Open Access Models

Options for Improving Backbone Access in Developing Countries (with a Focus on Sub-Saharan Africa)

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This study focuses on the opportunity for new models for building and financing and regulating network infrastructure. This need is particularly acute in Africa, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The scope of the work for the study covered three areas:

1. Leveraging new technologies: To look at “how new technologies could maximise the usefulness of existing infrastructure and in turn support the organic growth of new services and build-out of the infrastructure, providing greater access.”

2. Open access models: To examine municipal fibre models (that separate infrastructure provision from services) and the factors required to support such approaches.

3. Assessing the traditional approach to financing backbone infrastructure in SSA: To “articulate the conditions under which public financing of telecommunications infrastructure might be not only legitimate but effective from a development perspective.”

The leveraging of new technologies to expand access is covered in relation to Open Access ideas rather than as a topic in its own right. The study focuses on how, in the right circumstances, new, cheaper technologies offer opportunities for low-cost market entry in developing countries.