Recommendation

State governments that have elected to make investments to increase the availability of affordable broadband service in rural areas and low income ur-ban neighborhoods should organize their efforts around a strategy that encourages and leverages lo-cally-driven initiatives, rather than follow a top-down approach that seeks to identify and close all broad-band service gaps in a comprehensive fashion. A bot-tom-up approach to state broadband policy has three major advantages. First, it is a conservative policy re-sponse in an economic arena in which the appropriate role of the public sector is highly contested and in which private sector deployment is proceeding rap-idly, even as gaps in service in rural and poorer com-munities remain. Second, it acknowledges the ex-traordinary practical difficulty of identifying and ad-dressing all broadband infrastructure and service gaps at any point in time, given data limitations and the rapid pace at which technologies, services and the telecommunications industry itself are evolving. Third, it facilitates the design of solutions that are unique to the local conditions in places where gaps exist and where local commitment to policy action is clearly demonstrated