The development community in general and the World Bank in particular recognize the importance of access to telecommunications as an element within the agenda of economic development and poverty reduction. The World Bank has adopted a strategy that includes universal access to telecommunications as a goal. This paper outlines various approaches that can be integrated to help close the 'access gap' to telecommunications where needed. These include: designing and implementing appropriate policies and regulations; acquiring both government subsidies and private investment funds; building...

Telecommunications sector policy-makers and regulators have a wide range of instruments available to them that can be used to increase access to telecommunications services in rural and low-income areas. The paper provides a review of these instruments, evaluating them against a set of criteria. It then goes on to identify a number of them that are worthy of further consideration by policy-makers and regulators while demonstrating that the effectiveness of the identified instruments can be greatly enhanced by the establishment of a conducive legal, regulatory and institutional framework. The...