Urban broadband Internet policies in Europe: A critical review

For many reasons, cities and regions in Europe play an increasingly active role in providing and/or promoting broadband access to the Internet. This article describes and analyses local policy interventions in the broadband infrastructure market and presents a typology of four different kinds of policy. For each policy type, the cities' objectives and rationale for intervening in the broadband market are described. Subsequently, a critical analysis is made of the alleged benefits of broadband policies and the associated risks and costs are discussed.