the potential of and promoting mobile applications, including M-Government, in achieving Priorities of this Policy. The Government recognises that in many cases achievement of Priorities under this Policy entails expanded access to specific services— namely the relatively high-speed Internet. Furthermore, as demonstrated above, access to the broadband Internet generally delivers much greater economic impact than access to other telecommunications services. Therefore the Government will not shy away from promoting expanded access to the high-speed Internet as an important tool in achieving the overall objective of this Policy and especially Priorities 1 and 2. Specific characteristics of such high-speed Internet will generally be determined in the context of specific priorities, strategies and/or projects, having regard to the local needs, requirements associated with specific uses of such Internet and pragmatically attainable levels of service at specific locations. Nevertheless, taking into account market developments, including those referred to above, the Government considers that high-speed Internet services should be universally available at speeds attributable to at least 3.5G mobile communications technologies, having regard to: (a) that 2.5G mobile communications technologies may be used in the interim, while infrastructure capable of delivering higher speeds is deployed; and (b) potential of shared use of services as described below. The Government will, however, expect for certain areas to benefit from higher speed broadband Internet, including based on optical fibre, in particular in urban centres, especially in Port Vila and Luganville, where government offices and businesses that rely or would greatly benefit from such services are concentrated. In any case, the Government notes that the ICT sector is characterised by very rapid innovation and improvements. Therefore it expects that speeds and quality of telecommunications services will be constantly upgraded to reflect capabilities of current technologies as well as changing needs of users. The Government also recognises that services at the access network level need to be supported by appropriate backhaul networks as well as international connectivity. Therefore, whenever promoting infrastructure development, the Government will take an end-to-end network approach. In this regard it will aim to identify bottlenecks or obstacles to the development of such infrastructure. Where appropriate, regulatory or policy interventions will be designed and implemented to address such bottlenecks and obstacles. Specifically the Government acknowledges its role in facilitating appropriate solutions for reliable cost-efficient highcapacity and high-quality international connectivity, as well as solutions reducing reliance on such connectivity (such as a well-developed internet exchange point). Importantly, references to specific technologies in this Policy should only be considered as a manner to refer to specific functionality of services. The Government will by no means limit implementation of this Policy to specific technologies and, to the extent feasible, will not prescribe any specific technologies in its instruments. It will also Approaches and Principles 29