Broadly speaking, most of the market research firm's recommendations fall into two categories: public investment and spectrum policy. On the public investments side, the Yankee Group recommends funding the Rural Utilities Services' broadband program to help create subsidies and tax incentives aimed at coaxing rural carriers to build out broadband networks in underserved areas. The firm says that such efforts would mirror the Rural Electrification Administration that the government set up in the mid-1930s as part of the New Deal to bring electricity to the rural United States.

    Additionally, the group thinks Obama should mandate that fiber be built into all new public housing and multitenant buildings. Although deploying fiber is more expensive than deploying copper, the Yankee Group argues that it will be vastly more expensive to install fiber capacity in buildings after they are built. The group also says that the government needs to recalibrate its plans to build out a next-generation public safety broadband network after its last year to find any takers for the chunk of spectrum reserved for public safety on the 700MHz band.

    On the spectrum policy side, the group says the government should do more to open up spectrum for both licensed and unlicensed use. The Obama administration and congress could start opening up more spectrum simply by not delaying the transition to digital television and allowing carriers who successfully bid on the spectrum to use it for 4G (LTE) networks. Noting that Congress has already approved one transition delay, the group says that further delays would signal that the government is looking "backward rather than forward to our digital future."

    The government should also take the lead on pioneering applications for public use of the so-called "white-space" spectrum that the Federal Communications Commission to open up for unlicensed use last year. The group writes that the unlicensed spectrum "offers huge opportunities for new wireless innovations from consumer wireless broadband to geolocation" and that companies would have greater incentive to develop white-space devices and applications if the government invests in using the spectrum for public usage.

    The Yankee Group's other recommendations for spreading broadband technology include: