With two decades of experience with shared access, infrastructure funding, end-user subsidies, and most importantly market reform, the time is ripe to critically consider what strategies have worked and those that have not, particularly with respect to universal access funding, which remains a key challenge. This will enable the development of effective strategies to tackle the challenges posed by low levels of affordability and insufficient rollout of networks in "high risk," rural and remote areas on the one hand and to take advantage of the opportunities presented by advances in technology, and developments in society on the other. As a starting point, that a public financing mechanism is introduced in a liberalized market indicates the existence of a market access gap. A market access gap is a gap between what the private sector can deliver and what is needed by the public, it is arrived at through a thorough analysis of the relevant market based on national definitions of universal service and access and agreed targets in a country.