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Expectations about higher economic growth and the ever-increasing demand for higher bandwidth are driving the worldwide deployment of Next-Generation Access (NGA) networks. The paths followed to achieve this goal markedly vary, however, across different countries. This article offers a comparison of a handful of leading NGA deployments that rely on different investment models. We study the broadband national initiatives of New Zealand and Australia and a group of selected regional NGA deployments in Europe. While New Zealand’s approach partially relies on a public–private partnership model of investment, Australia’s National Broadband Network is a wholly government-funded initiative and the European local initiatives in Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands, and Portugal use a range of mixed models of investment. We use a common technology–policy–market framework that allows for a clear mapping of the incentives, goals, and actions of those involved in network deployment. Our main interest is the identification of the drivers for investment as well as the description of main risk factors in each case. By applying this framework to those selected deployment cases our work draws relevant conclusions about the impact of investment decisions on performance criteria such as coverage and uptake.