Library

Moving the Needle Forward on Broadband and Economic Development

August and September, in partnership with the International Economic Development Council (IEDC), Craig Settles conducted a national survey of IEDC members and others affiliated with IEDC. The primary goal was to get a snapshot of how broadband impacts local economic outcomes. A secondary goal was to gather some insights to leveraging broadband as an economic development asset.

The Killer App: Economic Development and Job Creation

By Jim Baller

Economic development has been the “killer app” of community broadband, particularly fiber-to-the-home projects, during the last fifteen years. What’s more, economic development is likely to become an even more powerful driver of community broadband in the years ahead, as our knowledge of the relationship between high-capacity broadband connectivity and economic development continues to grow and mature, and as the lessons learned from the federal broadband stimulus program, Google fiber, Gig.U, and other gigabit initiatives work their way across the nation. This paper examines what we know about the relationship between broadband and economic development today, what we are likely to learn in the months and years ahead, and what this means for our communities and our nation.

Eliminating the Waiting Game and Driving Network Uptake

By Doug Adams & Michael Curri, Strategic Networks Group

In working across the globe and working with multiple carriers deploying new, more robust broadband networks, Strategic Networks Group (SNG) consistently comes up against the notion that once the network is built, adoption will naturally follow. “Build it and they will come” is a school of thought that expresses the great hope that potential subscribers will naturally adopt, however this notion goes against what we have always known about technology adoption.

Let’s Make a Deal: Price Sensitivity and Optimal Subsidies

This study uses a rich dataset collected by Connected Nation in 2011 through Random Digit Dial (RDD) telephone interviews with 15,082 adult heads of households who do not subscribe to home broadband service across a heterogeneous selection of states. This survey research aims to better understand demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of non-adopters and assess key barriers to broadband adoption.

US-Ignite – What’s the Opportunity for Communities, Network Providers, and Developers?

With the June launch of its US Ignite initiative, the White House has taken a bold step to stimulate creation of a new wave of services and applications that leverage advanced broadband networks running up to 100 times faster than today’s Internet. A new public-private partnership with almost 100 partners to date, US Ignite will build on the National Science Foundation’s GENI network to interconnect communities with advanced fiber networks to facilitate sharing of knowledge, experiences, and applications across multiple disciplines. The program is poised to match developers of advanced medical, public safety, energy, and other bandwidth-rich applications in these communities with experts who can help accelerate the development and commercialization of these applications.

Digital Divide: Expanding Broadband Access to Small Businesses

Testimony of The Honorable Lawrence E. Strickling Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information National Telecommunications and Information Administration United States Department of Commerce. Before the Committee on Small Business United States House of Representatives.

Innovation and Employment in the Intelligent Community

In 2013, Intelligent Community Forum will examine the relationship between innovation – one of the Intelligent Community Indicators – and employment in communities around the world. A massive body of evidence points to the fact that innovation creates prosperity. The prosperity flows from new demand – who needed an iPod or iPad until one was created? – or from empowering us to do more with the same resources of raw materials, people and money. But prosperity is not always the same as employment. In each recession of the past 50 years, job recovery has been significantly slower than in the previous recession. The recent recession in the industrialized world is only the most dramatic example of a “jobless recovery” – and that is in nations managing to post positive economic numbers at all.

Upgrading America and Achieving a Strategic Bandwidth Advantage

Upgrading America: Achieving a Strategic Bandwidth Advantage And a Psychology of Bandwidth Abundance To Drive High-Performance Knowledge Exchange

Fujitsu Conference on Paving the Road to Unlimited Bandwidth: Technologies and Applications for a Connected Age

San Jose, California June 13, 2012

Blair Levin Speech

Florida Fiber: Martin County Saves Big With Gigabit Network

Martin County, located on Florida’s Atlantic coast, faced a problem shared by local governments across the nation: the rapidly escalating cost of telecommunications access. For ten years, the County had connected schools and other public facilities with leased lines from the local cable company but Comcast was threatening to radically increase its prices after the lease expired in 2010.