Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 201 Document Number: D11769
Notes:
Online from BroadbandNow, a registered trademark of Centerfield BBN LLC. 3 pages., Whereas the FCC reports that broadband is unavailable to 21.3 million Americans, BroadbandNow Research analyzed FCC Form 477 data and estimated that 42 million Americans do not have the ability to purchase broadband internet. This is an additional 6.5 percent of Americans beyond FCC estimates.
Installing fiber-optic internet in sparsely populated places like western Kansas is extremely expensive, even with government subsidies. But some smaller, local broadband providers are finding ways to make it work where the big national companies have not.
17pgs, In this article, we evaluate the rate of return to government efforts to promote broadband. Specifically, we estimate the impact of USDA's broadband loan and grant programs on the average payroll per worker using zip code level data from the Zip Code Business Patterns for the period from 1997 to 2007. Our results indicate that two of the smaller broadband programs (the Pilot loan program and the broadband grants program) likely had no effect on local payroll per workers. On the other hand, the largest program in terms of funding and coverage (the current broadband loan program) likely had a positive impact. Our estimate implies that a $1 per capita increase in a particular zip code's one-time receipt of the current program broadband loan results in a $0.92 increase in payroll per worker annually. Our calculated point estimates of the benefit: cost ratios for this broadband program range from 1.98 to 2.99, depending on assumptions about the time frame over which benefits accrue. However, the confidence intervals are wide enough to include the possibility that the costs outweigh the benefits.
Online via https://doaj.org, Article deals with the role of information and communication technologies and the related infrastructure to induce innovations for sustainable rural development." Authors examined the role of social innovation to create a new demand for products, services, and organizational models for farm and rural enterprises.
18 pages., via online journal., Findings in rural communities prompt authors to recommend a customized policy framework that is responsive to the diversity and uniqueness of local contexts in connectivity and digital inclusion.
Miller, Alfred (author / Louisville Courier-Journal)
Format:
Article
Publication Date:
2019
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 124 Document Number: D11197
Notes:
Online from the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. 16 pages., Report of a troubled and costly effort to provide "high-speed internet to Kentucky''s remote corners."
6 pages., via website,Ryerson Review of Journalism., Between the hours of about 4 p.m. to midnight, Ashleigh Weeden goes dark. Not for the usual reasons, though. In Weeden’s southwestern Ontario town, the internet connection becomes—for all practical purposes—nonexistent during those hours. The PhD student at the University of Guelph lives in Ariss, Ontario, a “dispersed rural community” sandwiched between urban centres like Guelph and Kitchener. Despite paying about $250 monthly for internet access, she finds herself shut out of the internet. “…[S]ometimes [internet speed] goes one, maybe half a megabyte down,” she says. “I can’t grade, I can’t do anything, there’s no point, I might as well give up until about midnight.”
