Unfortunately, one of the underlying causes for these off-the-mark assumptions is the stereotype that urban poor kids don’t do anything worthwhile on the Internet. So many articles about digital inclusion efforts or broadband adoption among inner city poor folks are followed by incendiary commentary from those who believe poor kids are lazy, only surf porn, aren’t capable of learning and a host of other fallacies.

There’s quite a different reality when you do a little research. There are projects going on that are lifting kids out of poverty and setting them on various tech-related career paths. Here are a couple that should be promoted and replicated in some way by those individuals, government agencies and organizations wanting to close the digital divide.

The Youth Institute

Each year the Long Beach YMCA Youth Institute trains 2000 elementary school students, 300 middle school students and 200 high school students in digital media skills. Students also receive training on how to improve their academic performance and training their develops skills necessary to be effective and productive workers.

The Youth Institute created Change Agent Productions as a social enterprise comprised of professional digital media artists who work alongside urban youth to execute professional video productions, graphic design projects and digital media trainings. This business generates $400,000 a year and employs 125 people, 45 of which are former participants in the Institute.

The journey toward this goal within the poorest part of Long Beach, CA started when Robert Cabeza had a vision to use creative technology to develop marketable job skills among urban high school youth at risk of failing school and life. The path he chose was to develop a mastery of digital media skills, and combine these with skills needed to excel at academics and be successful in the workforce.

The California Emerging Technology Fund awarded the Youth Institute a $1 million grant to have Change Agent Productions create 10 Institutes around the state. A group from the Institute went to Eastern Europe to teach youth there how to use technology for social change. Cabeza recently returned from Cambodia on a beginning effort to create a similar Institute there.

Smart Riverside

Riverside, CA’s IT department initiated and formed a nonprofit company, Smart Riverside, to manage the city’s digital inclusion program. Their citywide wireless network is integrated into the City’s gigabit network and is a cornerstone in a broadband effort that has brought over 5000 low-income families onto the Internet since its start.

60% – 70% of the $500,000 is costs to run the wireless network and digital inclusion program is covered by a recycling business that Smart Riverside also operates with its adult and youth staff. An annual fundraiser the City runs covers the remaining costs.

The organization hires youth from Project BRIDGE (Building Resources for the Intervention and Deterrence of Gang Engagement), a gang intervention program. The Smart Riverside staff mentors these kids and trains them how to act, talk and work within business settings as well as helps them get A+ Certification, a general computer certification for entry-level service technicians.

This organization refurbishes 200 computers per month. They have set up training labs at every school where teachers were willing to teach an 8-hour class for students, parents and other adults. At end of a training class, each family receives a free working PC with Microsoft Office and a WiFi router and free wireless access. Smart Riverside’s staff provides lifetime customer service and technical support.

Among the 27 students coming through the program so far, two currently staff and manage the recycling program, three are working at Best Buy and two were hired by at Xerox ACS (Xerox’ outsourcing arm).

What if…

These are just a couple of stories that melt away the stereotype that all poor kids are lazy, have no work ethic and all the other garbage that clutters rather than advances efforts to close the digital divide. Maybe one day soon Forbes will write an article, “If I Were a Smart Adult Helping Poor Kids Master Technology.”

Here’s an interesting column in The Huffington Post with some additional lessons we can learn from the debate the Forbes column generated.

Community foundations are tax-exempt public charities serving thousands of people who share a common interest—improving the quality of life in their area. Individuals, families, businesses, and organizations create permanent charitable funds that help their region meet local challenges. (Check out the Council On Foundations)

The community foundation should be formed under the auspices of a Community Development Co-operative and could be used to coordinate grant applications and to issue community bonds for open access broadband networks, community media center, schools, clinics, etc.    This can be readily accomplished by transferring public land, worthy assets, into the community foundation to secure bonds which local residents can invest their money, savings, 401Ks, etc. and can not only get interest, but through a cooperative might reap dividends depending on how the funds are used.

The bonds plus interest may be paid back several ways.  The obvious source of revenue is of course local community philanthropy.  As well as through grants, revenue would be raised through the sponsoring community development cooperative’s initiatives.  For example, a community enterprise endeavor might be an open source community broadband fiber network for an ongoing revenue source.  Obviously, to viably facilitate these types of initiatives the community needs to go through the formalities of a project initiative, in that, the concept specific to the local community needs to be defined and agreed to.  Subsequently, a feasibility study needs to be undertaken and the results of which agreed to.  From this a business plan needs to be drafted and again approved and finalized for design and implementation.

It could also be used to create and coordinate community currency, scrip, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_currency to foster local buying of products and services such as those in:

• Corvallis, Oregon, Hour Exchange,  http://hourexchange.org ;
• Pittsboro, North Carolina,  PLENTY  Currency Cooperative (PCC), http://theplenty.org ;
• Ithaca, New York, Ithaca Hours,  http://www.ithacahours.com ;
• Great Barrington, Massachusetts, BerkShares, http://www.berkshares.org .

Okay, so why not take it one step forward and create a Community Co-operative Bank similar to The Cooperative Bank, of Roslindale, Massachussetts, http://www.thecooperativebank.com to print local currency and support the Community Foundation?  Or, start a credit union with the 10 steps being advocated by the Florida Credit Union League, http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/cu/20000301a.asp.

Looking for further funding?  The National Consumer Co-operative Bank, http://www.nccb.coop/  “will support and be an advocate for America’s cooperatives and their members, especially in low-income communities, by providing innovative financial and related services”.  It also has a subsidiary co-operative bank, NCB, http://www.ncb.com/.

Maybe on a regular basis, and not just Christmas time, we should watch the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life“, to instill basic community and social values, to inspire us to create our own “Bailey Building and Loan Association.”

In case you missed the last Gigabit Nation show, the Executive Director of N. Carolina’s Mountain Area Information Network Wally Bowen gives listeners valuable lessons on forming broadband co-ops and nonprofits. 

You should consider this strategy for your community.

In 2009 I came across National Community Development Services, Inc. (NCDS), which specializes in boosting the economic health of communities through a process they term economic development fundraising. The concept is simple, really, and can be applied to broadband projects where one of the main goals is to use the network to improve economic development. Build a financial sustainability strategy based on a campaign to recruit investors for the network.

As I find interesting guests to invite to be on my radio show, Gigabit Nation, I’m finding a theme that keeps recurring in slightly different forms, but with the same bottom line – fund a network by convincing local businesses, not-for-profits and other organizations to underwrite the costs. One variation to that are co-ops, such as the Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN) that I’m highlighting on tomorrow’s show.

We’re not talking investors as a euphemism for “subscribers,” but people who invest more than the price of service in exchange for a piece of the action. This aligns with my position that communities need to treat broadband networks as a business venture.

The investors in this scenario are community hospitals, large businesses and other organizations I consider institutional customers of the network, but they’re putting a financial stake into the project. “Key funders have a greater sense of ownership in the initiative they are funding,” explains NCDS DiFiore. “An investor expects a return on his or her investment, but here, benefits the community receives are the primary return. Broadband creates economic growth, prosperity, and vibrancy for a city, county, or region. The largest stakeholders in a community’s well-being, therefore, are logical potential investors in that mission, even if they are not customers on the network.”

The premise behind NCDS’s service is that you should view any community project that improves economic development directly and indirectly as a business venture. Some “x” amount of money goes into the venture. When the investment is successful, return on the investment is more revenue, higher profits, more jobs, a more skilled workforce, improved infrastructure, friendlier business climate, etc. If municipal budgets, bond financing and traditional financing are available or practical for supporting the project, then you turn to those in the community with capital and the greatest stake in the project’s success. Since a network offering services to constituents is a revenue-generating business, there is potential for a direct financial return, though as is the case in Fredericton, this revenue is reinvested in the network.

A typical scenario might be to create a co-op or other nonprofit entity. If we use Fredericton, New Brunswick as an example, they created a budget for how much it would cost to build and operate a high-end fiber network. They brought together the heads of 12 of the larger commercial and educational organizations from the community and proposed that each of them and the city invest a fairly proportioned amount into the co-op. The co-op then retained contractors and hired personnel to build and operate the network. The investors received broadband services as a benefit while profits from revenues went back into network services that benefit the community, including free citywide wireless.

Over the next week, you can listen to Gigabit Nation to get a lot of details on how two other communities created effective broadband financing strategies when they weren’t making headway pursuing other avenues for funding. But what follows is a good conceptual framework that the radio interviews will build upon.

Putting the economic development fundraising strategy into play

The business, legal and tax procedures to structure the entity at the center of an economic development fundraising project are just a little complex, so be sure you start out by consulting the appropriate professionals at the outset. DiFiore provides more detail on how the fundraising process itself works.

“Most successful fundraising campaigns for community and economic development initiatives usually adhere to four core principles:

1. It’s about the community’s needs–not the organization’s needs. So you make the community and the benefits they’ll receive from broadband the focus of the campaign, not the organization.
2. It’s much easier to raise big money for specific initiatives and projects [digital inclusion, workforce retraining programs, improving healthcare delivery] than it is to fund an “organizational budget.” No one is interested in ensuring an income stream for an organization. They want outcomes in the community–not ‘activity.’
3. What they help write, they will help underwrite. Key stakeholders and funders must have a sense of ownership in the initiative being funded. The best way to achieve that is to involve them during planning and development.
4. The initiative must be relevant to the community’s needs and opportunities; there must be measurable goals that define progress and success; and the leaders of the organization/initiative must be accountable to the investors.

Tomorrow be sure to catch the second part of my interview with Tom, and then tune in to Gigabit Nation to listen to my interview with Wally Bowen, founder and Executive Director of MAIN.

Get these and other valuable broadband business strategies and tactics in my book, Fighting the Next Good Fight: Bringing True Broadband to Your Community.

This week I tackled another challenging issue represented by the DC deal that gets ignored by much of the media, and probably policymakers as well. What do you do about connecting all of these middle mile projects to last mile (or first mile, as my UK friends regularly remind me) projects? Huh. You say you haven’t heard about a lot of projects connecting consumers and businesses to those stimulus-funded middle mile buildouts? That’s my point.

We’re running the risk of having a lot of project teams complete thousands of miles of buildouts late next year, and then start scratching their heads wondering where are all the grateful citizenry coming out to greet them. But the truth of the matter is, if the Feds are spending billions to build middle mile infrastructure that private sector companies refused to do, why do they assume those same private providers will build the last mile? We easily could end up stuck with “well, we can’t make the business case for wiring your [take your pick] small town, rural county, low-income neighborhoods either. So we’re not gonna do it”

I talk about this in more detail on GigaOm, and using DC as an example lay out some potential last mile-to-middle-mile connection strategies communities may want to consider. There’s also a post on one of the DC blogs that lists some other issues that need to be addressed. The bottom line is, whether you’re an urban area or a rural community, it’s likely you’re going to have to get firmly settled into the driver’s seat and forge your own last mile path.

A good story to pay attention to as developments unfold is Wired West. The Co-Chair of this western Massachusetts coalition of 42 small towns and townships, Monica Webb, was a guest on my show, Gigabit Nation and described why these communities are building their own last mile. There’s a huge middle mile network coming their way, but given those communities’ depressing experience of constant rejections by Verizon, they’re going to take control of the deployment process rather than hear “no” again. It does pretty much suck, though, that they have to worry about stimulus money funding a private sector provider that could end up cherry picking Wired West’s best customers.

It’s still early in the game, so Wired West hasn’t settled on a business model yet. However, it seems a public private partnership in which a private provider rides on top of an Wired West-owned open access network is the ideal situation from the standpoint of residents and every business except the large telecom & cable companies. Consumers and local businesses get the kind of broadband services that benefit their lives and potentially their economic well-being. Local governments benefit in a myriad of ways. Private providers get to offer services 1) without the cost of building the infrastructure, which generates ROI sooner, and 2) in the long run benefit from a competitive environment. This scenario would likely play well for urban areas too, such as in DC.

The rain that falls on this parade for many communities, of course, are the entrenched incumbents who myopically believe that smaller, local providers doing well can only mean that the big companies lose. Since you can’t blow incumbents off of this position with dynamite, how well the first mile strategies work out depends on how much fight, political willpower and creativity consumers, local businesses and sensible service providers bring to bear.

I’ve also been getting feedback that some of you aren’t aware of what I do for a living, or how what I do can help your particular broadband project. <sigh> Another case of the cobbler’s kids having no shoes or smartphones or too many lights hidden under bushels or something.

Turkey Day inspired an idea. Though most of us are just becoming occupied with Christmas gift lists, what about Thanksgiving gifts? I know, probably no one’s dropped a subtle hint about what they’d like for T-day other than a Food Coma Recovery Couch. Being mindful of tight budgets and short tempers, here’s my Thanksgiving gift wish list.

In exchange for all the broadband knowledge I’ve passed your way that you’ve found helpful, how about  recommending one of my services to a colleague, friend, business partner, broadband project team or vendor who can use it? It’s one gift sure to benefit everyone involved. They get a service that helps their bottomline. I continue being able to afford the time to pump valuable content into the public domain. You continue getting that content.

Here’s the lineup of what I do to help folks get better, faster broadband to where it’s needed.

First, I have this kickin’ radio show, Gigabit Nation. It’s doing well, lots of people listen in and the lineup of guests continue to be awe-inspiring. However, I can use a couple of sponsors. The technology that makes Gigabit Nation run is integrated with social media networks, allowing me to offer sponsors a great marketing triple play that makes marketing people giddy.

I also have the only broadband strategy guide on the market, Fighting the Next Good Fight: Bringing True Broadband to Your Community. I should have an e-version ready for sale just in time for the holidays.

Some folks don’t have budget to bring on a consultant for a full-blown engagement. Others like to take a consultant out on a test drive before signing on the dotted line. I have an app for that! Ok, just kidding. I do have a workshop for that, though. Several, actually. Whether it’s to make your staff more sufficient handling the tasks at hand, or help them make better decisions, you can’t go wrong with a workshop.

Oh yeah, let’s not forget about vendors and ISPs. Sure, I’m a community broadband mover and shaker. But for 25 years before that I was a marketing guy for tech companies. I have a couple of marketing services that unite my past and my current lives. Let’s get crackin’ putting the word out folks, there are sales leads waiting to be generated!

Btw, I’m still a great candidate for your basic, all-around broadband consulting gig.

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving. And don’t forget to give thanks for all the little things that make life great and worth living.

Yea though we walk through the valley in the shadow of Comcast’s desire to annihilate our communities’ right to choose our best broadband solutions, we hold our fear in check and engage the foe because we believe it is possible for the underdog to win.   

I made that up last night as I headed out to prep one of my soccer teams for our biggest game of the season. I was feeling pumped after receiving the news that Longmont, CO’s Measure 2A was on its way to victory. The underdog had stood tall in the face of a huge corporation’s relentless efforts to buy a local election rather than compete in the free market. However, despite being outspent 60 to 1, Measure 2A won with 60% of the vote.

There are some valuable lessons for other communities to learn from Longmont’s duel with a corporate giant hell-bent on leveling all opposition in its path – and win. Some communities that have broadband dreams of their own, particularly those in Colorado, have watched the battle to gauge how things might turn out in their particular towns and counties. These elections are no walk in the park, but as we see, they are winnable.

Believe in the rightness of your cause

When all the candidates for local offices come out unanimously in favor of the same measure, regardless of political affiliation, then you get a pretty good sense that people believe in the rightness of community broadband. As Comcast rolled out seemingly endless slick mailers, robo-calls and full-page ads, broadband advocates kept fighting until the last vote was cast. There was definitely a feeling that the democratic process was being tested in Longmont, and its citizens weren’t about to fail this test.

Cut through the crap

Know who’s funding these efforts to kill pro-community broadband ballot measures, who their allies are and what their real agenda’s are. Generally, it’s pretty simple. The main big incumbent is the usually the puppet master hiding behind the curtain pulling the strings. Some state or regional telco “trade association” is usually the front for the incumbent, the entity of public record that sends out checks and the creator of the astroturf group that pretends to be a local public interest group (Look Before We Leap). Add in a couple of PR firms, some “research experts” and a handful of lawyers, you have the whole of your opposition.

Once you expose this cast of characters and their rabid fixation with killing anything with even the hint of competition to the incumbent, many local folks will get on the pro-community broadband train and will stay for the duration of the campaign. As Longmont proved, this loyalty will hold firm through the worst blizzard of negative marketing.

Educate your neighbors

When Longmont held an election on a similar ballot measure in 2009, a lot of people didn’t fully understand what broadband is, what benefits it delivers and how successful these networks have been in other communities. When the half-truths and outright lies start flooding the environment, the facts are your strongest weapons. Supporters went out of their way to deliver “just the facts,  ma’am” at every opportunity.

Use the medium you’re trying to create to level the playing field

Philadelphia, Wilson, NC and now Longmont are among the ranks of communities that have used social networks, blogs, traditional e-mail and other online tools to mobilize constituents quickly to write letters, attend council meetings, show up at events and otherwise stay actively engaged. In a presentation I did last year that I sent over to 2A supporters, I advise setting up a rapid response mechanism for counterattacking opponents’ false claims.

It warmed my heart to see supporters create and distribute a news release within hours of newspapers hitting the street with full-page ads from opponents. Just one of the many examples of the small but nimble home team working in excellent guerrilla marketing mode.

Pull in allies

2A supporters called on my colleagues Jim Baller (Baller Herbst), Chris Mitchell (Institute for Local Self Reliance) and others as well as myself. We open our vaults of knowledge of broadband and political battles across the U.S. so local advocates can be knowledgeable, creative and resourceful during referendum campaigns.

It also helped a lot having Alcatel-Lucent on board as an ally. Even though their financial contribution was small ($3,500), their presence lends credibility to the campaign plus access to good (and free) knowledgebases.

Keep your message simple, honest and powerful

After patiently enduring weeks of four-color glossy brochures dumped in every mailbox that attempted to scare voters, one Longmont resident saved up his pennies and ran the following ad on the local newspaper’s front page in the last couple days of the election. It summed up community sentiment quite nicely.

Of course there are additional lessons. But I’m not going to give away all the inside secrets. There are many more battles to fight.

Longmont, CO has the opportunity to launch itself squarely into a digital communications leadership position among U.S. cities. IF its citizens can beat back the latest attack from the Empire, in this case with Comcast in the role of Darth Vader, and the storm troopers crouched in a hastily conceived vehicle called No Blank Check Look Before We Leap.

Today seems like a good day to neuter one of the biggest false arguments from the storm troopers because you’ll hear it every time a city’s on the verge of breaking free of the ills of the Empire. But first, a brief history.

[Cue serene music, pop up panoramic of sleepy bedroom community]. Longmont is a forward-looking community, as typified by being declared an “All-America City” by the National Civic League in 2006, an award for communities whose citizens work together to identify and tackle community-wide challenges and achieve uncommon results.

One such achievement was to build a fiber network several years before this. Unfortunately in that period [cue sinister music], the Emperor’s senate allies in the state legislature passed a law that requires communities to get voter approval before they can run a network service. So the fiber network sits idle.

Longmont has a ballot measure up for next month’s election that will return the city’s rights to determine if it wants to use its network to provide services unavailable or unaffordable from the Empire [segue to brassy Jedi music]. A couple years ago the city’s local WiFi provider defaulted on major tax payments, so the City took over the network until they can decide how to make this resource work for them. If the ballot measure passes, the city gets a great one-two broadband punch capability.

But wait! [you guessed it - cue sinister music, heavy DV breathing] Once the ballot measure was approved over the objections of the local Comcast lawyer, said lawyer starts No Blank Check, Look Before We Leap, a “citizens” group to save Longmont from the fiscal ee-vil of the Jedi, eh, city-owned broadband. Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association’s [which has 3 Comcast execs on its Board of Directors and another as VP] promptly pours $150,000 $236,000 into the group already, and away we go with the usual campaign of distorted facts, twisted logic and baseless fear mongering.

The emperor is nekkid as a jaybird

A lot of No Blank Check’s argument Look Before We Leap (any Incumbent-funded Astroturf group, really) is that municipalities can’t run broadband networks effectively. Consider these stories that put the lie to these claims.

Santa Monica, CA is a southern California town about the same size as Longmont. The city government had old, slow-moving communication technology, but no money in the budget for new technology.  So the city’s IT department pooled money they were already paying for voice and data services and used this capital to build a fiber network and implement new technology such as better switches that allowed for additional savings.

By switching fiber for the old systems they realized a $750,000 savings, all of which stayed in IT’s budget.  The ongoing savings fund other innovations, such as hotzones for free wireless access.

The fiber network also had excess bandwidth, which the city used to provide large numbers of community sites with free wireless access.  They sold dark fiber to corporations, reaching a point where the service sells on its own. The network is growing all over the city using private companies’ money [and private service providers]. The city generates more revenue to expand the network for its use. The IT budget is self-sustaining and the department has $2.5 million in capital.

The City of Wilson, NC, half the size of Longmont, built a fiber network using mostly existing internal staff and consulting firm Uptown Services for guidance and Quanta Services to construct network distribution points. They are successfully selling 10 mbps services at a lower price than Time Warner’s 10 mbps service, and services up to 100 mbps that Time Warner can’t even match. They have a 12-year payback projection on their $28 million investment, and are on track with first-year sales to meet this goal.

Astroturf groups like to wail and gnash their teeth about the failures of muni wireless networks when, in reality, the failures they cite are all networks that were owned by private companies including the wireless network in Longmont. But what about city-owned WiFi? Here’s one example, from Prestonburg, KY.

Brent Graden, the city’s Director of Economic Development, states, “We made wireless the central part of an integrated package of activities to revitalize business in our downtown. Our wireless network, combined with 3% loans and development efforts for buildings that weren’t being used, made downtown friendly for businesses. Wireless created incentives for people to come downtown.

“Within three months of launching the network, 22 businesses moved in with 40–45 new jobs. This creates a cyclical effect with more people coming into downtown, which attracts more businesses. Tax revenue from here in the first year of the program went up $111,000, mostly through new business growth. This in turn allowed us to buy an aerial fire truck, which has kept property owners and government insurance rates from rising.”

Want to get the real deal on broadband networks run by municipal governments, check out these two reports: http://www.successful.com/msp/snapshot-4-09.pdf, http://www.successful.com/msp/snapshot-1-09.pdf. Not every municipal network has been a big winner, and a couple have struggled. But there are three or four dozen successful municipal, or public-driven public/private network, projects that provide unquestionable validation for communities such as Longmont [actually, 130 and increasing].

Government-owned networks have a lot to recommend them. They also demand proper previous planning. But I believe Longmont will pull it off if they can just get the Empire out of the way [segue to triumphant Jedi-in-the-house music].

Listen to radio talk show Gigabit Nation’s interview with two Longmont referendum supporters, and the interview with Santa Monica’s CIO about their network.

Last year the U.S. broadband stimulus program finished awarding public, private and nonprofit organizations over $7 billion to build new broadband infrastructure, create public computing centers and implement broadband adoption programs. Concurrently, hundreds of millions have come from private and other public sources for broadband. Improving economic development is a driving force behind these investments.

However, what have we accomplished for our investments, particularly in underserved urban and rural communities? It is a little early in the process, though, and only a small portion of the stimulus checks have been issued. Perhaps the more important question is, what economic outcomes can we hope to achieve in the next two or three years?

My national survey of economic development professionals, conducted in partnership with the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) produced results that provide a number of clues. Here’s a sampling of this year’s findings.

• Rural economic developers appear to be well ahead of their urban counterparts in the area of planning. 58% of rural respondents either have broadband strategies and tactics worked into their economic development plans, or are writing plans currently with these elements. Only 39% of urban respondents have done the same.

• “We need a gigabit” has become the rallying call for broadband supporters everywhere; rural survey respondents say that 100 – 120 Mbps the minimum they’ll need over the next three years to impact their local economies.

• While the FCC and other policymakers continue to try to make a silk purse from a 4Mbps sow’s ear, economic development professionals aren’t buying it. At least 92% see no economic impact coming from this minimal “standard.”

• “Finding a job” is one of the most frequently cited personal economic benefits of broadband for low-income people. Economic development professionals rate it at the bottom of the list of potential economic outcomes.

• As expected, fiber is clearly seen as the leading broadband technology to attract businesses to a community. However, wireless is viewed as a strong contender for increasing startups.

• Not all wired broadband technologies are equal. Whereas fiber networks are clearly viewed by more people as having a greater impact than wireless on a range of economic outcomes, cable is viewed as only slightly more effective than wireless despite the industry’s PR and marketing efforts.

• Perseverance is still key. Although 19% applied and didn’t win a stimulus grant, another 11% whose communities also didn’t win kept fighting for money and got their projects funded through state or other federal grants.

• As we move well along our way into the second decade of the new millennium, 7% of respondents only have dialup as their broadband option, and 13% of rural respondents say they don’t expect to ever have broadband sufficient enough to impact economic development.

Download the full survey analysis report here.

Supplement: Download comments of 169 survey respondents who offer advice on getting better broadband to communities that need it.

If you want assistance with developing your economic plan that incorporates broadband strategies and tactics, call me about my on-site workshop that helps your broadband project team be more effective.

One of the biggest pushbacks broadband champions of all stripes hear is that there’s not a direct link between broadband and economic development. I’m looking for stories from around the country – rural areas, urban cities, a group of farmers broad-banding together, a dozen assisted living buildings linked by a common computing center, pilot projects or done deals.

You don’t have to write your whole story here in the Comments section. I just need the high points such as “We built x-type of network in y-location for some number of subscribers and achieved z-results.

I do need a way to get back with you because I’ll have a few questions about the particulars of your project and your outcomes.” You can e-mail me (craig @cjspeaks. com) if you don’t want your contact info out there for the world to see.

The survey closes today (8/31). I’m starting interviews next week, so you want to hurry up and get your story in the queue for consideration. By the time I release the survey report on September 19, I hope to have all of these interviews completed.

The end product is going to be pretty cool and very informative, which means great exposure for your project. So, whataya got for me?