More Recognition for Connecting Rural Communities

In addition to The National e-Commerce Extension Initiative's Connecting Rural Communities receiving notable attention as a mechanism to drive rural broadband adoption, it was also recently cited in the March 2010 Volume 62, (2) edition of The Federal Communications Law Journal. In the article, "The Broadband Adoption Index: Improving Measurements and Comparisons of Broadband Deployment and Adoption" by T. Randolph Beard, George S. Ford, Lawrence J. Spiwak, and Michael Stern, the learning module's case study of Pickens County, Alabama is cited as an example of ways to evaluate both the monetary and social value associated with the governmental or organizational broadband adoption.

When the case study was added to the learning module fiber optic cable had been added in Pickens County to four schools at the request of the superintendent. This addition gave the school district the ability to offer a once unaffordable foreign language class to several schools at once, at a savings of $140,000. In addition to schools in the community, the increased service to the community also allowed for medical service providers to have access to larger centers of medical technology and health care information. Lastly, the community gained the ability to offer video arrangement capabilities which saved the court system money on prisoner transport. While the article points out that there are many ways to measure the value of broadband adoption, social value like residents learning a foreign language or gathering personal health information from medical sites, can be difficult to calculate yet should be considered as part of the value of broadband adoption.

For the full article, go to http://bit.ly/94sgDk
To review the complete case study, please see http://bit.ly/btnNIJ