THE STRUGGLE FOR BROADBAND IN RURAL AMERICA

Broadband, Digital Divide, Economic Development, Infrastructure, Rural Development, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, L96, R11, R58,

The impact of organisational culture on WiMax adoption by Saudi SMEs

Although there is some research that examines Worldwide Inter-operability for Microwave Access (WiMax) adoption, the role of the organisational culture by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) has not been studied in the context of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). This paper presents the outcome of a study carried out to examine the impact of organisational culture on the WiMax adoption by SMEs in the KSA. Based on Cameron and Quinn's Organisational Culture Assessments Instrument (OCAI), 63 questionnaires were distributed to different SMEs in Saudi Arabia. The results showed that there is a relatively low level of WiMax adoption by Saudi SMEs. Findings stated that Saudi SMEs are dominated by the clan culture where people are less innovative than the people in adhocracy culture

Residential Broadband Availability: Evidence from Kentucky and North Carolina

I analyze the determinants of county-level broadband availability to gauge the extent to which the rural-urban broadband gap has narrowed and the factors that underlie that narrowing. Using data that have been collected by organizations tracking and promoting broadband in Kentucky and North Carolina, I find that in both states the rural-urban availability gap has indeed narrowed substantially, although there appears to be a limit on the extent to which broadband service will extend into the least densely populated counties. Among rural counties, availability rates increase systematically with the size of the county’s urbanized population.broadband availability, digital divide, rural development, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Broadband Diffusion: Lags from Vintage Capital, Learning by Doing, Information Barriers and Network Effects

This paper examines the factors that affect the uptake of broadband in the residential and SME markets. We searched the economics literature on diffusion theory and identified five different models that potentially provide insights into the broadband phenomenon. These models were applied to the New Zealand market using detailed product and market data from an index ISP and the major telecommunications network provider which we consider representative of the market as a whole.We find evidence to suggest that the adoption of ADSL the dominant broadband technology in New Zealand is driven differently in the residential and SME markets. SMEs pay a fixed fee for each telephone circuit plus a toll tariff for all calls including local calls. An SME with multiple computers accessing the Internet requiring multiple telephone lines or with a reasonable level of traffic generating toll charges can cost-justify prematurely retiringmodem capital and introducing ADSL as there are immediate cost benefits. However an SME with little traffic and only one telephone line may still find that dial-up modems provide adequate service at a lower price

Factors Affecting Household Broadband Adoption in Australia

Broadband networking technology has grown in prominence, driven by increasing interest from researchers, organisations, the popular media and the public alike. Using a data set of more than 20,000 households, this study examines residential broadband adoption and growth over time. The study uses classification tree analysis, which allows for simple interpretive descriptions of the relationship between explanatory variables and adoption propensity without the need for strong distributional assumptions, a priori variable transformation or interaction specification. The study finds that broadband adopters typically live in a metropolitan centre and were also cable TV subscribers. Online banking, research and share trading were also significant drivers for uptake

Competition, Regulation and Broadband Diffusion: the Case of New Zealand

AbstractNew Zealand offers a through-provoking case study of the effects of different competition and regulatory policies on broadband diffusion rates. Despite having one of the highest rates of Internet connection and usage in the OECD widely available broadband infrastructure and low prices broadband uptake per capita languishes in the bottom third of the OECD. Whilst low uptake has typically been attributed to competition and regulatory factors associated with New Zealand's 'light-handed' regulatory regime this chapter proposes that the most likely reason is a combination of legacy demand-side regulations in particular the tariff options for voice telephony and limited value being derived by residential consumers from the small range of applications currently necessitating broadband connections. The New Zealand case illustrates the effect that legacy regulations can have on the diffusion of new technologies and indicates a need for more research on the effect of telecommunications industry regulations on demand-side uptake factors

International Broadband Deployment: The Impact of Unbundling

This paper shows that unbundling an incumbent's infrastructure only results in a substantial improvement in broadband deployment for middle-income countries, but not for their high income counterparts. Our statistical analysis of approximately 100 countries showed that GDP per capita, population, competition and unbundling are all factors that can lead a carrier to provide broadband services in a country. The logit models show that unbundling has a significant positive impact on the availability of broadband services. The OLS analysis indicates that GDP per capita, population size, price, competition, the percentage of dial-up Internet users, and hosts all have positive effects on the number of subscribers. One implication of these results is that if a policy is to be implemented to promote broadband, it should either foster competition through unbundling and/or reduced prices. Efforts to develop local content can also improve broadband adoption.broadband; unbundling; competition

Exploring the Relationship Between Broadband and Socioeconomic Health: A Case Study in Appalachia

This thesis uses county-level Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Form 477 and Appalachian Regional Commission data to examine factors that affect socioeconomic health, with a particular focus on the impact of household broadband adoption, in rural areas of the Appalachian United States. Outcome variables of interest are percentage of people in poverty, per capita market income (i.e., the income one earns from participating in the economy through wages, investments, business income and the like), and number of excess deaths per 100,000 residents. The first chapter uses two multivariate multiple regression models, one using 2008 data and one using 2016 data, to assess the impact of household fixed broadband connections per thousand residents, education (as measured by high school graduation rate), unemployment rate, and county economic dependency, on income and percent of people under the poverty line in two time periods. The second chapter uses an Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression to evaluate the relationship between rurality and excess mortality when socioeconomic variables, including broadband adoption, percent of adults with high school degrees, unemployment rate, percent of people in poverty, per capita market income, and county economic dependency, are controlled for. The results for the first two models depict a statistically significant and negative association between low levels of broadband adoption and income in counties, and a statistically significant negative association between low levels of broadband and percent of people in poverty in 2016. There was no significant association between broadband and excess mortality, but these results do suggest that socioeconomic factors play a larger role in contributing to excess mortality than whether a county is rural or urban. In particular, transfer payments (i.e., government aid) were positively and significantly associated with higher levels of excess mortality. Establishing causality remains an important consideration when assessing policy aimed at improving rural quality of life through increased broadband availability and adoption, and should be a central influence on policy and funding decisions going forward. Improving data quality and accuracy should also be a priority going forward, as this is necessary for determining whether funding programs are producing tangible benefits

The Broadband Digital Divide and the Nexus of Race, Competition, and Quality

We examine the gap in broadband access to the Internet between minority groups and white households with geographically fine data on DSL subscription. In addition to income and demographics, we also examine quality of service and competition as components of the Digital Divide. The gaps in DSL demand for blacks and Hispanics do not disappear when income, education, and other demographic variables are accounted for. However, lack of competition is an important driver of the Digital Divide for blacks. Service quality is an important determinant of demand, and ignoring it masks the true size of the DSL gap for Hispanics