Economic Development – ‘ConnectGoldCountry’

George Rebane

Kentucky reports that getting internet connectivity into remote parts of the state – say, like the foothill counties of the Sierras – has been a boon to economic development of the region.  The estimated number of new jobs created by ConnectKentucky is about 63,000.  According to an article by Ann Carrns in today’s WSJ, ConnectKentucky is “a nonprofit with a roughly $2 million annual budget that has worked for the past four years to expand the availability and use of broadband Internet connections in the state's rural areas.”

Now that’s $2M over the entire state of about 4.3 million souls.  Not all pro rata calculations are necessarily correct, but it’s a good place to start.  Say, that we organize a handful of gold country counties with a total population of one million people and start a non-profit program I’ll call ConnectGoldCountry.  It would then require about $500,000 a year to do the same thing.  CGC could, perhaps, be run/promoted by the equivalent of our ERC from all the counties.

Then in four years or less, we would need to spend $50K a year and generate from that 6,300 jobs, or at least the capacity to support that level of job creation.  ConnectKentucky now has a spin-off called Connected Nation that is supposed to help replicate Kentucky’s experience across the land.  We should be able to get all kinds of input from them on telecomms, how to get funding, etc.  Anyway, it’s worth a look by our local telecom and economic development mavens like Steve Monaghan (Nevada County’s Chief Information Officer) and Gil Mathew (CEO of our Economic Resources Council).

For those who don’t subscribe to the newspaper, I have taken the liberty of making a pdf of the WSJ article and you can download it here Download faster_and_stronger.pdf.  (I hope that they won’t yell at me too much since spreading the word about rural connectivity is the purpose of the piece.)

 

Comments

[Russell Steele]

George,

There is project already underway by the the Sierra Economic Development Corporation (SEDCorp) to assess the aggregated broadband demand for Alpine, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, and Sierra counties. A survey is currently being completed to assess demand for high-speed Internet expansion in areas not currently covered by more than one provider.

This project is funded by the California Emerging Technology Fund, which was established and funded by the SBC-AT&T and Verizon-MCI merger agreements approved by the California Public Utilities Commission in November 2005. The fund focuses on "achieving ubiquitous access to broadband and advanced services in California, particularly in under-served communities through the use of existing and emerging technologies."

The CETF had $60 million dollars to invest, and this survey is the first step in the defining the demand and work with providers on how they will meet this demand. SEDCorp will soon have the survey results up on a web page. One of the models for this effort was the work done in Kentucky.

[George Rebane]

Thanks for the expansion and update Russ; I kinda knew that but thought that this WSJ piece today needed connection to our own broadband progress. After all, Kentucky got stuff going four years ago in hillbilly country and are now seeing the fruits. We here in high-tech California, in the armpit of Silicon Valley, are still herding our ducks hoping to get them into some kind of a row. So consider this a burr-under-the-blanket piece.

[Douglas Keachie]

I wonder if the topography and geography of the two areas are similar. I would also wonder if economies of scale might be a factor here. I'm all in favor of faster Internet, and am currently using an aircard from Verizon, which is good to very good, most of the time, but occasionally crawls to useless, in an unpredictable manner, but Saturday seems to be major upgrade time.