Governance / Leadership
Talk is just talk until someone takes the initiative and puts structure and accountability around plans to invest in and derive the most from your local talent and digital infrastructure projects. Participants in this symposium stream will hear from research experts and other rural communities who have cracked the code on capturing and leveraging the talents and efforts in the community in building the vision, and then drafting and executing plans for realizing that vision.
Research
News Articles
Canada
Service Alberta website describes provincial government commitment to delivering Alberta SuperNet – a project to deliver high-speed broadband connection to rural areas in Alberta. Upon completion of this project, its results, benefits and future developments are discussed.
Central Alberta Rural Connectivity Initiative brings Government of Alberta and Xplorenet together in their efforts to deliver Internet connection to more and more households in rural areas. This website also provides the links to Premier Alison Redford’s press release on this topic.
The study is written by Allan Bly, ViTel Consulting Inc., in partnership with the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties and the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association. With the access to a high-speed reliable Internet becoming a “must-have” of our time, Government of Alberta is putting a lot of effort to connect rural communities to broadband. This study estimates the remaining unserved areas in Alberta.
Final Mile Rural Connectivity Initiative carried out by the provincial government of Alberta and Xplornet Communications Inc. successfully brings Internet to more rural communities. Advantages, challenges and future stages of the project are discussed.
Being the largest Canadian rural broadband service provider, Xplornet has recently hit 200,000 rural broadband subscribers. The article discusses Xplornet’s commitment to the mission of making internet accessible and affordable to the residents of the rural areas across Canada. A lot of projects are financed by the investors from the private sector.
The article discusses Bell’s position in the auction of 700 MHz spectrum, the significance of this auction for the rural broadband rollout project, and the key role of the government in the decision-making process. The federal government is urged to ensure the open and transparent competition for all the companies involved.
The article reports on Bell Canada failures to extend broadband services to rural communities. CRTC expresses its dissatisfaction with Bell’s services. The article concludes, that the acceleration of the rollout plans is required.
The government regulation of the rural broadband project remains crucial for its successful accomplishment. The MHA for Trinity North, Ross Wiseman suggests that the rollout process would run faster and be more successful if the CRTC makes Internet providers’ access to urban market conditional upon offering their services to “less lucrative” rural areas. The article describes in what ways federal government can gain more control over the broadband delivery.
Industry Canada provides an overview of programs and initiatives implemented with the efforts of provincial governments in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan.
CRTC
Papers and Reports
This UNDP report highlights how the benefits of the ICT can be applied to produce and modify policies and financing mechanisms when addressing the issues of the poor. It discusses the issues of inclusive and affordable access to ICT in the poorer rural and urban areas, as well as how ICT can be employed to produce more effective poverty-reduction policies and strengthen local development and participation of businesses in the areas.
The project summary discusses main goals and objectives of two projects carried out by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI): The Massachusetts Broadband Mapping Project and The Massachusetts Broadband Planning Project.
Making information technologies accessible and affordable to the entire population is one of the main priorities of all governments around the globe. Delivering reliable and fast broadband connection will increase economic and social benefits. This policy paper outlines the challenges of policy-makers in their efforts to extend data services. It discusses the cases of broadband rollout in the world focusing on the examples from East Africa.
This paper is part of the Broadband Series initiated by International Communication Union in cooperation with Broadband Commission for Digital Development. It discusses national governments’ commitments to the project of broadband rollout around the globe, focusing on the case studies of Rwanda and Australia. Although the main focus of this paper is on ICT and environmental sustainability it presents us with a meticulous analysis of governmental decision-making and policy-making processes with regards to broadband delivery project.
The paper focuses on the case studies of India, Sri Lanka and Philippines to analyze the process of the transformation from conventional networks to the NGN platform. It analyzes the steps undertaken in these countries to launch NGN in order to identify best practices and challenges faced in the process of policy-making and project delivery.
Legal Documents:
The Notice summarizes and discusses the results of CRTC review of broadcasting in the new media described in detail in Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2009-329. It also indicates the perspectives of the Commission on the developments and rapid changes in the broadcasting system. The purpose of this Notice is to comment on the existing data on the implications of growing over-the-top programming in the Canadian broadcasting system as well as to urge the partied to provide more data on the issue.
Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) is a team within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport responsible for conducting projects in broadband delivery across the UK. This guide contains the description of projects in the rural areas, as well information on funding for local authorities.
In response to CRTC interest in Over-The-Top broadcasting in Canada, Axia provides its recommendations with regards to its policy framework. Axia insists three regulatory challenges must be addressed when looking at OTT broadcasting.
The Government Five Point Broadband Action Plan outlines five key sectors – health, business, education, community, and government- and indicates what government is doing to provide faster broadband and better connection in there areas.
Website Links
This website offers articles and resources on broadband access issue in Australia and other countries.
United States of America
Massachusetts Broadband Institute is working closely together with Axia NetMedia Corporation to extend an affordable and reliable broadband across Massachusetts. As a part of Governor Patrick’s initiative Axia MassBroadband 123 serves as a tool to deliver the benefits of broadband connection to 120 communities in Western Massachusetts.
United Kingdom
Video – Discusses a group of MPs in UK heavily criticizing government rural broadband rollout project. Despite all the effort, high speed internet service in the rural areas of Britain still remain a distant reality.
The National Audit Office criticizes the government for being too slow in delivering “superfast” broadband to the rural areas of the UK. Among the biggest concerns, are slow pace, postponed deadlines, high costs and the absence of strong competition in the are of broadband services.
Australia
New Zealand
This website describes involvement of the Ministry of Education in the project of rural broadband rollout in New Zealand. Ultra-fast Internet in rural schools is one of the top priorities in this project.
This website contains information on two major initiatives launched by the government to bring access to high-speed Internet service across New Zealand: Ultra-Fast Broadband and Rural Broadband.