Broadband Impact and Market Assessment
Turn broadband market intelligence into impacts
A true broadband demand assessment not only helps you forecast subscription rates for internet services, it also tells you why and how broadband can benefit local households, businesses, and the community. By assessing current and potential demand for broadband, as well as quantifying local economy impacts and local quality of life benefits, SNG collects necessary demand data and builds an economic case for investing in broadband – which de-risks broadband investments, provides critical market intelligence, and further engages stakeholders in your project.
“We have some very specific needs in Custer County, so we needed a firm that could understand this and adapt to our needs. SNG was able to assess our broadband needs and quantify the economic impacts from broadband investments which they presented in a way that we could both understand and use for funding. They not only took the time to understand where we want to be, but have the know-how to help us get there.”
– Charles Bogle, President
Custer County Economic
Development Corporation, Colorado
Before launching a broadband initiative make sure you know the market:
- Who wants broadband services and why?
- What are their barriers to overcome?
- How do people view the benefits – to them and to the locality?
- What impact will your project have on the locality?
- Are your goals aligned with local residents and businesses?
The value of broadband comes from how it is used. Investing in broadband and digital infrastructure for any community or region should achieve three mutually reinforcing goals:
- Provide broadband to unserved, underserved, or overcharged areas.
- Ensure network sustainability, driven by subscriber demand for higher-value services.
- Use broadband and digital infrastructure as a platform for economic growth and delivery of smart community services.
Achieving these goals and overcoming digital divides can be put at risk by overly focusing on broadband availability. ‘Build it and they will come’ is a risky strategy. Growing demand and driving community benefits from the network investment increases both the economic sustainability and business case for broadband. This requires planning and granular market demand data. Investing in sustainability is as important as investing in the network build itself.
Uncover Demand and Maximize Value from Broadband
SNG collects and analyzes user data from households, businesses, and organizations to prepare a Broadband Impact and Market Assessment of broadband needs and service gaps at a community or regional level. We identify current and potential demand for services across market segments so you can:
- Assess your target market for developing a sustainable business plan and deployment strategy
- Forecast potential subscriptions and market share
- Formulate effective marketing campaigns based on market insights
- Engage with your community more effectively with targeted messaging
- Show local stakeholders how and why broadband investments can benefit the community
SNG provides elected officials, financial officers, local leaders, etc. the data points and insights they need to make evidence-based decisions on the potential sustainability of investments in broadband, digital infrastructure, and digital transformation. See our Success Stories for examples how we can help you – such as Custer County, Colorado, where we documented broadband needs, identified gaps in service, and estimated job and economic impacts from a $2 million investment in broadband infrastructure.
Broadband Impact and Market Assessment
Investing in broadband networks is a major undertaking. Planning for and ensuring the outcomes from your investment is essential. This comes down to two principal and related dimensions:
- Maximize service uptake and revenue generation for sustainable operations.
- Enable and promote effective use of the network for user benefits and to drive demand.
Addressing these dimensions proactively allows networks to fulfill the promise of economic advancement and increase demand for high margin, robust service subscriptions and value added services, such as; offsite data storage, hosted application, website design and hosting, etc. SNG’s Broadband Impact and Market Assessment provides municipal and utility networks with the following fact-based analysis:
- Levels of demand for current and potential services – provides new revenue streams and higher average revenue per user for network operators and their partners.
- Impacts that quantify the story – baseline data can be updated and used to demonstrate network return on investment over time.
- Levels of utilization – identifies gaps, barriers and opportunities from which strategies and programs can be developed to bridge digital divide issues in the community.
Take Stock, Measure Demand, and Meet It
The Market Demand and Economic Impact tools combine SNG’s proven data collection metrics and methods within your market with our analysis and research applied to your data. Both aspects are closely related and comprise a holistic approach to planning your network and delivering value from your network. The result is a sustainable network that delivers measurable positive impacts for your communities.
| Broadband Market Demand | Broadband Market Demand |
| Focus on identifying service demand and driving revenues. | Focus on identifying and driving network benefits, for users and for the community. |
| Understand the current state of broadband use and needs in your market | Understand the gaps and opportunities for broadband use in your market |
| Identify actual and potential demand for services across market segments | Estimate the economic impact of opportunities from your network investment |
| Assess the potential for driving demand for services and increasing revenues | Measure the impacts of the network and quantify its benefits |
Establishing the baseline early and identifying demand drivers from the outset better positions municipal and utility networks to quickly achieve and maintain sustainability and gain measurable outcomes for the community.
Who can benefit from this service?
The Broadband Impact and Market Assessment service is ideal for municipal and utility network providers who are:
In the planning stages of a broadband network who need to:
- Understand the economic return on investing in broadband infrastructure as a platform for the community
- Understand how to move forward quickly, build community buy-in, and avoid pitfalls
- Sustainably finance a network backbone for local anchor institutions (municipal and county facilities, schools, public safety, etc.)
- Sustainably finance last-mile network roll-outs
In the stages of deployment and operation of a broadband network and need to:
- Measure the impacts from local investment in broadband infrastructure
- Grow local demand and drive meaningful use of the network
- Understand models and methods to help networks become sustainable and maximize community return on investment
“The data gleaned from the engagement with SNG was exactly what I needed to present a go forward plan to council that aligned with the industry and our customer needs. No guessing. No waiting. Immediate results that showed on the bottom line.”
– Angela Imming
Director of Technology and Innovation
City of Highland, Illinois
See our Success Stories for examples of how we can help you – or contact us about how we can help your project achieve success.