Thank you for participating in the Digital Needs and Readiness Assessment for your community!

You will shortly be receiving an emailed summary of your responses to the assessment questions, with the intention of providing a valuable reference for your preparations toward addressing the digital needs of your community. Our goal is to help you and your community transform your local economic opportunities, quality of life, and access to essential services through broadband and digital infrastructure.

We recognize that elected officials and local leaders may need different types of assistance at various stages of their journey to avoid pitfalls, save time and money, and maximize community benefits. Below are the key questions and steps SNG has learned of what it takes to move a community through a digital infrastructure and transformation process:

Strategic Networks Group is pleased to offer lessons learned, a practical path forward, and guidance through the process of deploying digital infrastructure and smart community services – please see below some examples of how we can help.

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How SNG can help you – practically and cost-effectively

Webinars

We can provide webinars on a number of relevant topics to help get your team, partners, and local collaborators on the same page toward a shared vision and set of goals. Topics include:

• Why Broadband Matters – Broadband is more than better and faster connectivity. Learn how broadband delivers meaningful community benefits beyond the business case.
• Getting Ready – Digital initiatives can be complex and long-term, involving many organizations. Being ready to achieve successful outcomes requires early and effective engagement of partners and stakeholders aligned to shared goals.
• The Economics of Broadband – How does broadband drive economic growth, and what can you do about it?
• Owning Your Broadband Future – What can communities do to address their broadband needs when incumbents don’t step up? What models of municipal ownership, such as open access, can succeed, where others may fail?

Webinars can be scheduled on request. Additional webinar topics can be provided as needed.

Broadband Workshops

On-site broadband workshops can be provided that align with your current stage of preparation for a broadband initiative. Workshops are an effective way to engage your team and stakeholders by getting them to work together on practical solutions to address your unique community needs.

Digital Economy Demand Checkup

The Digital Economy Demand Checkup service provides SNG’s industry-leading digital economy metrics and data collection tools for localities considering broadband and digital infrastructure projects. The service is designed to be a practical and cost-effective way for localities to assess whether they have enough of an addressable market by gathering demand data directly from residents, businesses, and organizations. Assessing broadband demand is one of the first steps a locality can and should take as they decide where and how to get started.

Economic Feasibility Assessments

You know you need to do something for your digital future, but what can you, or should you, do? How do you know that investing in digital infrastructure will pay off for your community or region? And how do you answer that question without blowing your budget?

SNG’s Economic Feasibility Assessment can quickly and cost-effectively assess up-front whether community benefits outweigh the costs of investing in broadband and digital infrastructure before, and often instead of, investing in costly feasibility studies.

Community Readiness Assessments

Whether building-out broadband, digital infrastructure, or a smart community initiative, there are critical factors for readiness and sustainability that lead to successful outcomes. You need to get ready in the right way. Whatever strategy and plan you choose to address your community’s digital future needs, actually making it happen requires consensus and collaboration.

Engaging stakeholders across your community in this process gets everyone on the same page, builds buy-in, and avoids unanticipated issues before they happen. Your leaders and elected officials will want to be assured that your project is ready, your stakeholders are in alignment, and your community has what it takes to get your project across the finish line.

SNG’s Community Readiness Assessments enables local leaders to understand if they have the right resources, skills, commitment and support to efficiently and successfully complete their projects.

Broadband Impact and Market Assessment

You have a strategy and plan for digital infrastructure that makes sense and should achieve your goals. Investing in digital infrastructure is a major undertaking. Planning for and ensuring the outcomes from your investment is essential. Having solid data on market demand ensure that you know how, how much, and when you should invest so that your investment is sustainable.

SNG’s Broadband Impact and Market Assessment builds on decades of experience in collecting the right data from your market so that you can move forward with confidence that you have the demand to achieve your goals and a baseline for measuring outcomes.

Broadband Toolkit

Not sure where to start? You are not alone. SNG’s complimentary Broadband Toolkit is a comprehensive guide to help communities get started, from defining your vision and goals to practical steps to make it happen.

 

About Strategic Networks Group (SNG)

Founded in 1998, Strategic Networks Group (SNG) helps communities and regions address the economic, social, and connectivity challenges of broadband, digital infrastructure and smart community services. Today SNG is globally recognized as the leader in helping clients assess the value and then drive economic and community benefits from investing in digital infrastructure. We work with communities and regions across North America and internationally, as well as agencies at a federal, state, and regional level working on advancing economies in a digital world.

SNG is recognized as the world leader in the econometrics of digital infrastructure and maximizing the benefits from online applications, which include smart community services. Applying our expertise and proven methodologies across the globe, we help countries, states, counties, and municipalities maximize the impacts of investments in digital infrastructure and service transformation.