Economic Development Agencies
Broadband Opens New Opportunities for Economic Development
Broadband is the most important differentiating infrastructure today and is critical to local economic competitiveness.
The availability of broadband and digital infrastructure will retain existing residents and businesses, as well as be a critical factor to attracting new businesses and residents. A stable population will help keep existing businesses and tax base, which supports existing public services. Business growth creates new employment opportunities and an expanded tax base. Furthermore, SNG’s research shows that broadband enables entrepreneurship and new start-ups and is essential for workforce readiness.
However, growth needs to be planned and managed to enable economic vitality and achieve sustainable community development goals. SNG works with economic development agencies to assess their economic realities and opportunities, provide data points for evidence-based decisions, and build an action plan and build buy-in focused on outcomes that integrate digital infrastructure and economic development in a holistic approach.
Broadband: A Key Driver of Economic Development
Availability of high-quality broadband is essential for attracting new businesses AND retaining your existing ones. This alone makes it critical for economic development agencies to engage with community leaders to ensure that affordable, quality broadband infrastructure is available to all businesses as well as the workforce.
Beyond simply being an essential infrastructure, broadband opens up new opportunities for economic development across your existing business base. While having access to high-quality broadband is an essential prerequisite for businesses, over a decade of SNG research shows a direct link between how well businesses use online business practices and their opportunity for growth.
- Businesses with high use of online practices generate more revenue and achieve greater cost savings
- More than half of small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) do not use online practices as much as they could
With SMBs typically amounting to 90% of a community’s business base, encouraging and assisting established SMBs to take better advantage of broadband connectivity is a largely untapped economic development opportunity.
Simply put, helping existing businesses do more online makes them more competitive, productive, and relevant, accelerating their growth and leading to increased economic activity and new job creation.
How We Help
SNG can help you estimate the economic impact potential from more effective use of broadband for your community or region by applying our industry-leading research. Quantifying this potential arms you with the information you need to take action toward economic growth with in-place businesses.
SNG provides practical solutions designed to assist individual SMBs in getting the most from broadband that fits their needs … growing your economy one business at a time. SNG research shows that for every ten businesses that adopt meaningful new online business practices on average five new jobs can be created in the community. Helping businesses help themselves just makes sense.
“Michael Curri and SNG give quantifiable reasons to deploy broadband. Their research provides hard data that is specific to a community, region, or state, not opinions, feelings, assumptions, or conjecture. Finally, we have access to facts that enable informed decisions so we can confidently define a path forward and acquire favorable financing.”
Joseph Franell
CEO – Eastern Oregon Telecom
Chair – Oregon Broadband Advisory Council
Learn more about how broadband use impacts economic growth … and what you can do to make that happen … at Getting the most from broadband for your community.