Getting the Most From Broadband for Your Community

Driving Community Benefits – How do we get the most out of our broadband?

Broadband and digital infrastructure for local residents and businesses is essential for communities to remain relevant and competitive – but it is not enough.

Community and economic benefits come from how broadband is used. SNG has programs and experience to drive meaningful use of online practices in order to maximize local economic growth, community benefits, and network sustainability

Meaningful Change Does Not Just Happen

Years of SNG research have shown that businesses who use the internet more effectively generate more income and save on costs compared to those that do not. Growing revenues and cost efficiencies means increased profits and faster growth – which creates more jobs. Businesses that use the internet to a high degree report higher job creation.

The bottom line is that when businesses use online practices it accelerates their growth and creates new jobs for the community. Yet 70 percent of small businesses do not fully utilize broadband’s potential. This represents a missed opportunity for those businesses and for the community as a whole.

If broadband can deliver such clear value for businesses, why are more businesses not benefiting? For most businesses the primary reason is a lack of time, resources, expertise, and skills to look at what more they could be doing online. Change will not happen without overcoming these time and expertise challenges. For a community or region this is critical because they will miss out on broadband investments, job growth, business attraction, and being seen as a place to work and live.

Driving Economic Growth Through Meaningful Use of Broadband

Small businesses are willing and able to do more online once the opportunity and reasons are clearly understood. It becomes just another business decision – “is it worth doing?” – and what they need is the relevant information and assistance to make those decisions. Driving economic growth through broadband means helping businesses make decisions that are right for them. They benefit and the community benefits.

SNG has applied our industry-leading research to guide individual businesses toward online practices that have clear financial benefit to them, along with easily digestible information to help them take the steps they need.  Communities and economic development authorities can unleash the untapped potential of your existing business community for economic growth.

Learn more about SNG’s Small Business Growth Program and how you can help your business community be even more successful.

• SNG News

  • Press release – Joint White Paper on Options to Bridge Broadband Gaps in Unserved and Underserved Areas
  • Broadband funding is coming – but when and with what conditions? Can we wait for it?
  • It’s Time for Private investment in Community Digital Infrastructure
  • Unserved, underserved, or future ready – do your businesses and households have the broadband they need?
  • Choice for Localities – wait for broadband, or invest in your digital future
  • Do you need a “survey” or another “study” for your broadband initiative?
  • Where do we put our efforts to get connected with broadband?
  • Broadband and Household Income
  • Telework and Accessing the Workplace
  • SNG’s analysis featured in ISE Magazine

• @SNGroup

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• Research Findings

  

  Increasingly, broadband
  creates jobs.
  Over the last five years, job creation enabled by the Internet has doubled.

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