Michael Curri
June 14, 2024Michael Curri founded Strategic Networks Group (SNG) in 1998 driven by his passionate belief in the power of broadband to transform lives, business competitiveness, and community vitality. As President of SNG, he leads a team of experienced specialists on a wide range of economic development, broadband, and digital transformation initiatives.
With a vision to revitalize communities and regions through broadband and digital transformation, he has consulted as an economist and strategic analyst for public and private sector clients globally for over two decades. His guiding philosophy is that the value of technology comes from how it is used. Technology can have transformative impacts on localities, but fully leveraging technology requires personalizing returns on investments to individual households, organizations, and businesses. This requires using the right metrics and data points to develop strategies and plans that can bridge identified gaps and barriers.
Billions will be needed in the next 5 years to build-out broadband to unserved and underserved areas. Localities, cooperatives, and utilities need to decide whether to wait until service providers see enough returns to justify investing in their area – or invest themselves in digital infrastructure and transformation to connect people, economies, communities. Based on actionable economic analysis, Michael and the SNG team have shown how digital infrastructure investments can pay for themselves, as well as pioneered successful strategies for maximizing economic growth and community benefits through broadband and driving effective utilization.
Michael’s work has been described “ground-breaking” on numerous occasions. His efforts to assess how online practices can impact businesses, households, and localities have established goals, priorities, and outcomes for broadband and digital infrastructure investments. Government at all levels and major consulting firms have cited his studies that show how broadband investments stimulate economic development and generate significant returns to GDP – often over 10 times the investment.
Michael received his Honors B.Sc. in Economics and Political Science from Dalhousie University and a Masters in Economics from the University of Waterloo. His unique and deep broadband expertise makes him in high demand as a regular speaker at broadband conferences and workshops internationally. He has taught Management Information Systems and System Analysis at the college level. Mr Curri is fluent in English, German, and French, and highly proficient in Italian.