Friday, September 19, 2008

Bringing Broadband to Rural America

Writer Arek Hesseldahl has an important piece in BusinessWeek Magazine about the struggle of small towns to get broadband and the resulting economic impact. Featured in his story is Tennessee's own Hickman County.

A borrowed snippet:

The lack of fast Web access is helping create a country of broadband haves and have-nots—a division that not only makes it harder for businesses to get work done, but also impedes workers' efforts to find jobs, puts students at a disadvantage, and generally leaves a wide swath of the country less connected to the growing storehouse of information on the Web—from health sites to news magazines to up-to-date information on Presidential candidates. "Broadband is a distance killer, which can especially help rural Americans," says John Horrigan, a Pew researcher. "Broadband is not just an information source for news and civic matters, but it's also a pathway to participation."

The accompanying narrated slide show is here.

Follow Arek Hesseldahl on Twitter here.

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