“Today, America’s wireless industry continues to grow based on consumer demand that’s at an all-time high, and the staggering growth of mobile broadband traffic has created an explosion in new services, new devices, content and applications,” former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell told the symposium.
Rendell was among other featured speakers who are leaders in broadband and technology, including Jessica Zufolo, deputy administrator of rural utilities service with the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Susan Solovic, CEO and co-founder of ItsYourBiz.com; John Mayo, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy; and Henry Rivera, strategic counsel for the Internet Innovation Alliance.
Zufolo stressed the importance of broadband as an economic tool. “The availability of fixed and mobile broadband,” she said, “is one of the central pillars for economic growth in any community.”
Many rural areas remain without broadband access, Zufolo said, so the Rural Utilities Service and President Barack Obama have made it their charge to bring increased access to rural areas and tribal lands.
“Without access to affordable high speed communications, rural communities will simply not survive in this information economy,” she said. “To date, the Rural Utilities Service has invested close to $3 billion in Recovery Act funding for nearly 300 broadband projects, four satellite awards and 19 technical assistance grants. These projects will bring high-speed broadband to nearly 7 million rural residents, 360,000 businesses, 30,000 community anchor institutions as well as Native American lands in 45 states and one U.S. territory. In total, these projects are expected to create roughly 30,000 jobs in building out new high speed networks throughout rural America.”
Solovic, of ItsYourBiz.com, said Internet access allows more players into the economic competition. “Broadband and technology are leveling the playing field,” she said. “And for those businesses who are willing to embrace it, and for those people who are willing to get out there and make their own jobs embracing technology, there are opportunities.”
Lindsay Holmes, CEO of LCH Business, a digital marketing company, said her firm helped a campaign in Newark, New Jersey, increase HIV/AIDS testing rates by 200 percent through the use of social media. “A lot of it was just reaching people where they were,” Holmes said. “Our demographic was on social media. They were online.”
Dr. Alexander Vo, executive director of the University of Texas Medical Branch Center for Telehealth Research and Policy, said applying broadband technology to medicine made it easier to monitor certain chronic diseases and engendered numerous benefits, such as providing patients with increased access to specialists and reducing medical costs and the use of emergency rooms for acute care.
Also participating in the discussion were David Vivero, CEO of RentJuice, which developed software to streamline management of rental properties, and Catharine McNally, founder and president of Keen Guides, which created an application allowing the hearing impaired to use smartphones to tour museums.
The symposium also featured brief video interviews with professionals who attested to how broadband was transforming the areas of medicine, education and business.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Kenneth Mallory
Quelle/Source: Politic365, 20.09.2011
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