2017 Azbee Awards of Excellence
Category
Print > Original Research > Less Than $3 Million Revenue > Central
Awarded to
Steven S. Ross, Editor-at-Large
Entry details
Broadband: The Key Ingredient For Rural Economic Development
Issue date (if applicable): 12/13/2016
Publication name: Broadband Communities
Publishing company: Broadband Properties LLC
Website home page: www.bbcmag.com
Please describe the publication's mission and readership:
Broadband Communities readers build the networks that make the digital age possible. The magazine supports them with original reporting, well-attended conferences, sophisticated financial models that have been adapted by hundreds of network deployers worldwide, and massive amounts of original research, including the database of fiber optic networks used by the FCC.
A third of the readers are owners and managers of large real estate developments, including multiple-dwelling-unit buildings. Another third run ultra-broadband (usually fiber-optic) networks or work for large national broadband providers. The remainder is split between equipment vendors, financiers, public officials and community activists.
Please describe the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:
The magazine has built a unique database combining census, USDA, Commerce, FCC, legal and business data for all of the nation's 3144 counties. We continue to expand and update it, and to report our findings. Readers, the White House, Congress and federal/state/local regulators use it.
This year saw much of our original research on rural development -- a three-year effort that has already won several regional AZBEEs -- become even more startlingly relevant as the presidential campaigns focused on what we already knew. Since 2010 rural counties, for the first time in American history, have been losing population.
Our data show the single biggest reason for this is not free trade. It is lack of broadband access. That lack creates as much as half of all rural population loss, and even more (as this submission shows) in southern and Midwestern counties. Our research shows that lack of broadband access can explain as much as half the economic distress in rural counties – even more in counties dependent on farming and manufacturing. Broadband access is poor in the vast majority of rural counties, whether in blue or red states, but tends to be far worse in red states because they are far more likely to restrict municipalities from even threatening to build their own broadband networks, and the restrictions tend to be stronger in those states. Restriction states: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Links to entry URLs
Please note: These URLs are only required for entries in the Online division categories, entries in the Design division categories that are specific to websites, entries in the Website of the Year category, and entries in the Cross-Platform Package of the Year category.
Links to Uploaded Entry Files
Please note: The links below are the same links as clicking on the Preview images at the top of this column. You may click the links below to view each submitted entry file.
View entry file #1
View entry file #2
View entry file #3
View entry file #4
View entry file #5
View entry file #6
View entry file #7
View entry file #8
View entry file #9
View entry file #10
Broadband: The Key Ingredient For Rural Economic Development
Category
Print > Original Research > Less Than $3 Million Revenue > Central
Description
Publication name:
Broadband Communities
Company:
Broadband Properties LLC
Winner Status
- National Silver Award
Share