Rural Telecommunications Congress - Focus on Research — Build and facilitate collaborations among researchers who are focused on the future of rural broadband telecommunications and uses of broadband

Gentlemen,

I would like to work on revving up RTC's research program in order to take a more comprehensive and coordinated approach to rural telecommunications. Also, I believe that such an approach would better position us to get financial support for our research efforts.

My view is that the focus of this research -- the dependent variable, if you will -- should be economic and community development, including more specific development metrics such as economic growth, productivity, income, social cohesion, freedom, etc. Personally, I'm particularly interested in how IT is applied in enterprises, and how executive-level collaboration impacts the productive outcomes of IT utilization. Technical functionality, system design, business and organizational models (for deploying broadband), etc., generally fall in the realm of independent variables. The underlying questions are: How and why do information and communications technologies lead to economic and community development? What are the critical factors? Where is there an interaction between factors (educational achievement, for example)?

Beginning with Rural Telecon '06 the Rural Telecommunications Congress identified research expansion as a top priority. There are signficant changes on the horizon that mean rural areas will need to build capacity both in telecommunications and human resources. This capacity building will require efforts that are based in sound research and that connect research outcomes from many areas.