Broadband Adoption and Economic Opportunity

By Bernadine Joselyn   |   Blandin Foundation

Lessons from an NTIA-supported broadband program in Minnesota show that adoption is as important as access in ensuring the benefits of broadband to communities.

When we met Kristin Fake, a sole proprietor in tourism-dependent Akeley, Minn., it was a leap of faith for her to come to the workshop hosted by the University of Minnesota Extension Service, one of our partners in our broadband work. Like so many, she couldn’t imagine how technology might benefit her home staging business. At the workshop, she quickly discovered that her clients were being misdirected by Google Maps, how keywords drive inquiries and how she might use a smartphone to dramatically improve her customer service.

Her annual sales now are much higher than before she took the class, and products she advertises on Facebook often are purchased before she even gets them displayed in her shop. Kristin is poised to take her business to a new level as Akeley continues to recover from a very tough economic patch. Kristin went from not being able to imagine how technology might be helpful to her business to creating demand for products and services that the marketplace hadn’t yet imagined.

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