You may live in a community with broadband or DSL, or perhaps out in the country and utilize satellite broadband. If you already have broadband, why is it such a big deal?

The lack of affordable broadband defines and shapes the limits of growth in a community, county, or region. Many people in rural areas and communities still do not have access to affordable broadband. Furthermore, satellite broadband, while universally available in Arkansas, has lower speed, higher cost, and latency issues (a delay in getting the signal) that cause trouble with applications such as voice over IP (internet protocol telephones).

The new digital divide is between those who have access to affordable broadband and know how to use it effectively, and those who don't. As affordable broadband becomes the norm that is expected, those areas without it will be at a distinct disadvantage in the marketplace for goods, services, workers, ideas, and capital.

Access to the Internet is being redefined as access to affordable broadband, with a computer in every home, or at least every home with kids in school. How can your kids compete in school if they cannot access broadband at night from their home? In ConnectKentucky's "No Child Left Offline" program, refurbished computers are provided to families who need computers for their school work.

A brand new digital divide is emerging – those with very high speed broadband (15 MBPS or greater) and those without it. Those without it cannot use certain applications such as high definition TV, gaming, transmitting some health care images, or full-motion videoconferencing. If you only plan to meet today's needs, by the time you get your infrastructure in place, it will be out of date.

Areas without affordable broadband cannot compete as effectively in

business, education, tourism, manufacturing, health care, workforce education, agriculture, and other fields. They are left further and further behind.

Residential neighborhoods may be the industrial park of the 21^st century. As nearly half of all new businesses are now operated from the home, providing broadband to residential areas is as important as providing it to the industrial park on the edge of town.

Our competition is global, and we are behind the curve. South Korea is the world champion, with affordable broadband available to over 90 percent of their households, 60% of which are connected. (Kentucky is gaining on them; Arkansas needs to!).

Many South Koreans can get 20 megabits per second (MBPS) or higher broadband speed, while Americans are very lucky to get as high as 4 MBPS.

More than 95 percent of South Koreans between 6 and 29 years of age periodically go online. Does our emerging workforce have such skills?

Finally, if you question the value of broadband, ask your teenagers if they are willing to move to a community without broadband when they finish their education. Then imagine a community in which no one comes back to live.

I Said Yes! Is about America's young people and what can be done to better serve them, especially the one in five living below the poverty line. Readers will be introduced to a growing movement that teaches entrepreneurship to young people from low-income communities, called the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship or NFTE.

NFTE teaches entrepreneurship to at-risk youth, helping young people from low-income communities build life skills and unlock their entrepreneurial creativity. I Said Yes! provides a first-person account of the transformative power that NFTE's mission of teaching entrepreneurship has brought to many young lives. The book includes real-life stories of students, teachers and leaders involved with youth entrepreneurship in the school system. The author argues to support America's schools in adopting NFTE's entrepreneurship program as an accredited class and fundamental life skill for our youth.

More information on I Said Yes! is at www.isaidyes.org.

The Council on Competitiveness has released a new report on entrepreneurship in the United States, Where America Stands: Entrepreneurship. The report is the first part in a series of focused analyses on the high-impact drivers of U.S. innovation capacity and competitiveness. While U.S. entrepreneurial performance continues to lead the world by almost any measure, this analysis demonstrates that other nations are catching up to the U.S. in a variety of ways and highlights that the environment for entrepreneurial activity faces its own challenges and opportunities in the 21st century.

The national distribution of Where America Stands: Entrepreneurship was timed to coincide with the kickoff of Entrepreneurship Week USA (February 24-March 3).

The Council on Competitiveness is a group of corporate CEOs, university presidents and labor leaders committed to the future prosperity of all Americans and enhanced U.S. competitiveness in the global economy through the creation of high-value economic activity. Go to www.compete.org to download a copy of the publication.

In November 2006, the U.S. Department of Labor revised their job estimates upward by 810,000 for the period March 2005 to March 2006. Their initial report was based on surveys of existing business establishments. The "extra" 810,000 jobs were found when households were surveyed. This growth of small businesses and entrepreneurship in homes has huge implications for communities, for economic developers, and for broadband providers.

Strategic Questions:

Does your community or region have a culture and mechanisms to nurture small businesses such as innovative financing mechanisms, coaching/mentoring programs, small business incubators, telework spaces, and high school entrepreneurship programs?

Do you have affordable broadband available to all of the homes in your community? In your county?

If you are interested in helping farmers to transition their farms and assisting beginning farmers as a rural economic development strategy, you might want to learn more about the Farm Beginnings Program offered in several states primarily in the Midwest. Farm Beginnings is a farmer-led educational training and support program designed to help people who want to evaluate and plan their farm enterprise. To learn more, go to www.landstewardshipproject.org/farmbeg.html.

Low unemployment and rural labor shortages do affect many small rural areas, but certainly not all. Bill King, Chief Editor of Expansion Management magazine recently posted a commentary titled "Why Not Locate Your Next Plant in a Smaller Town?"

Small towns are a great location for manufacturers. Small towns offer some advantages that you just won't find in a metro area. Here are a few of the more obvious reasons.

·Lower real estate costs. Almost without exception (unless it's a tourist area), smaller cities and towns offer lower real estate costs. That's because the land is less valuable and the development costs are lower as well.

·Lower taxes. The demand for government services is considerably less in a small town and, therefore, so are the taxes.

·Lower wage costs. Although living costs vary from region to region, they also vary within the region itself. Even if business requirements dictate your presence in a particularly expensive region of the country, you can still lower your wage costs by choosing to locate in a smaller town within the region, rather than in a big city.

·Fewer transportation costs. One of the major advantages of a large metro is that it is often located at a transportation crossroads. Most of the "micropolitans" (an urban area that includes at least one city or town with at least 10,000 – but less than 50,000 – population) are also located on or near at least one major transportation artery, often more. The main difference is a whole lot less congestion.

·Lower operating costs. Lower wages, taxes and real estate costs all translate directly into considerably less "stress" on the expense side of the ledger.

·Strong work ethic. Let's face it. Small town values mean a day's work for a day's pay.

·Employer of choice. Properly handled, there's a lot to be said for being a big fish in a small pond. Depending upon the city or town, you could easily find yourself the "employer of choice", attracting the very best workers from the entire region.

As Bill King says, "While it's not likely that any of these towns will offer major league sports or a local philharmonic, they can offer advantages your company might find very attractive."

Is your community ready when prospects come knocking? Do you have information ready to present to these prospects regarding your real estate and tax costs, local wage and transportation costs? Keep your community positive and you might just land that next manufacturer looking at your small town.

- Jack Schultz, author of Boomtown

Maps are great because they show us important things and relationships very quickly. Go to blog.creativethink.com/2007/01/fresh_represent.html to see a map of the U.S. with each state labeled with another nation with a comparable economy, . By the way, the nation whose gross domestic product is comparable to Illinois has 9 times as many people as we do. If they learn to do the work we do, do you think they might have an advantage with cost of labor?

One of the key elements leading to breakthrough solutions is discovering opportunities that others may not see. This is a great story about discovering opportunities. Tom Bata, a famous shoemaker and owner of Bata Shoes, sells about 250 million pairs of shoes a year. He tells a story which illustrates how two people can look at the same situation and see different things: either opportunity or certain failure. Tom Bata sent two shoe salesmen to a poverty-stricken Third World country. One of the salesmen wired back to Tom. "Returning home immediately. No one wears shoes here." The other salesman looked at the same conditions and joyously communicated to Tom: "Unlimited possibilities. Millions still without shoes."

The Annual Youth Entrepreneurship Conference will be held May 3-5 at the Lincolnshire Marriott Resort. This conference is designed for high school students exploring the field of entrepreneurship and will provide business workshops, a business expo, business plan competitions and much more. Go to www.iiee.org/THEconf.html for more information.

Well, not exactly. We are embarking on an expansion of our relationship with the Great River Economic Development Foundation and will begin printing a joint newsletter at the end of this month or beginning of April. If you have received the Greater Adams Development News, you'll be getting the new one as well. Titled simply Developments, we look forward to collaborating to provide information from local, regional, state and national perspectives. There will be fewer issues than you might have become used to, 3-4 instead of 6 per year. Your comments are always welcome.

Website: www.wiusbdc.org Email: sb-center@wiu.edu

Phone: 309-836-2640 Fax: 309-837-4688

·Register for Business Training

·Make appointment for counseling in Quincy or Mt. Sterling.