Broadband Prime’s Top Picks – week 19
Broadband Prime’s Top Picks (formerly Top 5) is a weekly digest that brings you the top articles that I’ve read the past week. The focus of the digest is not on news, unless ground-breaking rather on opinions, analysis and comments by individuals or organizations relevant to broadband developments and beyond. Hopefully, this is going to be a list of good information that you might have missed. I am keeping the number of links strictly to maximum 5 to make the digest meaningful and effective.
I am thinking of including some sort of graphics header at the top of this digest. As I am only capable to use MsPaint (and this not so efficiently), I was wondering if there is anyone who wouldn’t mind to help, share an idea or throw a cow at me. If so, please leave a comment or email me and win huge bragging rights! Thanks!
Here’s this week’s top picks:
The Top Seven Intelligent Communities of 2009 – I have already blogged about the cities of Tallinn and Issy-les-Moulineaux. ICF has released a very interesting paper that presents the top 7 communities for 2009 that make use of IT and Communications infrastructure for a sustainable regional economy. Case studies include: Bristol, Va.; Eindhoven, Netherlands; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada; Issy-les-Moulineaux, France; Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada; Stockholm, Sweden; and Tallinn, Estonia.
Reporting back on eDemocracy camp and Politics Online – Michelle Lyons reports on eDemocracy camp and Politics Online conference held last month in Washington DC. The article is full of interesting sites on e-government and open government initiatives and features a short presentation on information infrastructure by Daniel Greenwood.
The municipal broadband battle rages on & Proposed bills to limit municipal broadband efforts returned to committees – Two articles published on TechJournalSouth discussing the developments on NC (Wilson and Bristol) and the battle between municipal broadband initiatives and carrier’s opposition to public broadband plans.
Infrastructure investment: links to growth and the role of public policies – An excellent publication by OECD that shows that investment has had a positive impact on capital stock although sometimes has been misallocated. [Quoting from the abstract] This paper identifies the policy framework that promotes investment that is conducive to growth and ensures the appropriate use of infrastructure. Central aspects of this framework are identified as a robust decision making process, improving the selection of investment projects, the introduction of competitive pressures through the reduction of barriers to entry and vertical separation when this is appropriate. A must read.
