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Sharon Gillett

Bio: Sharon Gillett is an academic researcher from Microsoft. The author has contributed to research in topics: The Internet & Internet access. The author has an hindex of 17, co-authored 34 publications receiving 1245 citations. Previous affiliations of Sharon Gillett include Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Papers
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01 Feb 2006
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present estimates of the effect of broadband on a number of indicators of economic activity, including employment, wages, and industry mix, using a cross-sectional panel data set of communities (by zip code) across the United States.
Abstract: Does broadband matter to the economy? Numerous studies have focused on whether there is a digital divide, on regulatory impacts and investment incentives, and on the factors influencing where broadband is available. However, given how recently broadband has been adopted, little empirical research has investigated its economic impact. This paper presents estimates of the effect of broadband on a number of indicators of economic activity, including employment, wages, and industry mix, using a cross-sectional panel data set of communities (by zip code) across the United States. We match data from the FCC (Form 477) on broadband availability with demographic and other economic data from the US Population Censuses and Establishment Surveys. We find support for the conclusion that broadband positively affects economic activity in ways that are consistent with the qualitative stories told by broadband advocates. Even after controlling for community-level factors known to influence broadband availability and economic activity, we find that between 1998 and 2002, communities in which mass-market broadband was available by December 1999 experienced more rapid growth in (1) employment, (2) the number of businesses overall, and (3) businesses in IT-intensive sectors. In addition, the effect of broadband availability by 1999 can be observed in higher market rates for rental housing in 2000. We compare state-level with zip-code level analyses to highlight data aggregation problems, and discuss a number of analytic and data issues that bear on further measurements of broadband’s economic impact. This analysis is perforce preliminary because additional data and experience are needed to more accurately address this important question; however, the early results presented here suggest that the assumed (and oft-touted) economic impacts of broadband are both real and measurable.

223 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a taxonomy to classify the range of policies that local governments are adopting, according to four roles of government vis a vis broadband: as user, rule-maker, financier, and infrastructure provider.
Abstract: The future for Internet access is broadband. Federal and state policymakers are exploring initiatives to promote the deployment and adoption of broadband services, and in recent years, an increasing number of local governments have joined them. While the first generation of narrowband dial-up access was able to piggyback on the near universal availability of the mature telephone network, broadband relies on communications infrastructure that is both more heterogeneous and less evenly distributed. These local infrastructure differences suggest a greater role for local communities in affecting how next generation access will evolve. A few case studies of local government broadband initiatives exist, but there is little systematic data or research categorizing the range of activity or assessing the effectiveness of these efforts. This paper represents a first step in an ongoing research effort to better understand the factors that influence a community’s decision to act, its choice of what to do, and the effectiveness of its actions. In recognition of the diversity of initiatives observed, the paper presents a taxonomy to classify the range of policies that local governments are adopting, according to four roles of government vis a vis broadband: as user, rule-maker, financier, and infrastructure provider. After discussing examples of each type of initiative within the taxonomy, the paper analyzes a sample of communities with municipal electric utilities (M.E.U.s). From a match of the sample of M.E.U. communities to demographic data from the 2000 Census, we find that on average, these M.E.U.s are more often found in mid-sized communities that are more likely to be in rural counties. Those that offer communications are in the vanguard: although they represent only about a quarter of all M.E.U.s, their number has grown more than 10% annually for the past two years. Within the subset of our sample of M.E.U.s that offer communication services, our analysis finds two distinct segments. While the average U.S. community has a population of around 8,000 people and the average M.E.U community around 42,000, the average population is around 6,000 in M.E.U communities that offer only consumer services, and around 158,000 in those that offer only wholesale commercial services. This size-based split suggests two separate rationales for public-sector interventions in different local contexts. Smaller communities may be less well-served by the private sector, as commercial carriers perceive them to be too costly to serve economically given the current state of broadband technology and demand. Larger communities, on the other hand, may experience an abundance of competitive entry that suggests a coordinating or facilitating role for the local government (for example, to encourage competition but minimize street cuts by bringing fiber installation under city management, while leaving the actual use of the fiber to the commercial sector). The paper also provides a preliminary econometric exploration of the factors that lead M.E.U.s to provide communications infrastructure and services, based on demographic and cost-related data available from the Census. It concludes with a discussion of issues to consider for further research. These include the addition of regressors such as the extent of competitive alternatives and the local political environment; a deeper understanding of M.E.U.’s choices with regard to wholesale-only vs. retail business models, especially in providing consumer services; and extension of the data set beyond municipal electric utilities.

180 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a taxonomy for classifying local government initiatives and preliminary empirical results for a sample of communities with municipal electric utilities is presented. But the taxonomy is limited to small communities.

144 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: How outcomes tied to ICT innovation are shaped by choices about whether and how to use the technology to reconfigure access to people, services, information and technologies in ways that significantly change the communicative power of individuals, communities, organisations, nations and regions is analyzed.
Abstract: Government and industry initiatives to stimulate the diffusion of high-performance broadband telecommunications links have given a fresh impetus to debates over the social and economic implications of the growing use of the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICTs). This paper analyses how outcomes tied to ICT innovation are shaped by choices about whether and how to use, or not use, the technology to reconfigure access to people, services, information and technologies in ways that significantly change the communicative power of individuals, communities, organisations, nations and regions. It explains why these outcomes are not predetermined by the technology, but unfold over time through the complex interplay among many actors, in many arenas. A framework is presented to assist in addressing the issue of digital divides and other areas of research, policy and practice affected by the design and use of broadband Internet and related ICTs.

82 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The implications of emerging wireless technologies for the policy debate over whether municipalities should be playing an active role in providing last-mile broadband services and, if so, what the nature of that role should be are examined.

72 citations


Cited by
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is illustrated how the routers of an IP network could be augmented to perform such customized processing on the datagrams flowing through them, and these active routers could also interoperate with legacy routers, which transparently forwarddatagrams in the traditional manner.
Abstract: Active networks are a novel approach to network architecture in which the switches (or routers) of the network perform customized computations on the messages flowing through them. This approach is motivated by both lead user applications, which perform user-driven computation at nodes within the network today, and the emergence of mobile code technologies that make dynamic network service innovation attainable. The authors discuss two approaches to the realization of active networks and provide a snapshot of the current research issues and activities. They illustrate how the routers of an IP network could be augmented to perform such customized processing on the datagrams flowing through them. These active routers could also interoperate with legacy routers, which transparently forward datagrams in the traditional manner.

1,489 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: The Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide as discussed by the authors examines theories of technological diffusion and points out that the American response to the Internet is more akin to the rapid spread of televisions and VCRs than the slower adoption of telephones and radios.
Abstract: Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Pippa Norris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 303 pp. $60 hbk., $20 pbk. Forecasts that the Internet heralds a world of more democracy and less poverty seem as inflated as dot.com stocks. This rosy view has electronic voting, political chat rooms, and email access re-engaging apathetic publics in politics. Digital technologies redress economic disparities, and the benefits of the Internet percolate down to transform poor societies. Equally exaggerated is the gloom of naysayers. The Internet Age has done little to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries, the information haves and havenots, cyber-skeptics contend. Indeed, digital technologies could create new inequalities and reinforce the dominance of power elites. In her new book, Digital Divide, Pippa Norris, associate director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, steps into this fusillade of cyber-hyperbole, lowers the decibel with a well-written and thoughtful examination of Internet use and access in 179 countries and dissects the claims and counter-claims. Her research and findings place her on middle ground, somewhere between current reality and optimism. The Internet era seems to be changing "politics as usual" in a number of countries, expanding and loosening information about governments and politics, allowing the entrance of new political players, and fostering international movements on the environment, women's rights, and other issues across borders. The disappointment is that digital technologies are activating the already politically active and passing up the disengaged and uninterested. A major challenge to digital democracy is the gulf between the United States, Scandinavia, and other early Internet adopters and the rest of the world. That gap is now so wide that at the turn of the century, more than three-quarters of the online community lived in the developed world. Internet use tracks the path of economic and technological development. But that situation could begin to change, Norris says. The Internet is in its technological adolescence. Costs of access are falling. And governments can make a difference if policymakers take the initiative. We have the historical patterns of other communication technologies to study. Norris examines theories of technological diffusion and points out that the American response to the Internet is more akin to the rapid spread of televisions and VCRs than the slower adoption of telephones and radios. American dominance could recede as Internet access grows worldwide. Contrary to what officials of the Bush Administration contend, Norris finds that the digital divide between rich and poor within the United States remains substantial. Europe mirrors that trend. In the long run, the Internet could become more accessible to the excluded: lower income families, minorities, and women. …

940 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: Zittrain this article argues that the Internet is on a path to lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control, and that its salvation lies in the hands of its millions of users.
Abstract: This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquityand reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovationand facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that cant be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. These tethered appliances have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. New Web 2.0 platforms like Google mash-ups and Facebook are rightly toutedbut their applications can be similarly monitored and eliminated from a central source. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internetits generativity, or innovative characteris at risk.The Internets current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true netizens.

798 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
15 Apr 1996
TL;DR: This paper describes the vision of an active network architecture, the approach to its design, and survey the technologies that can be brought to bear on its implementation, and proposes that the research community mount a joint effort to develop and deploy a wide area ActiveNet.
Abstract: Active networks allow their users to inject customized programs into the nodes of the network. An extreme case, in which we are most interested, replaces packets with "capsules" -- program fragments that are executed at each network router/switch they traverse.Active architectures permit a massive increase in the sophistication of the computation that is performed within the network. They will enable new applications, especially those based on application-specific multicast, information fusion, and other services that leverage network-based computation and storage. Furthermore, they will accelerate the pace of innovation by decoupling network services from the underlying hardware and allowing new services to be loaded into the infrastructure on demand.In this paper, we describe our vision of an active network architecture, outline our approach to its design, and survey the technologies that can be brought to bear on its implementation. We propose that the research community mount a joint effort to develop and deploy a wide area ActiveNet.

729 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a macroeconomic production function with a micro-model for broadband investment is used to estimate the impact of broadband infrastructure and growth, and the results indicate a significant causal positive link especially when a critical mass of infrastructure is present.

568 citations