In This Page:
Why Broadband Internet Necessary throughout Sussex County?
Coronavirus-related lockdown brought out the need of Countywide high-speed internet for
Remote Learning - including college students
Tele-working
Tele-medicine - especially for the elderly
Tele-banking
Social Connection through online meetings
Online Shopping and Delivery of grocery items and goods that became hard to find during pandemic
High paying industries that Sussex needs to attract
Farming Industries
Some clippings from Ch 7 of Sussex Comprehensive Plan regarding High Speed Internet:
https://sussexcountyde.gov/sites/default/files/PDFs/2018CompPlan-Final.pdf
A Clipping from Chapter 9 of Sussex Comp Plan - about Economic Development
Broadband Availability Map by FCC
Internet Problems in Rural America
Moving to the Woods Killed My Internet. Here’s What I Did About It.
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 11, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/moving-to-the-wilderness-killed-my-internet/
Remote Work Will Never Be the Same, And That’s a Good Thing
The home office you’ve occupied for months could be the wave of the future. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we think about remote work – and it's about time.
By Chandra Steele - June 1, 2020
Twitter Chief Marketing Officer and Head of People Leslie Berland tweeted about the company’s decision: “Decentralization and remote work was a top priority for us pre-COVID. We’ll continue to learn and improve to make the experience even better, but it starts with empowering people to work where they feel most creative, comfortable, and safe.”
“It's so prohibitive to live in these big cities right now where a lot of companies are requiring people to live; you will get a more diverse candidate pool as a result if you go outside those cities. And I think that will then follow with, obviously, more talent who didn't get access to those roles before,” Zaleski [Katharine Zaleski, co-founder and president of recruiting platform Power to Fly] said.
The Bay Area housing crisis was caused by tech companies that pushed out people who lived there for decades and spawned new crises, including a teacher shortage. Even, say, engineers at Google have trouble affording the astronomical housing prices and elect sometimes to live in vans instead.
A survey by LendingTree looked at the cost of commuting in 100 major cities in the United States. Those in San Francisco spend nearly $12,000 a year just to get to work. New Yorkers spend just under $10,000. If you’re using time as money as a calculation of cost, people in Fremont, California, spend, on average, $49 a day.
High-speed internet a ‘must’ after COVID-19
By Mike Quaranta, President | Delaware State Chamber of Commerce - Sep 24, 2020
Silicon Valley’s Next Big Office Idea: Work From Anywhere
Tech companies once wooed talent with over-the-top campuses. Now they are looking to keep workers happy by offering flexibility
By Katherine Bindley - May 17, 2020
Few companies have gone as far as Twitter Inc., whose CEO, Jack Dorsey, said this past week that most employees would be permitted to work from home permanently. Google and Facebook are allowing employees to work from home until at least the end of the year, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month canceled all gatherings of 50 or more people through June 2021.
Tech companies are experimenting with virtual ways to hold the conferences and product launches that are central to their efforts to build loyalty and excitement among developers and customers. Apple plans to conduct its June developer conference entirely online for the first time.
Some executives see advantages in the shift to remote work, such as accelerating tech companies’ efforts to spread their workforces beyond the West Coast hubs of Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area. Soaring property prices and cost-of-living in those regions have made it ever harder to find enough talent, and fueled criticism that the tech giants have made the areas unaffordable.
“Today if we’re looking at the cost of competing for talent in the Bay Area, rents are at an extravagant level,” he said, noting that employee perks are costly, too. “On top of that, if you’re a Google, oh my goodness, how much money are you investing into feeding your employees?”
“You can recruit from anywhere. That’s just great because the talent pool is way bigger,” said Mr. Levie of Box. “Even if you kept salaries the same, your employees would be able to get more out of their salary dollars if they could work anywhere,” he said.
Some are already moving. Heidi Kasemir, 31 years old, who works as a developer for an online-learning startup, long assumed she would leave San Francisco eventually, but coronavirus accelerated those plans. In mid-April, after almost eight years in the Bay Area, she negotiated with her company to take a 25% pay cut and work remotely from Salt Lake City.
Maintaining the level of communication and camaraderie that enables innovation and product development will be a challenge if a significant number of staff remain remote.
“Companies will have to find ways to build culture remotely, which is really tough to do,” said Gene Munster, a longtime tech analyst who is now a managing partner at Loup Ventures, a venture-capital firm.
Twitter recently held its first virtual global hack week, which is usually held in the common rooms of its offices. “Everyone could contribute in the same way and experience it together,” said Jennifer Christie, the company’s chief human-resources officer.
When offices do reopen, she wants to continue bringing on new employees—those not meant to work in San Francisco, who were previously flown to headquarters—virtually. “We just think it’s better for people to be able to onboard in the offices and locations where they are,” she said.
In part, the future of tech work depends on the function of the teams involved. Those who deal hands-on with hardware, for example, will find remote work harder to pull off. Apple already has begun calling some staff back to its Cupertino, Calif., campus, including a small percentage of its hardware engineers and some industrial designers, according to people close to the company.
Jason Owen-Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan who has studied the dynamics of high-tech industries, said research has shown there are downsides to employees not sharing space: fleeting and serendipitous interactions help generate new ideas, and new teams. “I would expect starting new things to be harder,” he said.
Facebook will try to offer employees flexibility, while maintaining the kind of innovation that comes from being in the same place, said Brynn Harrington, vice president of people growth and operations.
While the company offered everyone a videoconferencing device, Ms. Harrington says managers are encouraged to avoid back-to-back video calls. “We’re a very meeting-centric company,” she said.
She doesn’t see the office going away permanently, she said. “I don’t think that there are great examples of companies that solved innovation in remote environments.”
Coronavirus Shock College-Town Economy Blacksburg, home to Virginia Tech, ‘couldn’t have imagined’ crisis that shut down university
- May 17 2020
If the drop in enrollment persists, it could be harder for Blacksburg and other college towns to grow science and tech-oriented businesses needed to broaden their economies.
This spring, Virginia Tech had nearly 35,000 students, including 28,000 undergrads. Some 8,250 of the undergrads come from somewhere other than Virginia, and 1,962 of them are international students, according to the university spokesman.
Harmonia Holdings Group LLC, an information-technology company with annual revenue nearing $80 million, hires engineering students who graduate from Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, located some 150 miles away in Charlottesville, for its offices in those cities.
Jai Saboo, Harmonia’s chief operating officer, said his company often prefers to hire new staff in lower-cost Blacksburg rather than its suburban Washington headquarters. The company was recruiting the new wave of graduates in March when the pandemic hit. Instead, those openings will likely be filled in other locations, including populous northern Virginia.
“It’s similar to a beach community,” Mr. Roseberry said of Blacksburg’s dependence on Virginia Tech. “You take away the beach, and there’s nothing else.”
NTIA (National Telecommunications & Information Administration)
(dates not certain, probably outdated - However, this site gives an idea of the history of States' past efforts on this issue.)
Contact: Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications
1401 Constitution Ave, NW. Washington, DC 20230
202-482-2048
State Broadband Initiative (2/17/2011)
https://www2.ntia.doc.gov/sbdd
About Broadband Grants -
https://www2.ntia.doc.gov/about
NTIA managed two broadband grant programs funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) and the State Broadband Initiative (SBI) (formerly called the State Broadband Data and Development Grant Program). Through these programs, NTIA is oversaw an investment of approximately $4 billion in projects throughout the United States to support the deployment of broadband infrastructure, enhance and expand public computer centers, encourage sustainable adoption of broadband service, and promote statewide broadband planning and data collection activities. The State Broadband Initiative was also responsible for creation and maintenance of the National Broadband Map.