Broadband is among the most recent in a long series of advancements in electronic information technology that have reshaped economies and transformed societies since the mid-nineteenth century. That the world has benefitted mightily from advances in information technology is beyond dispute. But this does not mean that new information products and services are always on net beneficial or that public moneys to hasten their development and spread are always well spent. Although there is prior experience with broadband and a growing empirical record demonstrating its positive impacts of economic growth, considerable uncertainty remains as to its full implications. This brief report surveys the state of research on the economic effects of broadband and positions the US against peer nations and Michigan within the US and the Great Lakes area. It focuses on the benefits of broadband for productivity, employment, and income but does not attempt a review of the effects of advanced communications on other aspects of wellbeing such as more socially connected citizens. The effects of telecommunications on the economy have been examined in considerable detail since early studies in the 1970s and 1980s revealed a positive relation between telephone penetration and per capita income. Several studies have since found that telecommunications

The availability of wireless internet in an urban setting presents new possibilities for the ways in which inhabitants can interact with the city and its public spaces. Yet, the presence of Wi-Fi can be difficult to discern in an urban setting. It slips by largely unnoticed because of an apparent lack of physical infrastructure. This paper outlines the early stages of a PhD project in which emerging technologies have demanded innovative multiple approaches to the study of human activity at the intersection of the physical and digital. The ethnographic study highlights the path that led to a methodological breakthrough and development of an online tool for the collection and visualization of text and images posted to the social networking website, Twitter. It continues with a brief discussion of some initial challenges and early findings from participant observations which, in line with recent theoretical discourse, were necessarily conducted in both on and offline spaces, introducing Twitter as a supporting research tool. The experience suggests that experimenting with combined online and offline ethnographic methods in this way might open possibilities for new understandings of an urban public that exists in neither digital nor physical worlds- rather, somewhere in-between.

- Initial findings from interviews with market actors

In this work in progress paper we will discuss company capabilities related to telecom services and how they can be developed or acquired in order to increase the compositeness of the firm. Traditionally, the technical infrastructure and platforms are designed and deployed by the vendors and operators and the role of end-users, private persons or enterprises, is to accept the offered service, pay and use. This may be a sustainable model when the user requirements are limited to connectivity, communication between persons and internet access, and to delivery of media services where the network acts as a channel. However, we argue that the design and deployment process of telecom services must be changed in order to provide flexible support of customers ´ working processes. As a supplier you also have to consider how value is added in the working process of the customer. The full paper will include problem formulation, research questions, theoretical analysis and empirical data from case studies.