As for the discussion about upload speeds, I know that Craig knows how crucial it is we radically improve the pathetic upload speeds most have. I’m glad to see so many commenters making it a key issue. It would be nice if even a few in the Obama Administration recognized that when making policy.

My point: you’ll quickly discover that uplink speed matters to those who already experience the current constraints of the laggard U.S. broadband access benchmark.

There is definitely a lack of significant empirical research out there on this stuff, which is what makes from econ dev folks crazy because they have lots of anecdotal evidence that there is a relationship. This is why I’ll look at a community and ask “if 80% of your businesses wanting to do cloud computing and run video conferencing applications in order for them to open new markets, then what capacity do you need a network to have to achieve that goal?

You have to ignore all of those stories about the US failing to catch up with the rest of the world (not an easy thing to do), and look at your specific community to ask “if we want to achieve “b” or “d” economic outcome, can broadband help? And if so, at what speed and what type of broadband will help?”

I conducted the research in part to create a general picture of where broadband can impact economic development, and partly to get an idea of what kinds of speeds may be adequate to enable communities to reach important goals.

For example, in a recent needs analysis I did for Benicia, CA, I asked businesses 1) what computing/business operations tasks do you want to do now, and 2) what do you want to be able to do in 3 – 5 years. Concurrently, the city told me they want to draw businesses of a certain type to the area, and one of the commercial real estate people explained from his experience what kind of speeds companies are looking for when shopping for a new location.

In all three cases, the focus is on what do “x” constituency/stakeholder groups want to achieve that will in turn impact economic outcomes. Then we have to figure out what speeds are going to facilitate reaching the stated objectives in the short and the long term. Some communities may be able to reach their specific objectives with 5 Mbps. Others may be able to reach them with 10 Mbps over the next year and then upgrade to 100 Mbps within 3 years.

What matters is not giving communities the fastest speeds on the planet, but giving them the right technology to hit those economic milestones that matter most to each communities.