Broadband link to US jobs exaggerated

Robert Crandall, a Brookings Institution economist, co-authored a widely-cited study that nearly 300,000 US jobs would be created for every percentage point rise in high-speed Internet use. The Brookings Institution study, published in July 2007, is not particularly relevant now because of differing employment and related migration trends at the time of the study, Crandall said. "There is a great deal of overstatement in most of these studies," said Crandall. Most the data on jobs and broadband is not relevant because it doesn't apply to underserved, mostly rural and high cost areas targeted in the stimulus package, said Shane Greenstein, a professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. "The experience of Manhattan in 2005 has no relationship to the experience in West Texas," Greenstein said. Chris King, an investment analyst at Stifel Nicolaus said the proposals targeting unserved rural areas are not enough to propel rural providers to invest in any event, largely because they do not address ongoing operating costs.