Columbia Institute for Tele-Information
“Estimating the Economic Impact of the Broadband Stimulus Plan
Dr. Raul Katz & Dr. Stephan Suter

In Drs. Katz’ and Suter’s research paper on the Broadband Stimulus Plan, they investigate the potential jobs that could be produced using funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  The paper does take in consideration jobs generated by grant monies and jobs created by network deployment.

The study concludes that:

• Network infrastructure construction could produce 128,000 jobs (32,000/year) over a four year period.
• Estimated cost/job is $50,000.
• The impact of “network externalities”  may produce 0 to 270,000 jobs over four years (or roughly 67,500 jobs/year).

Katz and Suter argue that several policies implemented in the National Broadband Plan would improve the opportunity for the plan to create new jobs.  These policy suggestions include:

1. Coordinating broadband deployment with job creation and retention programs.
2. Rethinking criteria for selecting areas to develop broadband.
3. Centralizing program evaluation and grant allocation.
4. Developing systematic tests based on social and economic criteria to evaluate the return of the investment.
5. Evaluating the economic impact of NGAN.