“You wouldn’t make a major investment in your business without knowing the facts – investing in broadband is no different.”

We help communities build successful business cases for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and connectivity infrastructure investments. In essence, we apply our experience and proprietary tools to help regions build a technology platform for innovation and economic development. We customize our methodologies and tools to your needs.

• WE PROVE THE EFFECTIVENESS of community broadband infrastructure investments. SNG’s research shows that the local economic growth and secondary investment enabled by broadband is 10 times the initial investment, and the contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is 15 times the initial investment. Learn more.

• WE HAVE THE TOOLS to demonstrate broadband’s impacts. The immediate benefits from an investment in broadband are both seen and unseen. Immediate, seen effects include the direct effect of construction of a broadband infrastructure. Unseen effects include increased efficiency for governments and businesses, as well as innovation, opportunities and jobs that broadband enables. Learn more about how we customize our tools and methodologies to your needs.

We help our clients build solid, credible, and successful, business cases for necessary ICT and connectivity infrastructure investments within their communities. We have the experience and the tools to show clients where ICT investments can shorten the path to local economic growth. We adapt our methodologies to de-risk investment decisions and accelerate uptake rates for client broadband initiatives.

Our Vision

WE BELIEVE broadband is as vital to our economy today as electrification was in the 1930’s. It’s the enabler for competitiveness in the growing digital economy. Broadband infrastructure is essential for the effective participation of businesses and organizations in today (and tomorrow’s) economy.

WE SEE the benefits of broadband as deep and significant, creating a platform for innovation that brings economic and social benefits to a region and its citizens. Communities need to take ownership of their broadband strategies to ensure their economic sustainability and future success.

What we offer

Strategic Networks Group has for years been helping governments, at municipal, regional and national levels to best understand where investment will make the biggest impact. Our services include:

• Innovative research solutions for the right decisions – SNG has proprietary methodologies and survey tools enabling us to collect data in days rather than months.

• Turning research from data into insights – SNG has the experience to not only understand the broadband application needs of your community, but the ability to compare results in our database of global broadband initiatives globally, enabling us to forecast local impacts (economic and social), predict assess where success is most likely, and provide a roadmap to get there.

• Strategies to create your platform for innovation – Broadband is great as a buzzword – everyone needs it, everyone wants it… broadband is “good.” But why? SNG makes sure that broadband is a platform for economic and social development. A platform to bring opportunities to your region. A platform for innovation and competitiveness.

The approach that we are applying in all of our assignments is based on both contextual evidence and measurable economic impacts accruing to the specific communities through broadband. The applied methodology is based on our tested approach to evaluate and measure community level economic impacts from broadband, which has been developed over a number of years and includes background research and orientation (including document research and high level interviews), survey management (including development of a telephone based survey, survey pre-test and review, development of survey target list, survey deployment and data collection), stakeholders’ interviews (including development of interview list and broadband user interviews), primary data analysis (including code cleansing) and econometrics projections.

Skills & experience

Our team brings together subject matter experts who will offer their extensive project experience in program evaluation, technology impact measurement, regional economic development analysis, and hands-on experience, with particular focus on the needs and challenges for rural and remote communities. We bring a high quality, proven methodology and collective skills in:

• Experience working with community partnerships and particularly with the municipal sector;

• Community and regional economic development policy and strategy;

• e-government, ICT and broadband policy planning and implementation;

• Technology infrastructure selection and implementation;

• A variety of research techniques, such as: primary research, survey design, economic analysis, impact analysis, and program evaluation;

• Effectively and cost-efficiently collecting actionable data from businesses, organizations and stakeholders;

• Experts in GIS mapping

Effective survey techniques and online tools are required to collect relevant and usable data on specific research questions, or where research has a certain scope and/or time span that cannot be sourced through existing national or international statistical databases. It is for this very reason that SNG has been conducting primary research on broadband and ICT usage since 2001. Through numerous studies SNG has amassed proprietary data on broadband and ICT usage, e-solutions take-up, and the resulting impacts, including new revenues, costs savings, and new jobs. This data can also be cross-tabulated on a sectoral basis, by type of Internet access (e.g. broadband vs. non-broadband) or by business size (number of employees).

Our clients

SNG’s clients include: FedNor; Industry Canada; Ministry of Economic Development and Trade; Ministry of Government Services; Ontario Management Board Secretariat; Human Resources Development Canada; Conference Board of Canada; IBM; Nortel Italia; Department of Trade and Industry, United Kingdom; Department of Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Government of Australia, OneCommunity, and the Knight Center of Digital Excellence.