Job growth, not bandwidth, is key to winning broadband stimulus funds

There is a lot of money to be distributed in the coming months as governments around the world begin implementing their various economic stimulus packages.

There’s $30 billion in Australia, $7.2 billion in the United States, $2.2 billion in Malaysia and $1 billion in Portugal – just to name a few. That’s money to be made available through a host of programs intended to kick start the world economy. In many cases, telecommunications infrastructure is getting top billing as a potential driver for future economic prosperity. For those of us in the business, that means there’s a chance that a lot of those stray dollars could be heading to finance our visions and investments around building employment within our industry. That is, if we’re smart in the way we position ourselves as would-be contributors to the economic recovery effort...