In Support of Genuine Rural Broadband Applications….
http://lone-eagles.com/ruralbroadband.htm

 From Frank Odasz, Lone Eagle Consulting, frank@lone-eagles.com

 Specializing in Fast-Track Internet Training for Rural, Remote, and Indigenous Learners.

 We’ve seen a lot of hype and telco politics over the last decade regarding the “promise of rural broadband.” 
  The bottom line is that without appropriate training people will not invest in broadband access or realize the promised benefits.

 Infrastructure alone has proved inadequate for delivering the social and economic potential of broadband. 
”Build it and they will come has proved to be a field  of dreams.”

The bottom line is that without appropriate training people will not invest in broadband access or realize the promised benefits. Today, we can see mass adoption of the benefits of broadband in many other countries, China and India in particular. The U.S. is 25^th in broadband deployment.

Rural telework has never been more viable. Rural communities can attract new teleworkers with robust rural broadband and *support services - as THE clean industry of the future. Rural communities need to present themselves as Telework Enabled and Info-tech Business Ready communities.

The Government Services Agency has announced a 2 billion dollar telework initiative. IBM has recently announced they have sent 82% of their workforce home to function as teleworkers, saving the company one billion a year.  Jet Blue airlines and a growing number of other companies are employing thousands of home teleworkers and generating huge savings. Oracle software streamlines the process of training, managing, and assuring quality control for remote home agents. They offer services training teleworkers and matching them with corporate job opportunities at http://contractxchange.com

Most importantly to share with you is the recommendation for a Rural Ecommerce Support Network in a recent letter to the Gov. of MT at
http://lone-eagles.com/support-montanans.htm  
 
The core point of this letter is:
Montana’s economic development leaders are invited to consider creation of a Rural Ecommerce Support Network which would begin with a Rural Ecommerce Champions Award Program to celebrate Montana’s early adapter’s Ecommerce successes. An online Resources Clearinghouse would quickly evolve showcasing short video success stories, self-training online lessons, and a peer-mentoring program to establish a convenient means for Montanans to share successful strategies and learn new skills.

 The coming presidential campaign may well hinge on who best supports America's rural communities. 

Senator Clinton Introduces Rural Broadband Bill

        Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) introduced legislation on Friday entitled The Rural Broadband Initiatives Act (S.1032). According to a statement from Senator Clinton, this legislation "will extend and improve access to broadband services in small towns across America." 

The bill would establish an Office of Rural Broadband Initiatives within the Department of Agriculture. It would also establish a Rural Broadband Innovation fund to explore and develop cutting edge broadband delivery technologies to reach underserved rural areas.

<http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=271662&&>

The Children's Partnership is pleased to announce an update of our Issue Brief, Helping Our Children Succeed: What’s Broadband Got To Do With It? In this report, TCP analyzes how broadband can help improve the lives of the 73 million children in the U.S.
Our Brief highlights how important it is for all children to have access to broadband infrastructure, the applications it powers and the training to use them to improve their educational achievement, health, workforce preparation and civic participation.
To view an electronic version of our Issue Brief, please visit http://www.techpolicybank.org/TPB/Research/Brief/Broadband/

At issue is gathering and sharing the best rural broadband, ecommerce, and telework innovations from global sources on an ongoing basis. The Lone Eagle role as info-broker is unique based on 20 years experience as an early adapter and grassroots innovator. For many years Lone Eagle has written articles predicting that governments will compete on their ability to mine raw human potential combining broadband and the best possible mass training possible.

Lone Eagle Consulting has extensive related resources available online without restriction; http://lone-eagles.com  For the past ten years,  Lone Eagle Consulting has been involved with developing and delivering Rural Ecommerce and Telework Strategies programs for USDA, USDOL, and others in Montana, Alaska, and Idaho.

Lone Eagle Consulting’s Mission Statement
Lone Eagle Consulting strives to maintain the small circle of the very best
Internet learning pathways, requiring the least time and effort, to deliver the
highest levels of benefit and motivation for people of all cultures and literacy levels.

Lone Eagle Update January-October 2006
 http://lone-eagles.com/lone-eagle-update100106.htm
Ten trips to Alaska, six conferences across Canada and a dozen other presentations in the rural West.

As a Cody boy, there is a story to tell regarding Rural Ecommerce and Telework Strategies – celebrating the tenth year as Lone Eagle Consulting
A brief bio:
Born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1952, Frank Odasz has been a carpenter, oil field roughneck, dude ranch manager, college professor and is now a “Lone Eagle” – that is, an independent instructional entrepreneur. With a Masters in Instructional Technology from the University of Wyoming, Frank came to Dillon, MT in 1985 as faculty at UMW, he founded the Big Sky Telegraph network in 1988 – linking one-room school teachers as one of the first rural online educational networks.

Specializing in fast-track Internet training for rural, remote, and indigenous learners for the last 20 years, Frank has traveled over half a million miles presenting at national and international conferences on online learning, community networking, and rural Ecommerce. My published history is at http://lone-eagles.com/history.htm

Vita: http://lone-eagles.com/articles/frank.htm

LONE EAGLE ARTICLES AND RESOURCES

Community Internet Empowerment Resources
for Rural Communities
http://lone-eagles.com/ruralempowerment.htm
Lone Eagle’s rural community resources

 Dozens of Lone Eagle articles on rural community networking are at http://lone-eagles.com/smart.htm  At the beginning of this document is a short quiz, “How smart is your rural community?”  The quiz includes a web tour with exceptional web site models.

Lone Eagle offers many rural ecommerce community grant templates already written, online, and available without restriction at http://lone-eagles.com/rural-grant-templates.htm

Lone Eagle serves on the board of the Association for Community Networking www.afcn.org
and has gathered considerable information on wireless community networking http://lone-eagles.com/wireless.htm

The Community Technology Review www.comtechreview.org has a special section on community networking resources including the following Lone Eagle article:

What is Community Networking; And Why You Should Care
http://www.comtechreview.org/fall-2005/000347.html  Many related links are listed in the overall publication.

The following article was written in 2003 after presenting for an Australian govt. conference on rural and indigenous broadband applications.

Authenticating Rural Internet and Broadband Benefits - A Reality Check
http://lone-eagles.com/wings.htm Required reading for rural citizens and leaders.
Written for the Australian Government for national empowerment of all their communities.

The Lone Eagle paper related to Dec. 2006 presentations for the
National Conference of State Legislatures’ EDTECH Committee:

Reforming Educational, Economic Development, and Healthcare Institutions:
 An Executive Summary for State Legislators
A Non-Technical Overview of the Impacts of Information Technologies
http://lone-eagles.com/ncsl-reflections.htm  
Lone Eagle NCSL presentation handout http://lone-eagles.com/ncsl.htm

Another article written for Alaskan Legislators addresses policy issues regarding E-rate Silo funding for health, separately for education, and separately again for ebusiness.

An Info-Tech Wellness Strategy
for Healthy Alaskan Native and Native American Communities
http://lone-eagles.com/healthyvillage.htm  Much more at http://lone-eagles.com/afn-resources.htm

More on Lone Eagle rural Economic Development and other resources:
Lone Eagles has just finished three years providing rural presentations on "Entry-Level Rural Ecommerce" for the USDOL "Montana Choice" project.
http://lone-eagles.com/future-proofing.htm

A non-credit online class with ten two-hour lessons on what's working for others like you with Ecommerce has been developed for rural adults who have never taken an online course. http://lone-eagles.com/ecom.htm

The Power of All of Us? The eBay Lesson for Community Development
http://comtechreview.org/winter-2004-2005/000261.html
 
The New Gold Rush; Are You Ready?
 http://lone-eagles.com/mining.htm   Part II: http://lone-eagles.com/goldrush.htm
Themes from the Frontier of Rural Community Development, written for the
Journal of Municipal Telecommunication Policy, March 2001

The Future of Community Development;
Making the Living You Want, Living Wherever You Want
http://lone-eagles.com/comdev.htm
Written for a forthcoming book on rural community development to be published
by TechnoPress "Future Courses; A Compendium of Thought about Education,
Technology and the Future.

Community Networking Hits Media Mainstream (Almost)--
And Makes Its Own News   (4 pages)
http://lone-eagles.com/mainstream.htm

"Reaching the Tipping Point for the New Generation of Community Networks" 
http://lone-eagles.com/tipping-point.htm (9 pages)

Community Networking Best Practices and Global Citizenship:
A Knowledge Management Trend Report
http://lone-eagles.com/global-citizenship.htm

See two new Lone Eagle articles in the
Spring 2006 CTC VISTA Digest
http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/digest

Peer-to-Peer Social Networking; The Next Big Thing
http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/digest/?q=node/67

Empowering Americans: CTC VISTAs in Community Networking
http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/digest/?q=node/64

Nativeheart http://lone-eagles.com/nativeheart.htm

Recent and Upcoming Lone Eagle Presentations:
(Multi-media presentations are available with recent presentations listed at
http://lone-eagles.com/new.htm and presentation titles and descriptions at
http://lone-eagles.com/presentations.htm )

Lone Eagle recently presented for the Gov's Eco-dev council and the Montana County Commissioners eco-dev committee (who will write a letter of support).
Montana Ecommerce Success stories and related resources for county commissioners:  http://lone-eagles.com/maco.htm

Lone Eagle recently returned from Guatemala facilitating the formal creation of the Indigenous ICT Commission of the Americas. http://lone-eagles.com/guatemala.htm

CONTACT:
Frank Odasz
Lone Eagle Consulting
2200 Rebich Lane
Dillon, Montana 59725
Web: http://lone-eagles.com
Ph/Fax: 406 683 6270