Browsing by Author "Blythe, Earving L."

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    Exploring the Feasibility of a Strategic Alliance Approach to Telecommunications Provision in Rural Municipalities
    van Gelder, Brenda A. (Virginia Tech, 2004-04-26)
    Rural communities require means for obtaining access to affordable broadband infrastructure and services to meet their economic development, education, and quality of life objectives. Due to the comparatively low potential for return on investment in serving isolated rural communities, the private sector telecommunications providers have proved unwilling or unable to provide beyond the very basic services for rural communities. Private sector providers must maximize their return on investment as it is their responsibility to shareholders. Return on investment is maximized in urban areas as opposed to rural areas because the high capital cost per connection is higher in rural areas; the operating cost per connection is higher; and the revenues per connection tend to be lower. This thesis explores the feasibility of municipal and private sector provider strategic alliances as an approach to provisioning rural areas with improved telecommunications infrastructure and services. As a means of determining whether the possibility exists of a "meeting of the minds" between municipalities and private sector telecommunications providers, a series of interviews was conducted. Common themes from the interviews were analyzed for areas of mutual interest and of polarized perspectives. In pursuing an alliance model, communities may need to consider less than the optimal technological solution in exchange for the opportunity to exemplify the ability to collaborate with a willing private sector partner. The results suggest that, while the prospects for strategic alliances as an emerging business model appear dim, opportunities do exist for rural communities and small private sector companies to find mutual interest on an exceptional basis in developing strategies for access to telecommunications infrastructure and services.
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    The maximization of discretionary budget: an explanation for the pattern of computer investments in the federal government
    Blythe, Earving L. (Virginia Tech, 1983-03-08)
    This study of bureaucratic behavior is from the perspective of a particular federal government operations process - the management and delivery of computing services to the federal agencies. It supports the idea that federal bureaucrats are utility maximizers. The first of the two theories considered in this thesis is based upon William Niskanen's hypothesis that the primary objective of the government bureaucrat is to maximize the bureau's budget through the maximization of output. The second theory is based upon Jean-Luc Migue’s and Gerald Belanger's hypothesis that the objective of bureaucrats is to maximize "discretionary budget” - the difference between the bureau's total budget and the cost of producing the bureaus authorized output. This thesis contends that the maximization of discretionary budget is the maximand of the federal bureaucrat evaluating the computer investment decision.
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    Producer Network Effects for Rural Economic Development: An Investigation into the Economic Development Potential of Information Production as a Firm-Level Effect of Broadband Telecommunications in Rural Areas
    Peery, Stephen Seth (Virginia Tech, 2005-04-29)
    Broadband telecommunications infrastructure is considered to be an economic development necessity by a significant number of policymakers and economic development professionals, particularly in rural areas. Across the United States, a considerable amount of money is being invested in the deployment of broadband networks based, at least in part, on the premise that economic development benefits will obtain. However, there is a general lack of academic theory explaining the mechanism(s) by which broadband telecommunications can produce economic development results. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of broadband at the level of the firm. It adopts as its central working hypothesis the "Producer Network" concept originally developed at Virginia Tech, which suggests that economic development benefits may result from Internet users having access to multiple megabits-per-second of symmetrical, affordable bandwidth. It employs a qualitative grounded theory methodology to identify firm-level effects of broadband use. The study's findings revealed that a majority of businesses in the case study communities were using much slower Internet connections than had been hypothesized, were using third-party, off-site web hosting, and did not believe they needed "Big Broadband." Informants to the study believed that the economic development potential of broadband in the short term depended on the ubiquitous deployment of affordable connectivity, and were more concerned with reliability than bandwidth. The study concludes that the "Producer Network" is better understood as a long-term goal than as a model to explain the current firm-level applications of the commodity Internet. It suggests that policymakers should consider broadband not as a panacea for economic development, but as a tool whose potential for impact is influenced by a number of economic, political, social, and cultural forces originating at the community, national, and global levels. Based on the literature review and the field research, it proposes a general model for broadband telecommunications in rural economic development.