From Broadband to Organizational Productivity

From Broadband to Organizational Productivity

Ngabonziza, S.

Madureira, A.J.P.S. (mentor)
Baken, N.H.G. (mentor)

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Electrical Engineering

2009-08-21

Broadband infrastructures are advanced telecommunication systems capable of providing high-speed transmission of services. Broadband deployment has the potential to bring valuable new services, stimulate economic activity, advance economic opportunity and improve productivity. For example, the European Commission has stated that "widespread and affordable broadband access is essential to realize the potential of the information society". Despite this general perception, the announced impacts were not yet backed up with factual evidence. Scientifically grounding this perception is an essential input to the development of telecommunication infrastructures related public and private policies. This thesis contributes to clarify the importance of broadband, by investigating the following research questions: 1) what is the state of the art concerning the impact of broadband to organizational productivity; 2) is there any thorough and generally accepted framework to investigate the relation from broadband to organizational productivity; 3) if not, which framework can be used; 4) how can the applicability of such framework be tested; and 5) which conclusions can be derived about the impact of broadband using this framework. The methodology used to investigate these research questions is based on literature reviews and a survey. From a general observation of the results of the survey, it can be concluded that the majority of the interviewees are conscientious of the impact of the digital information networks and broadband on their productivity, but are not able to distinguish broadband from narrowband. In general, they don't care about the types of networks they are using as long as they can do their job. At this stage, no concrete conclusion can be drawn about the impact of broadband, since users are not clarified about the difference between broadband and narrowband networks. Although the relevance of broadband was validated with a literature review, there is a lack of confirmation of the perceived impacts with an empirical validation. A careful re-design of the questions of the questionnaire should be able to clarify to the target population the difference between these two networks. From a scientific perspective, the novelty of this work lies on the application of a novel framework useful to structure the outcomes of broadband impact studies in a valid conceptual way. From an applied perspective, this work can contribute to clarify utopian and opposite dystopian views of broadband, particularly aiming policy makers and organizational managers.

Productivity
Broadband

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7277beba-eb6e-4ce1-ade5-5a33d489596a

2009-08-25

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2009 Ngabonziza, S.