Ed Feser and Timothy Green of UIUC were commissioned by Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn's Office of Rural Affairs to prepare broadband policy recommedations for the state.

The report, entitled "Illinois Online: Recommendations for Universal Broadband Access" is definitely required reading for CN folks.

In my view it's a great step, but will require political will to be enacted.

The paper takes a broad view on the topic. Our challenge should be to establish similar studies addressing e-literacy, e-government, and e-entrepreneurship or tech-incubation, to name a few examples in our domain. That is, we need to set a policy framework that ensures all have access, all have ability to make productive and creative use of the technologies, and that technologies are there to open government and community processes in a positive way.

You can access the link to Feser's paper below.