About Us
The Digital Communities Broadband Portal and Repository provides a curated collection of resources on rural and community broadband. The goal is to provide a set of resources on a range of topics to help communities further their decision making and arrive at practical and effective, locally generated broadband solutions. Materials hosted directly in the repository have been provided from interested parties across Alberta, and the portal also provides additional links to relevant documents and sites on the internet.
Resources are arranged into the following categories:
- Case Studies (Alberta, Canada, and Outside Canada)
- Best Practices
- Government Documents (Municipal Programs, Municipal Policies and Regulations, Provincial Programs, Provincial Policies and Regulations, Federal Programs, Federal Policies and Regulations, and Forms)
- Funding Options
- Business Plans (Costs, Carriers and Deployment Models)
- Learn More (Conference Sharing, Fibre Coverage, Scholarly Publications, Research Initiatives, Datasets and Statistics, Emerging Technologies)
Digital Communities is run and maintained by a research team from the University of Alberta. The team members are:
- Dr. Michael McNally – Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Studies, Faculty of Education
- Dr. Rob McMahan – Assistant Professor, Masters of Arts in Communications and Technology Program, Faculty of Extension
- Dr. Dinesh Rathi, Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Studies, Faculty of Education
- Jenny Plecash, Masters of Library and Information Studies Candidate, School of Library and Information Studies, Faculty of Education
The success of Digital Communities would not be possible without the generous contributions of individuals and groups from across Alberta who have provided material in an open access manner (using a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY-4.0), the Kule Institute of Advanced Study who provided seed funding, University of Alberta Libraries who provides on-going support, and the Van Horne Institute who has served as a catalyst for bringing together interested parties on broadband across Alberta.
