Meaningful Broadband Research

Meaningful Broadband is a long-term applied research program at the Center, conducted in collaboration with the Digital Divide Institute. Since 2006, this initiative has been directed by Craig Warren Smith, a former Visiting Professor of Science and Technology at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Meaningful Broadband refers to an ethics-based approach for establishing “meaningful broadband ecosystems” in low-income regions of developing nations. After Prof Smith came into residence at the Center in that year the Kingdom of Thailand’s regulatory agency (National Broadcast and Telecommunications Commission) adopted Meaningful Broadband as national policy. At the same time the chairmen of all five of the nation’s telecommunications operating companies joined a Meaningful Broadband Working Group, led by Professor Smith. In recent years the focus of Meaningful Broadband at the Center has been tied to the formulation of a model of internet ethics, tied to a Meaningful Technology Index, and a principle called “Meaningful User Experience,” which has been offered for application in Indonesia and other Asian countries and these themes are now the basis of academic research into internet ethics in China and other nations. .