By Shirley Bloomfield, Guest Columnist

I wish I could say this is my story, but it’s not. It’s the story of some hard working women looking for a way to be connected in the global economy. And it’s the story of my daughter, Kelsey Patterson, who is dedicating her talent and skills to help these women. My heart glows with pride when I share the work that she is doing in Mozambique.

Kelsey, a global development and international affairs major, is in her third year at the University of Virginia. She received a grant this year to develop a marketing plan to assist women crafters in Mozambique who are selling their homemade crafts by the roadside.

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Tags: africa, economic impact, research, rural broadband, service adoption, vni, VNI-SA

Four months after launching the Connected Life Exchange, let’s reflect back on some of the key insights that we’ve shared thus far — about the evolving nature of the Global Networked Economy, how participation transforms the way we live, work, play and learn.

We’ve started to explore the user adoption trends that can be discovered as part of the Cisco CLUE initiative, and we will be sharing more details soon. We offered examples of progressive infrastructure investment plans that not only attempt to catch up with the global market leaders, but perhaps set a bold new benchmark for others to follow.

We outlined the mobile data traffic growth trends and reviewed the amazing forecast estimates that demonstrate how more and more people will have their first Internet access experience via a mobile broadband connection – most likely on a handheld device.

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Tags: broadband, economic development, economic impact, global networked economy, ICT