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| DIGITAL DIVIDE | |
 September 17, 1999 
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Jeffrey Kaye takes a look at the chasm between the haves and have nots in the world of cyberspace.
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TECHNICIAN: You don’t have to dial up and wait for a connection; you’re always connected. JEFFREY KAYE: Always connected. You can’t get more connected than the Lifland-Rodriguez family of Temple City, a suburb of Los Angeles. For a $30 installation fee plus 50 bucks a month, the household recently got their computer wired to the Internet through the same wires used for cable TV. CONSUMER: It’s always on. You don’t have to worry about a busy signal ever. CONSUMER: It’s definitely going to be worth it because you’re going to just save so much time even though whatever it costs, you’re just saving so much time. |
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| The haves and have nots | ||||||||||||||||||||
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JENNIFER YAZZIE: The figure that we heard was like about three to four thousand for the poles to come this way. JEFFREY KAYE: And could you afford that? JENNIFER YAZZIE: I don’t know. I don’t know if we could afford that, but it’s going to be a lot for us to pay that much just to get a phone. JEFFREY KAYE: While many Americans are increasingly getting plugged in and wired up, for others, the information age is virtually non-existent. These contrasts may seem extreme, but they are vivid examples of what has become known as the “digital divide.”
JEFFREY KAYE: William Kennard is chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission. He says the WILLIAM KENNARD: If you are black or Hispanic in this country, you are less likely to have a computer. If you live in a household earning over $75,000 a year, you are five times more likely to have a computer. If you live in a city or suburban area, you are ten times more likely to have a computer than in a rural area. |
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JEFFREY KAYE: The divide is also evident in schools and libraries. 51 percent of the nation’s public school classrooms had access to the Internet in 1998, but schools in poor areas or with high minority enrollments were less wired. The waiting time to use a computer at some Los Angeles libraries can be an hour, but it’s the only way some of the patrons can get onto the Internet.
JEFFREY KAYE: LA City librarian Susan Kent says the publicly available computers are becoming indispensable to those who can’t afford them at home. SUSAN KENT, Los Angeles Public Library: They may never have used a computer before, and now they’re using the computer to write a resume, to do research papers in school, to improve their math, to improve their English. All of those things are now available through technology. And if they didn’t come to us and if the library didn’t provide it, many of these folks would have no other place to go to get that kind of information. JEFFREY KAYE: Computer access in libraries and public schools around the country is improving. That’s in part because of subsidies built into phone rates. The subsidies go to a federal government fund that helps pay the cost of wiring up schools and libraries. The money comes from long distance fees paid by consumers. The cost comes to 30 to 40 cents a month on the average phone bill, according to the FCC. The program is called the E-Rate or Education Rate. EDWINA FIELDS, School Principal: With the E-Rate Project this is just opening up a whole new world to our boys and girls. Our boys and girls will have global access. They will be out on the Internet. They will use E-Mail. It is a very exciting time for us. JEFFREY KAYE: The FCC oversees the E-Rate program, and Chairman Kennard has taken delight in announcing grants. Kennard and local officials recently toured the Vine Street Elementary School in Hollywood, where his mother once taught, to call attention to the school’s Internet hookup.
WILLIAM KENNARD: In the first year through the E-Rate we were able to wire about 600,000 classrooms to the Internet, touching about 40 million of American schoolchildren. This next year we’ll invest $2 ¼ billion in the program and wire about another ½ million classrooms to the Internet. It is a wonderful program. |
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| The future arrives | ||||||||||||||||||||
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JEFFREY KAYE: Not everyone agrees the program is wonderful. Many fiscal conservatives complain the FCC has overstepped its authority. The 1996 Telecommunications Act requires phone companies to give schools and libraries discounts for Internet access. But Ronald Nehring of Americans for Tax Reform says Congress never meant for consumers to foot the bill. RONALD NEHRING, Americans for Tax Reform: Congress never intended to levy a new tax on the American people of $2 ½ billion a year, and to hide that tax by refusing to even call it a tax, and then pass those costs along to everyone else. The Internet does not become more affordable when the government comes in and raises your phone bills through taxes. And that’s exactly what the government is doing in this particular case.
WILLIAM KENNARD: He points to research which suggests that Internet access among Latinos is likely to rise 20 percent and among blacks 42 percent. Poor schools in rural areas are also quickly gaining access to the Internet. In the town of Cayenta, on the Navajo Reservation, the phone company has been installing high-speed lines in the public schools. TEACHER: Now here’s what you want it to be. You want it to be -- or a page about Indians or whatever … JEFFREY KAYE: In a recent seminar, Karen Buller of the National Indian Telecommunications Institute showed teachers how to build Internet Web pages focusing on Navajo culture. Buller, who herself is Comanche, says she appreciates the efforts to wire up schools, but she says since most reservation homes lack basic phone service, native Americans are falling even further behind.
JEFFREY KAYE: Buller says she would like to see greater government subsidies and more generosity from phone companies. But phone company officials say they can’t afford to shoulder the high costs of stringing phone lines to remote areas. The FCC has held hearings on providing assistance to Native Americans without phone service. WILLIAM KENNARD: We are targeting Native American communities for more access, more subsidies. And that is separate and apart from the E-Rate. We’re recognizing that these communities are going to need special, special help if they are going to be brought into the information age and across that digital divide. JEFFREY KAYE: Kennard says the digital divide in rural areas could be bridged by wireless technology, such as satellite dishes, now more commonly used for TV reception. As for the technological isolation of inner cities, private contributions have allowed many schools and libraries to acquire computer equipment and government officials are seeking to help narrow the digital divide through more private-public partnerships. |
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JEFFREY
KAYE: A technician’s description of a high-speed Internet line
is practically a mantra of the information age. 
JEFFREY
KAYE: For their money the family now has high-speed, top-of-the-line
Internet access. The hookup places them with many other Americans at
the forefront of the information revolution … and an age apart
from those with no or limited access to information technologies. On
the Navajo Indian Reservation in the Southwest U.S., 78 percent of the
56,000 homes don’t even have telephone service. Most residents
of the sprawling reservation live clustered in remote areas. Jennifer
Yazzie’s family got electricity only last year and has no running
water; they can’t afford to install phones.
WILLIAM
KENNARD, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission: In a society where
increasingly we are defined by access to information and what we earn
is what we learn, if you don’t have access to technology, you’re
going to be left in the digital dark ages. That’s what the digital
divide is all about.
LITTLE
GIRL: My dad says we have to pay for it, and it’s too much to pay.
WILLIAM
KENNARD: If we can have this technology in every office building in
America, we can have it in every school in America. And that’s
what we’re doing here today. This is the start.
JEFFREY
KAYE: But Kennard says the real focus should be the fact that the E-Rate
program, which he contends is not a tax, is helping to narrow the digital
divide.
KAREN
BULLER, National Indian Telecommunications Institute: The more that
Americans in big cities have easy access to broad band widths, to big
computers, and the more that we wait for years and years here on reservations
to even get our first phone line, the bigger this chasm is going to
be. The more that children are in urban schools get access to museums
in Europe through the Internet and the more that our children don’t
even go a mile away from their hometown, the bigger the chasm gets to
be, and that’s not fair.
