‘Digital Divide’ Persists Even at High Income, Education, Commerce Report Says
African-Americans and Hispanics are still less likely to use broadband Internet in their homes even when they attain the same education and income levels as whites, a government report said. Nearly 87 percent of urban and nearly 76 percent of rural, college-educated white families used broadband in their homes in 2009. But for black families with the same education, the percentages were about 77 percent in cities and 56 percent in the countryside; for college-educated Hispanics, the percentages were almost 78 percent in cities and about 69 percent in the country, the Commerce Department said in a report released Monday.
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There was also a digital divide between whites and non-whites when income was accounted for, Commerce said. For whites earning more than $75,000 per year, the broadband-to-the-home rates were nearly 93 percent in the cities and more than 84 percent in the countryside. For African-Americans in the same tax bracket, the adoption rates were more than 88 percent in the cities and nearly 72 percent in the countryside. For Hispanics, it was nearly 89 percent in the cities and more than 73 percent in the countryside, the report said.
Commerce Undersecretary for Economic Affairs Rebecca Blank said in a Monday conference call that the results were “striking. … It’s not something we necessarily expected to see."
NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said Monday’s findings underlined the need for his agency’s broadband stimulus grants. He said the report also suggests a need for “targeted programs for specific populations” to close the digital divide. “We're not going to be able to do it alone,” Strickling said, saying he hoped the study would be “food for thought” for policy makers and legislators.
Commerce’s findings were further evidence for the need for the National Broadband Plan to be ratified, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement. “The digital divide is an opportunity divide -- if you can’t get online, you can’t compete in the digital economy,” he said in the e-mail.
USTelecom Senior Vice President Jonathan Banks agreed that Monday’s report “shows an overall positive trend. … The report’s identification of specific parts of the population that have adopted broadband at slower rates will be helpful as industry works together with government and policy leaders to bridge the adoption gap. We support policies that can help increase adoption, through greater education and programs that help people understand how to use a computer, and explain how the Internet is relevant to their lives."
The Commerce report reaffirms that affordability is a major barrier to broadband adoption in urban and rural areas, said Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., a member of the House Communications Subcommittee. Matsui plans to continue work to enact her bill (HR-3646) to provide USF Lifeline funds to connect low-income people to broadband, she said. “It is imperative that Congress and the FCC persist in working to bridge the digital divide in this nation that prevents so many lower-income households from using the Internet to access information or search for a job."
Commerce’s findings mirror an August report by the Pew Research Center that found 65 percent of whites and 46 percent of African-Americans used broadband (CD Aug 12 p10), said Verizon Assistant Vice President of Internet and Technology Issues Link Hoewing. Still, Hoewing said he was cheered by results showing an explosion of broadband in the last five years. Broadband usage increased sevenfold from 2005-09, Commerce said. “The picture I think overall is pretty positive,” he said. “We have some work to do and I think the report shows it."
But “these data confirm a trend we've been seeing a while: that broadband deployment isn’t the major problem for the U.S., it’s adoption, and a big problem there is the high cost and low perceived value, resulting in part from the lack of adequate competition in our broadband market,” said Free Press Research Director Derek Turner in a statement. The FCC and other policymakers have missed a chance to confront a coming monopoly by “oligopoly broadband special interests,” Turner said.
Monday’s report was a “landmark,” said Minority Media and Telecommunications Council President David Honig in an e-mail. He said he hopes the report will refocus Washington’s attention. “It means, in the digital age, that the nation still consigns underserved groups to second class digital citizenship. Universal home adoption and informed use for those not yet online -- rather than net neutrality for those who are fortunate enough to be online -- should be the nation’s No. 1 broadband policy priority,” Honig said.
Public Knowledge spokesman Art Brodsky said Monday’s report demonstrates the need to use the Universal Service Fund to support broadband deployment. “Of course, that won’t be possible unless the Federal Communications Commission has authority over broadband,” he said in an e-mail. “The politicians most opposed to the FCC taking back jurisdiction over broadband who represent rural areas should consider the future of their constituents’ ability to take part in a broadband-based economy."
On Tuesday, the Internet Innovation Alliance was scheduled to release a report showing that the average American family can save more than $7,700 per year in rent, groceries and even over-the-counter medicine by using broadband Internet. “Just having a pipe into someone’s home is not enough,” study author Nick Delgado of the Chicago-based wealth management firm Dignitas told us. “That pipe -- that access -- could be a great opportunity.”