The digital divide in easy to understand terms.

The digital divide is still a serious problem in this country. I know it hasn’t been in the news lately but that doesn’t mean the problem is going away. In fact, the problem has quietly been getting worse.

According to this article the problem can be clearly articulated by the following statement.

” One out of every two American households with incomes above $75,000 have high-speed Internet connections at home. One-out of every two American households with incomes below $30,000 does not have any Internet connection at home at all.”

As I sit here thinking about that statement taking into consideration the critical function the internet provides I have to wonder if this isn’t something we, as a nation, should be deeply ashamed of. Is it possible that we have created a society to become so split, so divided that the middle and upper classes can have nearly unlimited access to information along with a means to communicate while the poor cannot? How does this benefit society as a whole?

Would we allow the bottom rung of society to not have telephone or electricity?

According to this study, an estimated 1.2 million new and permanent high paying jobs would be created if the US would build out a ubiquitous next generation network!

· 166,000 jobs in the telecommunications sector;

· 71,700 manufacturing jobs generated by the direct purchase of network plant and
equipment and customer premise equipment; and

· 974,000 indirect jobs created if a next generation network were built.

Here’s the rub in my opinion. To build this network out so that every American would have some form of connectivity my guess is that this network would have a zero cost to the taxpayer! That’s a bold statement so let me back it up.

We have reached a point in the development of technology that the actual cost per household to connect it to the net is negligible. Daily Wireless credits TechNet with an estimate that it would cost $35.2 billion annually to bring fiber service to all Americans. They also claim that wireless could cost 1/10th of that total.

How does that break down in real numbers that make sense to people like you and I? Well, based on the original estimate of $35.2 billion annually divided down by 300 million Americans (plus or minus) we find out that it would cost roughly $120/year per American or $10/month! Now, if the estimates that deploying wireless are correct in assuming it would only cost 1/10th of the over all cost we are looking at a cost of $1/month per American for high speed access to be provided to everyone in this country.

So, in my three person household my family's total cost for this service and the creation of 1.2 million jobs would be $3/month? Damn, where do I send my check?

So, what’s holding this up? I can honestly say that the only two reasons I can see are regulatory roadblocks and greed.

How do we change that?

I honestly don’t know but I can say with some certainty that these two problems have been affecting mankind since the beginning of recorded history and probably before that.


Respectfully,

Ken DiPietro
New-ISP
NextGenCommunications