While the African American community as a whole continues to make progress in narrowing the digital divide (“Sweeping national study finds blacks in U.S. diverse, optimistic”, published in USA Today, June 26”), we cannot rest without making sure that improvements in this nation’s digital broadband technology platform are affordable to every American. It must be affordable regardless of socio-economic status, otherwise we risk transforming the promise of the digital revolution, by furthering the economic divide and imbalances in our nation.
In our recent study, “Affordable Broadband: Empowering Communities Across the Digital Divide,” the Alliance found that many of the gains made in underserved communities, as it relates to broadband access, are fragile at best. Sharply increasing prices or challenges in obtaining broadband could easily mean that the last on the “digital highway” of high-speed and mobile Internet service could be the first off.
In today’s world, too many opportunities depend on broadband Internet services – quality education, job opportunities, economic development, healthcare and simple everyday tasks, such as renewing a driver’s license or paying monthly bills.
We need to look to technological initiatives started via public-private partnerships that seek to develop active programs to ensure that affordable broadband services are available in every community. Programs such as ConnectKentucky and Elevate Miami are having an impact, but as our study clearly demonstrates, ill-conceived policies emerging from our nation’s capitol, although well-intentioned, threaten to dislodge millions of families from the Internet who are situated in underserved communities by making broadband inaccessible to them. Today, large media content purveyors are lobbying the US Congress to consider passing legislation to implement specific price point considerations that would essentially pass their capital developmental costs onto the average American wage-earner.
U.S. Senator Barack Obama eloquently stated in his address before the U.S. Conference of Mayors Forum in Miami, “our nation must deploy every technological asset to ensure that the United States moves from being ranked 15th globally in broadband deployment to number one, in order to enhance the performance of our educational, healthcare and economic development infrastructures.” The ADE’S slogan, “Empowering Communities Across the Digital Divide,” is the genesis of our core belief that every American in this nation must be empowered. Every American must be a benefactor and participant in this digital revolution, which will forever change the economic landscape of our society.
