October 20, 2004

Long Live the Digital Divide

This has been a long-standing pet peeve of mine about telecom regulation. Home Tech Study Reveals "Digital Divide," But Not Necessarily The One You'd Think It Is [MediaDailyNews].

Given the rapid proliferation of new media of all kinds, the term "digital divide" appears to have been dropped from most industry, or even political discussions. But a new report on consumer media technologies reveals economic, racial and other demographic gaps continue to influence the adoption of digital media technologies, although they are not necessarily the ones you might think they are.

The report, released by Knowledge Networks/SRI, does find a surprisingly wide gap in the penetration of seemingly ubiquitous digital media technologies such as personal computers and broadband access, but it also reveals that some newer media, including digital TV and cell phone services are accelerating more rapidly among lower or niche socio-economic groups.

So, we know that the government does not subsidize VCRs, yet in 20 years they have penetrated to 95% of the marketplace. Every welfare mom (and this I know from persoal experience representing formerly homeless families) has one. On the other hand, America has subsidized POTS (regular telephone service) to low-income and rural users for 70 years and we're still at 94% penetration -- and falling. Now we find that the poor are actually earlier adopters of some communications technologies, like cell phones, without any subsidies. So I say it's time to abandon the "universal service" shibboleth and let the market work. If it's good enough for VCRs, it's good enough for telephones and computers, too.

 Posted by glenn

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