The Pew Internet and American Life Project has a new survey Home Broadband Adoption 2008 (PDF, 31 pages) that says "Adoption stalls for low-income Americans even as many broadband users opt for premium services that give them more speed."

NextGov looks at the report in relation to e-government initiatives. (E-Government's Tough Nut, by Allan Holmes, Tech Insider NextGov, July 3, 2008.) Some of the problems for a government wanting to interact with citizens online is that many citizens cannot or will not be able to do so. The articles picks the relevant statistics from the Pew report: the percentage of low-income Americans who have a broadband Internet connection dropped from 28 percent to 25 percent; of those that use the slower dial-up connections, almost two-thirds said they had no desire to change to broadband; 27 percent of Americans have no Internet access, with most of those being either elderly or low-income; only 10 percent of the non-Internet users have any desire to become wired. As Holmes says:

These are the hard-core resisters - and there are millions of them. That means if government wants to move ahead with providing more electronic services - including services that may require faster and more robust connections that broadband provides - a large portion of Americans may just not care. And these resisters are exactly the demographics that government tends to serve.

A new study says that there are signs that the digital divide is widening for some groups in California, particularly Latino and low-income residents. This conclusion is based on a statewide survey. The study also notes that computer use in California is similar to that in the nation as a whole.

• Californians & information technology, by Mark Baldassare, Dean Bonner, Jennifer Paluch, and Sonja Petek, The Public Policy Institute of California, in collaboration with The California Emerging Technology Fund. June 25, 2008

Baldassare says:

"...[T]here are tremendous differences in access to critical information that put many at a disadvantage in their everyday lives. At a time when technology's role is growing and in a state that has led the way, this poses a major policy challenge."

Public Libraries Can't Fill Digital Divide Alone, Senate Committee Told
Jennifer Pinkowski -- Library Journal, 9/7/2007

Public libraries alone cannot fill the digital divide that plagues rural Arkansas, Pine Bluff/Jefferson County Library System director David Burdick told United States Senators and officials from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on August 28. Burdick testified in Little Rock at the Central Arkansas Library System's downtown branch before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee in a field hearing on the accessibility and affordability of broadband in Arkansas organized by Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR).

It's time for the first of the CNN-YouTube Presidential Debates. It will be broadcast on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/citizentube July 23, 2007. But sadly missing so far in the race that is so dependent on the Internet is any mention of the digital divide.

• Binary America: Split in Two by A Digital Divide, by Jose Antonio Vargas, Washington Post, July 23, 2007; C01.

As this article says, there are "two Americas online: one that's connected to high-speed Internet -- socializing, paying bills, uploading debate questions to presidential candidates on YouTube -- and one that's not. This is the digital divide, now more than a decade old, a rarely discussed schism in which the unconnected are second-class citizens. In some parts of this so-called Internet ghetto, the screech of a telephone modem dialing up to get online is not uncommon. And with dial-up, YouTube is impossible to use."

Excerpts:

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Less than a mile and a half from the Citadel, the site of the Democratic presidential debate tonight, sits Cooper River Courts, a public housing project. Forget the Web. Never mind YouTube, the debate's co-sponsor. Here, owning a computer and getting on the Internet (through DSL or cable or Wi-Fi) is a luxury.

..."At one level, the YouTube debate shows that the Web has really become a centerpiece of American political culture," adds Lee Rainie, director of Pew Internet. "At another level, it also shows that the debate is not for everybody. It's certainly not available to all Americans."

That is especially true at Cooper River Courts, where Tiara Reid, 14, in her jeans shorts and pink striped top, runs up and down the complex asking friends if anyone wants to go the library. Finally her mom, Jossie, who works at a deli, drives her and a neighbor's daughter. With school out and without Internet access at home, the library is the only place where she can go on the Web -- for a maximum of two hours a day.

FCC LAUNCHES "RURAL HEALTH CARE PILOT PROGRAM" WEBSITE Press Release (November 21, 2006) fcc.gov

The FCC has launched a website (http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/rural/rhcp.html) that provides a consolidated source of information about the FCC's recently announced Rural Health Care Pilot Program. The website includes the Order adopting the pilot program and the accompanying news release, a PDF slide presentation giving an overview of the program, and frequently asked questions (FAQs), The website will be updated periodically, as appropriate.

The FCC's pilot program is an innovative, enhanced funding initiative intended to help public and non-profit health care providers construct state- and region-wide broadband networks to provide telehealth and telemedicine services throughout the nation. The program will fund up to 85% of the costs of constructing those networks, as well as the costs of advanced telecommunications and information services that will ride over these networks. If selected, up to 85% of the cost of connecting to Internet2, a dedicated nationwide backbone, may also be funded by the pilot program. Connection to Internet 2 is not required, but may be requested by the applicants....