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Guest Commentary: XXXXXXXXXXXX, 2001
Bridging the Digital Divide
The Honorable Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
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In 1943, Thomas Watson, then-Chairman of IBM, said with great confidence, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Mr. Watson’s reality then has become obsolete and almost humorous, for since that time we have seen an explosion of technologies which have reached into nearly every aspect of our lives. Today, more than half the homes in the United States have computers that are used to conduct a variety of day-to-day activities ranging from business transactions and personal correspondence to education, research, and job searches. Whatever the reason Americans use their computers, it has become more and more apparent that we are rapidly becoming a digital nation.
Today, the Internet is becoming an increasingly vital tool in our information society. The U.S. Commerce Department reports that between December 1998 and August 2000, access to the Internet in U.S. households grew by 58 percent. In 1997, just over half of all households with computers had Internet access; today, that number has surged to four out of five households. As more and more Americans regularly use the Internet to conduct daily activities, being digitally connected becomes ever more critical, putting those without Internet access at a growing disadvantage. That is why our nation must make a priority of linking rural and urban areas together through a telecommunications superhighway – a high speed, broadband network that can transmit and receive large amounts of data quickly and reliably.
If our nation to prosper in the new, technology-based economy, we cannot afford to have a nation divided between technological haves and have nots. While efforts are being made to ensure broadband services are available in all regions – both urban and rural – the fact is that these services, which are integral to being a part of our nation’s technological and telecommunications infrastructure, are being deployed more rapidly in urban areas. We simply cannot afford to allow this discrepancy to continue. Without action by Congress, this discrepancy is likely to become more pronounced. We must ensure that small businesses and consumers in rural regions and towns have access to these services in a timely manner if we are to form a seamless web of opportunity for all of our nation’s citizens.
To address the broadband disparity, I have joined with Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) to encourage development of high-speed telecommunications in rural areas. Earlier this year, we reintroduced our bipartisan Broadband Internet Access Act to provide a tax credit to companies that invest in high-speed Internet facilities benefitting rural, low-income and residential areas. Our bill will grant a ten percent credit for expenditures on equipment that provides a bandwidth of 1.5 megabits per second downstream and 200 kilo bits per second upstream to subscribers in rural and low-income areas, and a 20 percent credit for delivery of next-generation broadband services to customers anywhere in the nation to encourage the most cutting edge technologies. The plan seeks to give companies the incentive to build broadband facilities in rural areas by directly addressing the higher cost of investing in these areas.
Without question, the challenges for deploying technology in rural areas are significant: these areas are often more expensive to serve, because terrain is often difficult and populations widely dispersed. Importantly, many broadband technologies cannot serve people who live more than 18,000 feet from a phone company’s "central office" – which is the case for most rural Americans. By offering sensible tax incentives, the Broadband Internet Access Act will break down many of the barriers that have allowed the digital divide to grow.
Closing the digital divide is important not only to small cities and towns, but to our national economy as well. A recent study suggests the Internet is the single greatest contributor to the unprecedented economic expansion by the United States over the last five years. The use of information technology, computer hardware, software, and communications equipment accounted for two-thirds of the productivity growth between the first and second halves of the 1990 decade. But only through investing in broadband services for all parts of our country can we be absolutely certain that economic expansion will continue in this quickly changing world.
I remain committed to reversing the growing disparity between the availability of Broadband services in urban areas and in more rural states like Maine. We cannot continue to deny rural Americans – or any segment of our population – the opportunity to access the technology which will allow us to realize the full potential of the computing revolution.
 How to contact Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)
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