Plans for the so-called “information superhighway” promise just about everything but an on-ramp for the poor, a recent study by civil rights and consumer groups charges.
Regional telephone companies plan to build their new advanced communications networks in affluent neighborhoods first, bypassing most poor and minority areas, according to the study by the Consumer Federation of America, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other civil rights and consumer groups.
That doesn’t interface well with the vision of universal access painted by Vice President Al Gore or Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt.
“There have to be some rules,” said one consumer advocate. “You can’t just let the market determine who gets service and who doesn’t.”
But why not?
The prospect of systematic underrepresentation for the poor does raise important questions about the role this new technology will play in bridging or widening the gap between haves and have-nots in the cyberworld of the future.
But it is far too early to charge the private developers of the information superhighway with “redlining” of the sort that has been outlawed in banking and insurance services. And far too early to demand regulatory remedies for a problem that may turn out to be less problematic than now seems the case.
Communications industry officials point out that they are only going to those areas first where demand is greatest. That matches the pattern by which past technologies were introduced. Poor, remote and rural areas were the last to get automated telephone service, for example. Neighborhoods of bungalows neatly lined up along middle-class streets were the first to be snapped up by cable television franchises.
Capital follows demand, which for new technologies tends to emerge in better-off neighborhoods first. Guaranteeing access for homes that don’t want a service or can’t afford it makes less sense than assuring equal access through institutions like local schools, libraries and hospitals.
Proposed legislation in both the House and the Senate would mandate the wiring of such facilities. Other bills would prohibit common carriers from denying service to an area because of race or income levels.
Market competition eventually rolls out to meet demand. Modern technology has reduced that filling-in process from decades to years or even months. Government referees can help orderly growth, but their intrusion is best held to a minimum. Otherwise, they may stifle the very market dynamism they should be encouraging.
