The digital divide -is broadband tax funding the wealthy?

The Commons Business Committee has criticised the government plans to introduce a 50p-per-month tax on households to fund superfast broadband as 'regressive', saying it will result in the poor paying for a service used mainly by the wealthy.

In what will be seen as a rebuff to the method of funding the next generation of internet coonections,the committee said that the charge would have a much greater impact on the less well off who will pay for an enhanced service which only a minority will enjoy.

They added that if public funds are required for next generation access, they should be raised through general taxation, in the same way as for any other national infrastructure programme."

Tory MP Peter Luff joined the debate saying ‘market will determine the roll out of super-fast broadband.’ and urging the government to focus on getting people who are offline online instead.

A warning on data.gov

The government's data initiative data.gov.uk was launched to a great deal of fanfare yesterday.

But out of it comes a warning from one of its creators Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

According to Berners-Lee

social inequalities between different areas will quickly become apparent. adding that

There was a risk that some areas would seem like “ghettoes” compared to others, although this was not necessarily a bad thing as it would create pressure on politicians to spend money on improving the worse-off areas.

Source-Telegraph.co.uk

DAB uncertain future for local stations

The Future of local radio stations is in doubt as plans to switch to DAB come to fruition.

Guardian media reports this morning that the Lib Dem MP,Alistair Carmichael,said there was

widespread concern" from small independent stations that the digital economy bill would leave them facing an uneven playing field.Over 100 local stations still do not have a clear digital migration path and are likely to be consigned to an uncertain future on the analogue spectrum once digital switchover has occurred. It is important the government addresses this matter before committing to analogue switch-off."

Digital divide and Wikipedia

Whilst crowdsourcing works wonders in places where there are plenty of educated earners,it falls down in places that underperform.

One such area is Africa,as Marginal Revolution notes

Almost the entire continent of Africa is geographically poorly represented in Wikipedia. Remarkably, there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than all but one of the 53 countries in Africa (or perhaps more amazingly, there are more Wikipedia articles written about the fictional places of Middle Earth and Discworld than about many countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas).

via the Guardian

Is this what is going to happen to information in the future

The lessons of the likes of Google becoming too powerful?




Ht-Stephen's Lighthouse

The UK needs to look at lessons in broadband adapation

Lesson for the UK?

Across the Atlantic,The Federal Commission has listed seven obstacles in the road towards universal use of broadband.

In the United States almost two-thirds of adults have broadband connections at home, but of course that's a long way from the country's ultimate goal.

The biggest problem according to the commission,

The Universal Service Fund. The USF was created to directly subsidize phone service for low income people and to support service providers in rural areas. It does all that, but at an exorbitant cost and with increasingly irrelevant results. The United States now spends about $7 billion every year to support this pooch, a result of lousy auditing methods, goofy standards for measuring provider costs, and an intercarrier compensation system that was designed for a pre-IP-telephony world.

However it also identifies

2. The broadband adoption gap.

3. The consumer information gap.

4. The spectrum gap.

5. The deployment gap.

6. The television set-top box innovation gap.

7. The personal data gap.

Take a look at the full article here

Ht-Stephen's Lighthouse

Internet access-a human right?

Is there a fundemental right to being online?

The Times asked a number of people that question and here are some of the replies

Being cut off from your broadband isn’t the same as being whisked to Guantánamo; I see it more as a consumer right and a citizen’s right. Nobody says you have to shop online at Tesco, but it is convenient.

says David Rowan,Editor, Wired magazine

easy access to technology and information is a growing human right

.says Sam Barratt who is Head of Media for Oxfam .

and this from Padraig Reidy,Index on Censorship

As the internet becomes a prime conduit for information, it would seem that yes, access is a right. Increasingly it is merely another public space in which we interact and learn; a public space in which we are still learning how to conduct ourselves. The idea of barring people from that public space is detrimental to liberty and equality.

The digital generation in conflict with the Telecoms

Young people’s behaviour is no longer technology-driven, but reflects how this technology has been internalised and now drives a new participatory culture which impacts across all generations and demographics online.

That is the findings of a new report Serving the Digital Generation Innovation for a new breed of customers

Whereas the digital generation wants,Communication to be free,to be able to express identity and content and move seamlessly between media,this conflicts with Telecom operators whowant to connect calls and lines,to control as much as possible,to minimize capital investment and take a long time in developing new products and services

via Norman Lewis

Small steps in the net and civic engagement

Pew have just published a report on the internet and civic engagement in America.

What has it found? You may or may not be surprised

the internet is not changing the fundamental socio-economic character of civic engagement in America. When it comes to online activities such as contributing money, contacting a government official or signing an online petition, the wealthy and well-educated continue to lead the way.

There are hints that the net may be developing new forms of civic engagement.

The report found that

Some 19% of internet users have posted material online about political or social issues or used a social networking site for some form of civic or political engagement. And this group of activists is disproportionately young.

No doubt social media will play a greater role in this but the barriers are changing oh too slowly

Wireless devices are bridging the racial internet gap

A Pew report suggests that at least in America,there may be a racial divide over the types of devices used to access the internet.

Whilst

56% of adult Americans have accessed the internet by wireless means, such as using a laptop, mobile device, game console, or MP3 player. The most prevalent way people get online using a wireless network is with a laptop computer; 39% of adults have done this.

But interestingly

African Americans are the most active users of the mobile internet – and their use of it is also growing the fastest. This means the digital divide between African Americans and white Americans diminishes when mobile use is taken into account.

Stripped down further

1.48% of Africans Americans have at one time used their mobile device to access the internet for information, emailing, or instant-messaging, half again the national average of 32%.

2. 29% of African Americans use the internet on their handheld on an average day, also about half again the national average of 19%.

3,Compared with 2007, when 12% of African Americans used the internet on their mobile on the average day, use of the mobile internet is up by 141%.

Social inclusion?

“digital exclusion” needs to be revisited because people are using technology in increasingly sophisticated ways, particularly around social media and social networks. The danger is that a large portion of the population will have less access to jobs, private records and digital databanks if they’re not conversant with social media.

The words of Tristan Wilkinson, director for public sector for EMEA, Intel UK, talks about the need for social media literacy in this 9-minute video.

You can watch the video here,and it brings up a point that this blog has made before,what happens to the people that are left behind in this revolution?

“If you’ve never used these empowering technologies, they can seem pretty alien.”

Creating a digital divide?

This blog has talked about the digital divide before and if you are interested take a look at this presentation from Helen Milner (Ht-Paul Bradshaw)

Amongst some of the highlights.

The fact that 29 per cent of adults don't use the internet.35 per cent of homes haven't got it and that 49 per cent of D&E households don't have access to it.

Rather frightening.Are we creating a digital divide

Helen Milner Digital Inclusion The Evidence April 2009 National Digital Inclusion Conference London

View more presentations from Helen Milner.