Rural Digital Divide

A new report issued this week by the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration provides detail on the rural digital divide. The report, Broadband Use by Rural Small Business, documents greater broadband use by small businesses in urban areas compared with small businesses in rural areas.
The report’s author reviewed a number of reports showing links between information technology investment, broadband penetration, and economic growth. These results, combined with documented lower levels of rural small business broadband use, indicate that without increased broadband access rural economies could miss out on higher levels of growth and job creation.
Broadband is fast becoming an issue of economic and social infrastructure, just like electricity, paved roads and telephones were in past generations. One thing that almost all of us can agree on is that government should be focused on is providing necessary public goods and services. Just as providing access to electricity, telephone and good roads were important vehicles of commerce in the past, buy topamax uk quality Internet access is today’s economic equalizer, especially for small businesses,
This does not mean that government should pay for and provide broadband access across the country. All of the other advancements of infrastructure were accomplished by various forms of public and private cooperation. But it should become a major priority to find workable solutions for this issue.
Some may argue that broadband is different than the other aspects of our infrastructure. That is because we just cannot imagine living without things like telephone and good roads. But civilization operated for thousands of years without these improvements. Now from our perspective these are necessities. Very soon broadband will be the same thing. It is not just a means of access to entertainment. It is becoming the back bone of commerce and communication: a critical public good.
Small business is the engine of this economy and the Internet is one of the important sources of fuel for that engine.