Rural areas missing broadband

RURAL AREAS MISSING BROADBAND
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Troy Wolverton]
The digital divide is alive and well in California and may get worse unless policy-makers take steps to address it, according to a new report. Whether Californians have a high-speed connection to the Internet depends a lot on where they live and who they are, according to the report, which was issued earlier this week by the Public Policy Institute of California. Perhaps most strikingly, the report suggests that many Californians still can't even sign up for broadband connections because they're simply not available. Among households with income greater than $100,000, broadband adoption was 68 percent in 2005, that last year for which the report had data. In that same year, broadband adoption among households with income below $25,000 was 24 percent. Regional differences showed adoption ranged from just above 50 percent in and around the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles to just 21 percent in the rural central Sierra region. Some of those regional differences can be explained by their relative affluence and rates of computer ownership, according to the report. But data analyzed in the report suggests much of the difference has to do with broadband not being as available in rural areas as it is in urban ones.
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