The Birth of the Digital Divide

I define the digital divide as a technology gap where good broadband is available in some places, but not everywhere. The technology divide can be as large as an entire county that doesn’t have broadband or as small as a pocket of homes or apartment buildings in cities that got bypassed. Until late in the 1990s, the only way for most people to get onto the Internet was by the use of dial-up access through phone lines.  At first, dial-up technology was only available to people who lived in places where an ISP had established local dial-up telephone numbers. But the online phenomenon was so popular that broadband providers eventually offered 800 numbers that could be reached from anywhere. There was no residential digital divide at this time, except perhaps in places where telephone quality wasn’t good enough to accommodate dial-up. The digital divide came into being when the faster technologies of the digital subscriber line (DSL) and cable modem were offered to homes. The advent of DSL created the first digital divide – the gulf between urban areas and rural areas. When DSL and cable modem technologies improved, the second digital divide was created. Cable modem technology improved more quickly than DSL, meaning cable companies could charge more for their broadband services. This price difference largely meant that low-income households were stuck with DSL, while folks who care about speeds migrated over the years to the cable companies. The digital divide persists into the fiber age, as large telecommunication companies cherry-pick their locations based on preferable demographics and lowest in cost of deployment—which exacerbates the digital divide between urban and rural areas against more affluent areas.