The Federal Reserve is taking on the digital divide

A Q&A with Jeremy Hegle, a senior community development adviser for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. The Federal Reserve Bank is trying convince businesses that the digital divide is their problem, too. He said:

 if you think about how we deployed electricity 100 years ago, we recognized that it wasn't profitable for for-profit companies to run the lines out 20 miles to one farmer. So that's where you got the rural co-ops. And I do think that it's a sticking point right now in trying to figure out how we get our regulations to be in line with deploying broadband rurally and still supporting our for-profit concept with the internet service providers.