Spreading the Broadband Revolution By WILLIAM E. KENNARD NY Times Published: October 21, 2006
WASHINGTON Television is becoming a two-way, interactive experience that offers viewers the digital agility of the computer, the display quality of a movie theater and content that can be summoned on demand. It will take us from what an F.C.C. chairman, Newton Minow, referred to 45 years ago as a “vast wasteland” to a vast interactive world of limitless content — a long way from our couch-potato past.
Any serious discussion of the future of the Internet should start with a basic fact: broadband is transforming every facet of communications, from entertainment and telephone services to delivery of vital services like health care. But this also means that the digital divide, once defined as the chasm separating those who had access to narrowband dial-up Internet and those who didn’t, has become a broadband digital divide.
The nation should have a full-scale policy debate about the direction of the broadband Internet, especially about how to make sure that all Americans get access to broadband connections.
Any serious discussion of the future of the Internet should start with a basic fact: broadband is transforming every facet of communications, from entertainment and telephone services to delivery of vital services like health care. But this also means that the digital divide, once defined as the chasm separating those who had access to narrowband dial-up Internet and those who didn’t, has become a broadband digital divide.
The nation should have a full-scale policy debate about the direction of the broadband Internet, especially about how to make sure that all Americans get access to broadband connections.
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