Too often, broadband policy is talked about in terms of "access" to providers, as if making a broadband option available is enough. Â But in a speech at the Free Press conference, Â FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn made it clear the issue has to include cost as well:
In considering all of the factors relating to America's minority and lower-income citizens, and realizing how hard people work to claw past their monthly bills only to immediately start fretting about next month, we must be vigilant - super-vigilant - about the direction the wireless industry is heading.
Many people hope that wireless phones can become an access point for many low-income folks to the Internet, but cost is one of the biggest obstacles to that goal.  The Pew Internet & American Life Project has highlighted in a past report that even if high-speed Internet service was available to the entire nation, about one-third of Americans not currently using broadband still wouldn't because of the expense.
When the federal government published its broadband map back in February, it provided impressive detail on where broadband was available and the speeds for various states, but what was sorely lacking were details on what the costs of access were for people. Â Â Providers get away with treating pricing as "proprietary" information not to be shared with the public, but if policymakers are going to get a true handle on closing the digital divide, they need to keep cost in the equation as well as "access."
The reality is that even if everyone has Internet service available in their community, that doesn't mean an individual will be able to afford it or, in a related question, have the digital literacy to take advantage of Internet-based communication. These are related since, while almost anyone can potentially gain economically from the Internet, whether through accessing work and learning opportunities at a distance or using online services for local projects, the costliness of Internet access may prevent many people from ever gaining the skills to take advantage of the online world. Cutting the cost of Internet access will encourage more people to take the plunge, gain the digital skills to participate in the digital economy, and, in turn, hopefully be able to afford higher costs as their income rises.
But unless cost of access is addressed, we are likely to see  the reverse vicious cycle of high Internet costs keeping many people from gaining needed digital skills, which in turn will keep them trapped in poverty.
Commissioner Clyburn is pushing in the right direction and hopefully we'll start seeing greater focus on tracking costs systematically as an obstacle to bringing broadband to everyone, as the Obama administration has stated is their goal.
Follow Nathan Newman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nathansnewman
I have to disagree with you here. I've spent the last decade creating Internet products for minorities on the web and on mobile devices. With that experience in hand I can tell cost is not the driving factor in the digital divide. It is in fact the lack of relevant offerings that cater to this audience and the lack of digital literacy initiatives that show minorities the way broadband can improve the many aspects of their life ( ex. education, job preparation, and health care info). In fact you mention wireless specifically in your post but African Americans are over indexed in their use of wireless devices. But even though that data is available to many mobile start-ups, they still make no effort to create products and tools catered to this audience. The issue of digital divide is personally important to me. So i ask if you are going to address it to please address it in the right context.
Will lower prices for Internet access solve the whole problem. Of course not. But it will make a difference in creating an audience that will encourage more content providers to try to increase the offerings.
This is why, for example, the AT&T network and ALL the networks in Japan are over-capacity.
There is PHYSICALLY just not enough bandwidth available and can NEVER be enough available. Basic physics and data encoding laws have strict limits.
This is why wireless devices can never replace wired devices This is also why do-called web based applications can not function very well on wireless devices. Only memory resident applications with local data can fully function all the time on a handheld device.
BTW - the actual cost to provide wired broadband, including each person's share of the CEO's jet, is less than US$5.00/month because most of the infrastructure that provides wired broadband has been paid for several times over and is now free.