Government policies will go a long way toward determining whether new information technologies widen or narrow social divisions. To ensure that the digital future brings opportunity for everybody, regardless of income or geography, public interest advocates must play an active role in the continuing debate over telecommunications policy.

Universal Service

A key issue will be whether society's traditional commitment to universal access to telecommunications keeps pace with changing technology. Already, advocates have scored some significant gains on this front. For one thing, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 strengthened two programs designed to keep basic telephone service affordable for low-income families: Lifeline, which reduced monthly charges for an estimated 4.4 million customers through 1997, and Link-Up America, which reduces initial connection charges. Under the new law and regulations that took effect in January 1998, consumers in all states will be eligible for Lifeline and Link-Up assistance. Each Lifeline consumer will receive $5.25 per month in federal support. In addition, for every dollar a state offers in universal service support, the federal government will kick in an extra 50 cents, up to a maximum of $1.75. Under this formula, a low-income consumer's bill could be reduced by $10.50 per month if the state contributes $3.50. The new law also established that qualifying customers can continue receiving basic telephone service even if they are unable to pay their long-distance charges.

The debate over universal service is far from over. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must periodically review what communications services should be covered by universal service policies. At the same time, states are free to establish their own definitions that go beyond federal conventions. Although the definition currently is drawn rather tightly, public interest advocates foresee a day when some services that currently aren't eligible for universal service support will be recognized as essential. For instance, Maxine Rockoff, a founder of the Information Technology Initiative at United Neighborhood Houses of New York, argues that our definition of universal service should be expanded to include at least three new components: access to a computer with a World Wide Web browser, a personal Internet email address, and the capability to make one's own information available via the Web.

At the moment, public officials haven't been willing to go as far as Rockoff recommends. Even the states that have established the most expansive definitions have not required discounted rates for much beyond basic telephone service; they simply have defined basic services to include touch-tone dialing, access to long-distance carriers, and 911 services. Wisconsin has concluded that advanced services should be accessible in some form, though it doesn't require that they be provided to every home or be subsidized as substantially as basic services. California lawmakers recognize community organizations as eligible for universal service support, while Louisiana moved to include community networks as eligible for universal service discounts.

The issue is a difficult one for policymakers, who must strike a balance between competing interests when establishing universal service policies, notes Thomas W. Bonnet in Telewars in the States: Telecommunications Issues in a New Era of Competition. On the one hand, they do not want to let the market establish technologically wealthy and technologically disadvantaged classes. But they also do not want to require rate payers to subsidize new technologies for which there is no demand. As Bradley Stillman, then the legislative counsel for the Consumer Federation of America, told the Wall Street Journal in 1994: "I don't want to be forced to pay for the interactive video games or movies-on-demand of my neighbor down the street."

But at what point does a technology become important, as Montana Public Service Commission member Bob Rowe puts it, "to a household's ability to be part of the social and economic community"? Federal and state policymakers will need advice on this issue for years to come, and public-interest advocates will have a vital role to play in the continuing discussion.

Perhaps the most important addition to the government's universal service arsenal is a new provision, also launched by the 1996 telecommunications law, that primary and secondary schools and libraries can receive basic and advanced telecommunications services at discounts ranging from 20 percent to 90 percent below commercially available rates. The most disadvantaged schools and libraries, as well as those in rural areas, would receive the highest discounts. The discounts, also known as the "e-rate," which could total as much as $2.25 billion per year and cover basic as well as advanced telecommunications services, will be financed with revenues from long-distance telephone charges.

Advocates like the National Urban League argue that the benefits of universal service should be broadened to include educational and developmental nonprofit organizations. These organizations, says the League, "are a vital part of the second-chance opportunity structure of these United States. Anything less than the full participation of community-based organizations in the resource pools of the Information Age is a disgrace." The League's B. Keith Fulton concludes that "the most competitive and forward-looking states will include all competent service organizations as part of their formula for sustaining programs and maximizing the state's workforce development initiatives."

Federal Programs

In the meantime, advocates should be ready to advise a number of federal agencies that will help shape the telecommunications future. The 1996 law established a Telecommunications Development Fund (TDF) to make loans to small businesses to promote competition in telecommunications and to stimulate new technology development. The fund, which will operate as a nonprofit corporation and will be capitalized with interest earned on money raised in spectrum auctions, can be used "to support universal service and promote delivery of telecommunications services to underserved rural and urban areas." As of March 1998, the TDF has $22 million to provide assistance and financing to small communications businesses.

The federal government also identified the National Educational Technology Funding Corporation as an organization that could help states leverage funds for educational technology. Deena Stoner, executive director at the Council for Educational Development and Research, predicts that the corporation will help states to finance improvements in school infrastructure so that school buildings can support technology. " Even if you could afford a computer for every four students, what about the infrastructure issues? You can't have computers without enough electric plugs or security systems, or with leaky roofs." The corporation will depend on congressional appropriations for its funding.

These new agencies join others that already have been encouraging more widespread access to the communications tools of the digital age. Since 1994, the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP), part of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, has awarded 332 grants totaling more than $100 million for projects aimed at helping nonprofit hospitals, tribal and local governments, libraries, schools, and community centers use information technologies. Matching funds have raised the total amount generated to more than $250 million. By design, every TIIAP site serves as a laboratory on how to use new technologies to better serve the public. Some of the primary tenets of TIIAP grants include creating partnerships, supporting the end-user, providing access to the underserved, and developing tools to evaluate the impact of technology.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), meanwhile, devised the Neighborhood Networks Initiative to provide training and access for residents of HUD-financed properties. Neighborhood Networks supports the development of community technology centers in public housing. Currently, there are over 340 Neighborhood Networks centers open, with more than 1,060 planned. HUD also was concerned that the increasing frequency of online government and commercial transactions would leave citizens served by its programs severely disenfranchised and ill-equipped to achieve self-reliance given a significant projected decrease in funding for federal rental assistance over the next five years. HUD provides some funds for Neighborhood Networks sites, but it says these should be considered "gap fillers."

State Regulatory Commissions

State regulatory commissions will be another important arena for decisions affecting equal access to new technologies. Here, too, public interest advocates have a major role to play.

The opportunities were illustrated by a case in Ohio, where the Legal Aid Societies of Dayton and Cleveland helped win concessions from Ameritech that led to establishment of a number of community technology centers. Representing clients including the American Association for Retired Persons, the Ohio Department of Education, and the Greater Cleveland Welfare Rights Association, the Legal Aid Societies accused Ameritech of overcharging customers. A negotiated settlement ultimately provided for establishment of 14 community computing centers in seven Ohio cities and creation of a fund that finances reduced telephone rates for low-income households and school technology efforts.

Public interest advocates also won a significant victory from the California Public Utilities Commission. In the late 1980s, the commission found that Pacific Bell (PacBell) had been signing up low-income and non-English-speaking customers for services like call waiting and call forwarding without taking adequate steps to obtain their consent. Typically in such regulatory cases, companies are required to make restitution or pay fines by providing credits to all their customers. But public interest advocates argued that the company had victimized a specific set of customers, not all telephone users, and that restitution should be similarly targeted. The commission agreed, and Pacific Bell was required to pay $16.5 million, plus another $4.5 million in interest, into a Telecommunications Education Trust Fund that financed research and education programs aimed at minority and low-income communities.

Some of this money went to technology initiatives. Some went to develop a public kiosk prototype, with a touch-sensitive screen and instructions in Spanish, that could be used by recent immigrants to learn about the U.S. telephone system. And seed money was provided to launch the California Telecommunications Policy Forum to educate leaders in the Latino communities about communications policy issues that could affect their constituencies.

More recently, as a condition of California regulators' approval of PacBell's merger with SBC Communications Inc., they required PacBell to refund to ratepayers the economic benefits of the merger in the amount of $248 million over five years. The $248 million is to be distributed in the form of $213 million in surcredits and $34 million to fund the "Community Partnership Commitment," under which PacBell promises to fund over $50 million in consumer education efforts plus an additional $32 million for other activities over a 10-year period. Advocates observe that the Community Partnership Commitment will provide valuable contributions to underserved communities in California, a more valuable economic benefit than small monthly rebates for PacBell's customers.

The latest planned merger between SBC and Ameritech Corporation will be reviewed by the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission, as well as the state regulatory commissions in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Local public interest groups should remain vigilant to ensure that the proposed benefits of major telecommunications mergers reach the communities that need these benefits most.

Other Anti-Poverty Efforts

Technology offers no magic wand that will eliminate poverty and isolation in America. To be effective, efforts to achieve equitable access to telecommunications must be part of a broader strategy that addresses the underlying problems of inner cities and disadvantaged rural areas. While such policies go far beyond the scope of this report, three specific issues illustrate this point.

School Equity. While schools in low-income communities have made strides toward acquiring new technologies, these gains are unlikely to have a lasting effect unless teachers are comfortable with new technologies. Unfortunately, schools in low-income communities have fewer resources than wealthy communities for teacher training and technology support. This is particularly worrisome since many children in low-income communities are not exposed to new technology at home. Those who are concerned about equality in the information age cannot afford to ignore debates in state legislatures about school funding for staff and training. Funding is only part of the answer, though. Long-term volunteers are needed to help schools and individual teachers learn how to use computers and the Internet effectively.

Job Training. Success in the job market of the future will require a high level of familiarity with technology. The Information Technology Association of America estimated in early 1997 that one in ten technology jobs goes unfilled because of a shortage of trained workers. Job training programs should focus on developing clients' skills with computers and communications tools. And such training should be closely linked to actual job opportunities. Otherwise, it may do little more than breed frustration. As numerous experts in the job training field have found, there is a tremendous need for closer collaboration in job training efforts between employers, educators, community organizations, and given the rising expectation that welfare recipients find jobs welfare agencies.

Transportation. Policymakers must consider the harmful effect communications technology has had in facilitating the flight of good jobs from central cities to the suburbs. Since only one out of five suburban jobs is easily accessible by public transportation, according to Hank Ditmar of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, improvements in public transportation, ride-sharing arrangements, and new shuttle programs should be a high priority. Planners also should explore whether more opportunities could be created for inner-city residents to telecommute. But ultimately, the best solution may be to find ways to nurture good jobs in the neighborhoods that have been losing them.

Community-Based Initiatives

Efforts to encourage the spread of information technologies in low-income communities stand little chance of achieving lasting success unless they are firmly rooted in the communities' own sense of their goals and needs. But simple as that observation sounds, we haven't always heeded it. All too often, community revitalization projects unintentionally have promoted the "perception that only outside experts can provide real help," argue John P. Kretzman and John L. McKnight in Building Communities from the Inside Out. This can be disastrous, especially considering the ambivalence, or outright suspicion, with which many residents of low-income neighborhoods view technology.

Increasingly, however, technology activists stress the importance of nurturing individuals and indigenous community organizations that already provide help and support in the community, rather than trying to impose technology from the outside. If an effort is aimed at providing new Internet access points in a certain community, they say, residents should have a say in where the stations are set up. Low-income people should decide for themselves how these tools can best serve their interests.

"It is not just a question of access," explains Peter Miller at the Community Technology Centers' Network, "but who controls the content (and) how much control does the community have on the electronic environment serving it."

A first step is to identify and work with recognized information leaders in the communities. As part of a community networking project in Austin, Texas, for example, a team of graduate students from the University of Texas is engaged in social mapping finding the key community members and organizations that people use to find information. "We want to discover who are the key community members," says project director Gary Chapman. "My long-term goal is to have the information networks map to this network."

Similarly, Joey Rodger at the Urban Libraries Council says public libraries could "deputize" community leaders, training them in communications technology so that they can spread the word. "If libraries can reach out and create Ôbarefoot librarians,' these people can present the services and their significance to the community in the community's terms."

It isn't always obvious who community information leaders will be. In one Chicago neighborhood, for instance, Richard Krieg and his colleagues at the Institute for Metropolitan Affairs found that many people relied on a pharmacist's assistant for health information on topics ranging from child care to drugs. The Institute's challenge, according to Krieg, is to determine how to make information technologies available in ways that will increase the capabilities of such individuals.

Community-based organizations are particularly well-positioned to play a leadership role in spreading technology in low-income communities, mainly because they already have strong local ties. In New York, for instance, settlement houses provide a wide range of services to community residents including pre-school and after-school programs for children, college readiness classes, adult education, GED preparation, job training, and senior centers. All these services could be enhanced by the thoughtful application of technology. As the settlement houses have learned, once computers and network connections become available in an environment where people are comfortable, residents readily embrace it.

"The experience of settlement houses in New York City suggests that community-based organizations can play a powerful role in making the benefits of technology both meaningful and available in poor urban neighborhoods," says Maxine Rockoff, who launched an ambitious technology program for the settlement houses.

Yet, as noted above, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 authorized the FCC to order telecommunications discounts only for schools, libraries, and rural health care providers. Community activists can encourage their state regulatory agencies to include community centers and other access programs among those eligible for discounts.

Last updated: 7 July 1998 jss
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