October 8, 1999
By Manny Aguilar,
External Affairs Director, Pacific Bell
When the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was created, there was a driving belief that through the increase level of competition throughout the telecommunications industry such world-shaping products as the Internet would soon be made available to everyone. Yet here we are a little more than three years after the Act and the reality is a growing racial divide for high-speed Internet access.
Millions of Americans are missing the benefits of the emerging digital economy because regulations have slowed deployment of the high-speed Internet backbone — also known as the Information Superhighway. Thanks to these regulations high-speed access to the Internet continues to elude many ethnic and rural communities. While the Internet should provide a platform for economic development to all communities, current regulations continue to foster a "Digital Divide" by needlessly delaying the delivery of the most recent technological advances.
For a community to succeed in today's world it must have the most current and advanced resources available. Currently, and certainly in the near future, that recource is high-speed Internet access, and what drives that high-speed train in something called bandwidth. Unfortunately many companies that can provide this increased bandwidth and bring our communities into the technological age, the local telephone companies, are being shackled from doing so through regulatory roadblocks set up by the FCC. This must stop.
So why is this happening? Currently, most local telephone companies, such as Pacific Bell, are regulated on a different level than the long-distance carriers, like AT&T. Unless we see a conscious effort to deregulate the data market, I fear that this divide will not only sustain itself, but more than likely it will continue to widen. In other words the "haves" will continue to thrive and the "have nots" will continue to be left behind. And guess which communities can be found in the "have nots" category? That's right, the rural and ethnic communities continue to find themselves on the outside looking in.
So what can we do? We can help by putting pressure on the FCC to speed up the deregulation of the data market and allow local telephone companies like Pacific Bell to invest in the future of our communities. Deregulating the data market will accelerate deployment of advanced technology and services to all segments of the consumer market, including the rural and ethnic communities of our nation. By eliminating the arbitrary geographic regulatory boundaries, and by eliminating antiquated regulations that are applied to some, but not all, service providers, that existing gap between information "haves" and "have nots" will begin to close.
Never in the history of the world has there been a greater and potentially more prosperous time for our children to live. Imagine your son or daughter tapping into the wealth of the high-speed Internet to learn about their ancestors, or to study for their next school exam? However, this will simply remain in your imagination unless we stand up and demand that these regulatory roadblocks be pushed aside and allow all companies an even playing field. Then, perhaps we will see the 21st century bring our entire nation the rewards and possibilities of the information superhighway.
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