There are many faces to that information chasm known as the "Digital Divide." There is the most basic form of the Divide, that results from the still great number of households without any form of PC. Then there are homes with PCs not yet connected to the Internet, so they cannot access the vast wealth of information that's available in cyberspace.

However, even for the millions of homes that currently have Internet access, there is a growing divide within the Divide, when access occurs at such slow transfer rates that some information is difficult or impossible to acquire in a useable form. One could call this a form of divided highway, where the express lanes, if you have the right vehicle or transportation characteristics, will take you quickly to places, while slower lanes take significantly longer, if they go there at all. This inability to gain high-speed Internet access and other high bandwidth data communications services is occurring all across the nation, but it has presented a number of special challenges for outer tier suburban and rural communities, even those that are nearby large suburban population centers and metropolitan marketplaces.

While low population density and affluence level sometimes contribute to a lack of high-speed services in these locations, non-delivery of broadband services to outer tier and rural communities also seems to result from two other factors:

• Multiple companies with small service areas–In this instance, a county or a series of towns and cities within a county may be served by a variety of small companies that have different goals and objectives for the provision of services, and no common plan that could result in economies of scale that could help facilitate the offering of high-speed Internet access and other broadband services. This situation is compounded when there are both small cable and small phone companies, because neither may see a viable business in the provision of such services. In contrast, if there was a large cable operator vs. a number of small phone companies, or vice versa, then the larger entity might see that the roll-out of broadband services across the entire county or region would give it a leg up, competitively, over its smaller rivals. Thus, it would be spurred to add such services, believing that it could gain a very high market share and become entrenched in the provision of broadband services.
• Old infrastructure–In many outer tier or rural communities, except for those that have been recently developed, small phone and cable providers are plagued by ancient infrastructure that may only allow them to offer high-speed digital subscriber line (DSL) services close to the main office, and data-over-cable services only if they are willing to upgrade major portions or the entire system plant. This becomes a significant challenge, when the cost can only be defrayed over a small area.

There are ways, though, to overcome the broadband service deployment hurdles in cases such as these and bring a higher level of services to these communities. For example, where there are a variety of small cable companies, cooperation can be fostered to develop high-speed interconnections between their headends so that they can take advantage of newly-created economies of scale. Similar to cooperative advertising interconnect development, high-speed data communications services can be developed initially by a more technologically advanced system, and then deployed in a cooperative and resource-sharing manner by additional systems, or even pockets of systems, as they are upgraded to provide such services.

Second, and growing in popularity, is the creation of rural and outer tier "telecommunity centers," where high-speed access and other services are brought to central gathering points. Telecommunity centers can be established as separate entities or as partnerships with other entities (such as colleges, libraries, managed office suites, etc.). Such centers typically include shared space for teleworkers, conference rooms often outfitted with large scale videoconferencing equipment, shared office equipment and center managers or facilitators. They are also denoted by their ability to provide multi-user access to broadband technology and services that support rural and outer tier Small Office/Home Office businesses, telecommuters, regional employees of highly distributed organizations and others.

A good example of effective telecommunity center development can be found in Clackamas County, Oregon. Clackamas has some populous incorporated cities, towns and unincorporated areas close into Portland and the more densely populated Multnomah County. However, as you extend farther out into Clackamas, the density is low, except for a few dense pockets, including some incorporated cities. Even so, Clackamas County has a PC and Internet access penetration higher than the national average, but most of the access is traditional dial-up. In the last two years, Clackamas, working with a variety of partners within the County, has begun to establish telecommunity centers in some of the incorporated cities that serve not only city residents, but the surrounding unincorporated County population as well. In each of these cases, the telecommunity center is serving the multiple users discussed above, and more telecommunity centers are planned in other areas of the county.

On the cable side, some of Clackamas' operators are already interconnected for resource sharing and deployment of digital cable and data-over-cable services, and the county is pursuing development of additional linkages.

The employment of such concepts in other similarly-situated communities may not serve to entirely close the Digital Divide, but any time you multiply the opportunities that a community has to access broadband technology and services, you're at least going in the right direction.

Have a comment? Contact Tom by e-mail at: robinson@cbgcommunications.com