Saturday, July 17, 1999
Report: Ky. access to Internet among lowest
Rural, urban gap in technology widens
The Associated Press
LEXINGTON — In Kentucky and across the nation, rural areas tend to have less computer and Internet access than their metropolitan counterparts, and the gap is widening, a new report says.
Kentucky has the ninth-lowest percentage of households with computers among the 50 states, and the eighth-lowest percentage with Internet access.
U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley will present the report today to Congress.
President Clinton said in Kentucky last week that information technology provides tools “to ensure that no one gets left behind.”
But the report suggests that many people — among them the poor and rural people Mr. Clinton spoke to in Appalachian Kentucky — are being left behind.
In an effort to boost the number of households with Internet access, the state promotes the Kentucky Infor mation Highway, a group of private Internet service providers that try to service all areas of the state.
David Ballard, a director in the state department of information systems, said he thinks everyone in Kentucky who wants Internet access can get it from a local provider. But, he said, some have gone out of business because of a lack of subscribers.
The report, the work of the department's national telecommunications and information administration, also finds blacks and Hispanics disproportionately lack access to computers and the Internet.
Nationwide and across ethnic lines, certain household types tend to have less Internet access: the poor, single-parent families and the undereducated, to name a few.
Many households in Kentucky and other Southern states contend with several of these attributes at once, said Ranjit de Silva, Commerce Department spokesman.
As the Internet continues to change the way the world communicates, the nation may pay a heavy toll for continuing to leave the underprivileged behind, Mr. de Silva said.
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