Within weeks of assuming the Chairmanship of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Michael Powell attacked the concept of the digital divide, declaring, “I think there’s a Mercedes Benz divide, I’d like one, but I can’t afford it.” Soon thereafter the National Telecommunications Information Administration essentially declared the problem solved when it published its first, and only, detailed analysis of Internet penetration, under the title A Nation Online.
The Bush Administration’s continuing hostility to policies to promote Internet adoption was recently reaffirmed when the Associate Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy declared “we have not come out with a universal service platform,” and emphasized that the “goal is universal access, not adoption.” Instead of promoting universal service, the FCC excused cable and telephone companies from public interest obligations, allowing them to set high prices and exclude competitors from their networks. The Administration hopes that competition will bring prices down so that broadband becomes affordable. Chairman Powell is “buoyant” about broadband in the United States, declaring “we have turned the corner in the digital migration.”