Rural dwellers left behind in 'digital divide': Chris Cope, executive director of the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI), reports that the time commitment for inividuals who must use dial-up Internat access places them at a disadvantage.
"We see this as a real digital divide where the citizens of the rural regions are not able to participate in the same kind of social economy using broadband as a tool.Nearly every second home has some kind of small business associated with it, whether it's a an agricultural business, or software business in a basement...as a small home office. There's an incredible demand for broadband in the rural part of Ottawa"
According to the article, "About 35 per cent of homes in rural Ottawa have access to broadband services."
I have been reading a number of articles in today's periodicals that flash the phrase 'Digital Divide' around like it is some sort of disease that can be cured with a single injection. The access challenges that people in rural Ottawa face are real, but I am beginning to believe that something besides the phrase Digital Divide needs to be employed to describe those challenges. There are significant differences between what David Cope describes as Ottawa's Digital Divide, compared with the struggles of many African nations who have neither infrastructure, hardware, software, or knowlege base to access anything in the digital realm. In that particular comparison, Ottawa's digital divide is a 'drainage ditch chasm'; the African generalization of the digital divide is of 'grand canyon' proportions. The effects on individuals, socially and economically, may share similarities...but they are NOT the same digital divide.