Telecom industry brings Connected Nation to North CarolinaThe industry-backed nonprofit seeks to influence state policy on broadband23 DEC 2008 by Fiona Morgan
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http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A272764Citizens across North Carolina are clamoring for better access to the Internet, but cable and telecom companies say it's too expensive to build service that reaches them. Now the industry has decided it is willing to pay an outside group, Connected Nation, to collect data about who's stuck on dialup, ostensibly to deliver improved service. But critics say the motive is hardly altruistic, charging that cable and telecom companies are more interested in warding off regulators than in bridging the digital divide.
In Chatham County, where many residents commute to work in Research Triangle Park or at area universities, 45 percent of homes and businesses don't have access to high-speed Internet service.
"Right now there is an information superhighway," Pittsboro Mayor Randy Voller told state lawmakers at a recent meeting on the issue, "but too many of our citizens are accessing what we all know as the equivalent of the information dirt road."
The first step to getting more people out of the dirt and onto the highway is to precisely determine who has access and who doesn't. But controversy is brewing in the General Assembly over how that information will be collected and who will control access to it.
The state's telephone and cable industry associations have hired Connected Nation, a nationwide nonprofit, to map the availability of broadband services statewide for an undisclosed fee.