The digital divide: rural America was decades late in getting electricity. Today, it's falling behind in high-speed Internet access--and in danger of being left out of the technology revolution.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: NATIONAL

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Pheylan Martin, 17, knows from experience what a challenge it is to be a high school senior without Internet access at home. Broadband isn't available at his house in East Granville, Vermont. Satellite is way too expensive. And dial-up is so slow that his family doesn't bother.

Since he can't get online while doing his homework at home, Pheylan downloads Web pages he might need to his laptop before leaving school. He can't e-mail his teachers questions like most of his classmates at Sharon Academy in Sharon, Vermont.

Then there was the problem of college applications, most of which are now done solely online, along with federal financial aid forms. Pheylan's applications had to be filled out at school or at his mom's office. The logistics made applying early unrealistic.

"It's been really tough to coordinate things, and I feel like it's put me at a disadvantage," Pheylan says.

As a good chunk of dally life migrates online--2 billion people around the world now use the Internet regularly--those on the wrong side of the digital divide find themselves at an increasing disadvantage. Today, most people in urban and suburban America have reliable, high-speed Internet access, while many in rural America do not.

About 11 million Americans living in rural areas cannot get broadband Internet service at home, according to the Department of Commerce. The Obama administration thinks this is a serious problem, and it has allocated $7.2 billion in stimulus money to improving Internet access in the United States, particularly in rural areas.

"This is like electricity was," says Brian Depew of the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Nebraska. "This is a critical utility."

Seventy-five years ago, private companies wouldn't run power lines out to the farthest reaches of rural America, since there weren't enough customers to make it profitable. President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided that the federal government should step in, and in 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration was established.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"You often hear people talk about broadband from a business development perspective, but it's much more significant than that," Depew says. "This is about whether rural communities are going to participate in our democratic society. If you don't have effective broadband, you are cut out of things that are really core to who we are as a country."

Affordable broadband service could revolutionize life in rural parts of the country, as it has in the rest of the U.S...