California Broadband Workshop Shows Work Still Needed To Close Digital Divide, NTIA Says
The California broadband workshop NTIA hosted last week (see 1511170062) underscored that while the state has made progress, there's still work to be done to close the digital divide, said a blog post from NTIA. Even with companies headquartered in…
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the state -- Apple, Google and Intel, for example -- there remain remote areas with tribal lands that lack basic communications infrastructure and desert towns where students don't have Internet access to complete their homework, it said Thursday. Comprehensive mapping data from the California Public Utilities Commission shows 98 percent of urban households in the state have access to wired broadband speeds of at least 6 Mbps downstream, but that number drops to just 43 percent for rural households, NTIA said. The commission said the limited reliability of wireless service in many rural areas means wireless connections rarely fill the gap.