Federal Communications Commission Chair William Kennard announced that the agency would hold public hearings beginning this fall on community access to communications technology, focusing on the disparity between races in computer use, regardless of income levels .
In an August 3 speech to the National Urban League in Philadelphia, Kennard said the hearings would be held in such areas as rural Appalachia, American Indian communities in the Southwest, and inner cities around the country. "These hearings will give us information with which to better understand access to communications technology in America today," he said.
Although he acknowledged criticism of the FCC's universal-service program, Kennard called the e-rate subsidies the answer to ensuring that "all Americans can get onto the on-ramp of the information superhighway."
Posted August 10, 1998.