An Economic and therefore Governmental Issue

While the digital divide might bring up the idea that enterprises will be able to sell more and more computers during the next years another truth looks as if there was no hope for a certain percentage of the population to get out of their marginalization, their position of being "have nots".

Studies show that the issue of different colors of skin play a role in this, but more than "racial" issues it is income, age and education that decides about the have and have nots.

There exist ~ 103 million households in the USA.
~6 million do not even have telephone access. Why should they care about computers?

The digital divide cuts the world into centers and peripheries, not into nations, as it runs through the boarder between the North and the South as well as through nations.

http://www.digitaldivide.gov/
http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org/
http://www.pbs.org/digitaldivide/
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-344552.html
http://racerelations.about.com/newsissues/racerelations/msubdigdivide.htm
http://www.techweek.com/articles/11-1-99/divide.htm
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/net2/falling.html

The most different institutions with various interests in their background work in that field; not rarely paid by governments, which are interested in inhabitants, connected to the net and economy.
see also: http://www.washington.edu/wto/digital/

Searching information about the digital divide one will find informations saying that it is growing all the time whereas other studies suggest the contrary, like this one
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-341054.html

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Satellites

Communications satellites are relay stations for radio signals and provide reliable and distance-independent high-speed connections even at remote locations without high-bandwidth infrastructure.

On point-to-point transmission, the transmission method originally employed on, satellites face increasing competition from fiber optic cables, so point-to-multipoint transmission increasingly becomes the ruling satellite technology. Point-to-multipoint transmission enables the quick implementation of private networks consisting of very small aperture terminals (VSAT). Such networks are independent and make mobile access possible.

In the future, satellites will become stronger, cheaper and their orbits will be lower; their services might become as common as satellite TV is today.

For more information about satellites, see How Satellites Work (http://octopus.gma.org/surfing/satellites) and the Tech Museum's satellite site (http://www.thetech.org/hyper/satellite).

http://www.whatis.com/vsat.htm
http://octopus.gma.org/surfing/satellites
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