Southern Dallas experiencing a high-speed internet gap

by Michael Davis of Dallas Progress

Jim Mitchell of the DMN had an interesting post on their Southern Dallas blog Wednesday morning. It talks about the broadband gap, which is defined by Mitchell as "easy access to high-speed information services for some and little or no access for others based on geography, income and population density."

This is definitely an issue South of I-30. In Council District 4, we have entire neighborhoods that are not served by DSL service, much less a service like U-verse or FIOS. This is despite the fact that we have some neighborhoods of affluence in our District.

I have a friend in Oak Cliff that actually bought the outrageously expensive DirectWay satellite internet service because he works from home and needed high-speed service. The broadband gap is why every computer in the library at places like Kiest library is always reserved for hours in advance. Beyond the library, there are not many ways available to lower-income residents to search for jobs.

I know that President Obama has spoken about the "broadband gap" on occasion, which is also encouraging. Locally, this is an issue that we hope to address in Dallas, and I hope that we can bring companies like AT&T to the table to do so. To limit neighborhoods to dial-up access in 2009, is astonishing. It's also bad for business.

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