U.N. official urges closing of high speed Internet gap

Last month, the head of the U.N. telecommunications agency warned that a major worldwide gap exists between those with high speed Internet access and those without.

At the Global Forum on Access and Connectivity, Hamadoun Touré, secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union, called for governments and private companies to work together to bring high speed Internet to those missing out on this crucial technology:

The private sector needs to believe in governments’ intention to roll-out ICT-related initiatives, and governments needed to set up fair rules that encourage companies to invest in their countries, he said.

While the Global Forum focused on the Asia-Pacific region of the globe, this public-private cooperation is also essential here in the United States, where telecom providers often leave rural and low-income communities out of their high speed networks due to a lack of profit potential.

At the conference, Touré announced the creation of Connect Asia and Connect Latin America, information technology initiatives modeled after the current Connect Africa program, which aims to connect more than a billion people to the Internet by 2012.

Now the U.S. government should follow suit with policies that close the digital divide within the U.S. to make sure we don’t continue to fall behind the rest of the world in high speed Internet access.