Bridging the Digital Divide through Innovation

U.S. Ambassador to the EU William Kennard on how innovation and creativity can help find ways to bridge the digital divide.


Open Days 2010, organized by the Committee of the Regions in Brussels - workshop "Bridging the Digital Divide", October 5.

U.S. Ambassador to the EU William E. Kennard participated in the Committee of the regions "Open Days" on October 5, 2010. "Open Days" is the annual flagship event of European regions and cities which gathers thousands of regional and local politicians in Brussels.

In a keynote speech on "Bridging the Digital Divide" Ambassador Kennard, former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, presented the U.S. historical experience and best practices while encouraging EU implementation of key policies to integrate the EU digital market. "Not having access to broadband is a liability," he stated pointing out that those who speak the language of technology will have access to greater opportunities than those who do not.

Transcription: Broadband deployment in rural, underserved areas is very expensive. In the United States we spend about $8.7 billion per year to subsidize deployment of basic phone service, and there's a recognition that we'll need more in order to deploy broadband. I've seen some figures here in the European Union that in order to deploy broadband it will be anywhere from 150 to 300 billion euros to get this infrastructure deployed.

We have to be thinking of more efficient ways to do it. I think in many ways the biggest challenge in Europe is to make sure that there are ways to repurpose wireless spectrum so that it can be reused for broadband technologies. We all know that many rural areas, it's too expensive to lay fiber lines into sparsely populated rural communities, so we have to be creative. We have to think about fiber to base stations and then using WiFi or wireless technologies for the last mile. We have to find ways that we can harness hybrid platforms like terrestrial and satellite networks working in combination to reach disadvantaged areas.

I guess my message to you as policy-makers is that one, we have to keep up the sense of urgency about this mission. And second, we have to be creative. As policy-makers we have to be as innovative as our technology in finding ways to deploy high bandwidth technologies to rural and disadvantaged areas.

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