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Worried that new information technologies will split American society
into information ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, the Clinton administration is
offering a legislative carrot to encourage industry to make ‘information
superhighways’ open to everyone.

The government plans to give greater commercial freedom to those cable
and telephone companies that agree to offer information links to all, US
Vice-President Al Gore said last week. Telecommunications and cable companies,
hungry for new business and less stringent regulation, are likely to accept
the deal.

‘This is not a matter of guaranteeing the right to play video games,’
Gore told the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. ‘It
is a matter of guaranteeing access to essential services. We cannot tolerate
– nor in the long run can this nation afford – a society in which some children
become fully educated and others do not; in which some adults have access
to training and lifetime education, and others do not.’

The plan to build a vast ‘national information infrastructure’ is one
of President Bill Clinton’s pet schemes. Businesses, scientists and ordinary
people will be connected by a web of data links crisscrossing the country.
The links have come to be known as ‘information superhighways’ because they
would carry huge volumes of data, such as business information, electronic
mail and entertainment.

But rather than spending taxpayers’ money on the superhighways, the
government wants phone and cable companies to build them as business ventures.
The administration hopes to persuade companies to provide universal access
to networks in return for fewer restrictions on how companies operate. At
present, for example, a telephone company is barred from providing any information
service that is distributed over phone lines, be it a television programme
or home shopping. This rule was designed to prevent any company having control
over both information and the means for its dissemination. The government
also regulates the charges levied by cable companies. Such restrictions
might be eased for companies that provide universal access.

However, many are cynical about the idea of universal access. The concept
is admirable, but if past experience is anything to go by, the poor are
still likely to be left out. In a previous attempt at providing universal
access to an essential service – a telephone – local phone companies across
the US were told that everyone must have access to a phone. Their answer
was to offer subsidised rates for families on low incomes. But even at the
cheap rate many poor families still cannot afford to have a phone. Gore
did not spell out his definition of universal access.

‘There’s agreement on the goal, but there is not yet a mechanism for
achieving it,’ says Marc Rotenberg of Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility, a group that campaigns for wide access to information technology.

The scheme announced by Gore would blur the distinction between different
types of telecommunications companies, by allowing cable and phone companies
to carry out the same tasks. ‘There may not be cable companies or phone
companies or computer companies, as such. Everyone will be in the bit business,’
Gore said. ‘There will be information conduits, information providers, information
appliances and information consumers.’

Gore also said the new telecommunications law would require builders
to make information networks compatible with one another, so that information
can flow freely across the nation.

Congress has to approve the plan. But its chances on Capitol Hill are
improved by the fact that it includes features – such as freeing local phone
companies to offer information services – already proposed by key members
of Congress. John Dingell, an influential Democrat who is chairman of the
Committee on Energy and Commerce and wants the telephone companies unshackled,
called the plan ‘an intriguing and creative new framework for telecommunications
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