Bringing Broadband to America’s Urban Poor

To make good on a pledge to prioritize high-speed Internet access, President-elect Obama must address inner cities, where many go without a connectionAnthony Celestine was a latecomer to the Internet Age. The 40-year-old Harlem resident has owned a small Jani-King commercial cleaning franchise since 2004, but until recently, the New Yorker hadn’t owned a computer or even surfed the Web or had an e-mail address. “I didn’t know what none of that stuff was,” he says.Now he uses the Internet all the time to scout out new customers, communicate with Jani-King headquarters in Dallas, and trade e-mails with fellow franchisees on how to do certain kinds of jobs better. “I talk to my franchise brothers about what works and what doesn’t,” says Celestine, “I’m learning about new procedures faster than before. It’s like riding a bike and then switching to a car. It’s just a whole better world with the PC.”To read this BusinessWeek report in full, see:
www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2008/tc20081230_015542.htm.