A Push to Connect Millions Who Live Offline to the Internet

“The job I’m trying to get now requires me to know how to operate a computer,” said Elmer Griffin, 70, a retired truck driver from Bessemer, Ala., who was recently rejected for a job at an auto-parts store because he was unable to use the computer to check the inventory. “I wish I knew how, I really do. People don’t even want to talk to you if you don’t know how to use the Internet.”

Mr. Griffin is among the roughly 20 percent of American adults who do not use the Internet at home, work and school, or by mobile device, a figure essentially unchanged since Barack Obama took office as president in 2009 and initiated a $7 billion effort to expand access, chiefly through grants to build wired and wireless systems in neglected areas of the country.

Administration officials and policy experts say they are increasingly concerned that a significant portion of the population, around 60 million people, is shut off from jobs, government services, health care and education, and that the social and economic effects of that gap are looming larger. Persistent digital inequality — caused by the inability to afford Internet service, disinterest or a lack of computer literacy — is also deepening racial and economic disparities in the United States, experts say.

“As more tasks move online, it hollows out the offline options,” said John B. Horrigan, a senior research fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “A lot of employers don’t accept offline job applications. It means if you don’t have the Internet, you could be really isolated.”

Seventy-six percent of white American households use the Internet, compared with 57 percent of African-American households, according to the “Exploring the Digital Nation,” a Commerce Department report released this summer and based on 2011 data.

The figures also show that Internet use over all is much higher among those with at least some college experience and household income of more than $50,000.

Low adoption rates among older people remain a major hurdle. Slightly more than half of Americans 65 and older use the Internet, compared with well over three-quarters of those under 65.

In addition, Internet use is lowest in the South, particularly in Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas.

Willa Ohnoutka, 78, who has lived in the same house in suburban Houston for 40 years, said she did not use the Internet at all. “I use my telephone,” Ms. Ohnoutka said. “I get news on the TV. I’m just not comfortable involving myself with that Internet.”

Others cite expense as the reason they do not use the Internet.

“I am cheap,” said Craig Morgan, 23, a self-employed carpenter from Oxford, Miss. So far, he has made do without the Internet at home, but while he has used a smartphone to connect, that has limitations, he said.

“When we came home from the hospital with our new baby two months ago,” the hospital “took pictures and put them online,” he said. “We had to go to my in-laws to order them.”

Gloria Bean, 41, an elementary school teaching assistant from Calhoun City, Miss., said cost was also a reason she had not had Internet access at home for three years.

“I just couldn’t afford it,” she said. Being cut off, she said, “has affected me and my children.”

“They have to have it for school to do research for a paper or something they need for class,” Ms. Bean said.

As a result, she added, she often rushes from her job at school to pick up her children and take them to the library, where there are 10 computers.

The Obama administration allocated $7 billion to broadband expansion as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package. Most of it went to build physical networks. About half of those infrastructure programs have been completed, with Internet availability growing to 98 percent of homes from fewer than 90 percent.

About $500 million from the package went toward helping people learn to use the Internet. Those programs were highly successful, though on a small scale, producing more than half a million new household subscribers to Internet service, Commerce Department statistics show.

F.C.C. Backs Plan to Update a Fund That Helps Connect Schools to the Internet

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted on Friday to overhaul and possibly expand its E-Rate program, a $2.3 billion effort to provide schools and libraries with up-to-date telecommunications service and equipment, including high-speed Internet connections.

A proposal approved by the commission, which will be made available for public comment before a final version is completed, calls for funds to be moved away from outdated uses like paying for paging service and long-distance phone calls and into areas that will accelerate digital literacy, like Wi-Fi connections within a school or library.

The proposal also calls for measures that would drive down the cost of services, like adoption of purchasing consortiums, and the streamlining of administrative requirements — among them, shifting much of the required paperwork for applicants to electronic filings. “One of the biggest obstacles to seizing the opportunities of digital learning in America is inadequate bandwidth at our schools and libraries,” Mignon L. Clyburn, the F.C.C. chairwoman, said before voting. “Simply put, they need faster high-capacity connections and they need them now.”

Just last month in a visit to a North Carolina middle school, President Obama set a goal of connecting 99 percent of school students to the Internet through high-speed broadband and high-speed wireless within five years.

“To get there, we have to build connected classrooms that support modern teaching — investments we know our international competitors are already making,” Mr. Obama said on Friday.

The E-Rate fund has financed Internet connections to more than 95 percent of American public school classrooms, while only 14 percent were connected when E-Rate was established in 1997.

In 2010, however, an F.C.C. study found that more than half of the schools and libraries reported that their Internet connections were too slow to meet their needs. For the coming school year, libraries and schools requested more than $4.9 billion to pay for connections and equipment, more than twice the size of the fund.

“We fail our students if we expect digital-age learning to take place at near dial-up speeds,” said Jessica Rosenworcel, an F.C.C. commissioner. “Contrast this with efforts under way in some of our world neighbors. They are pouring resources into these subjects, into schools and connectivity.”

The E-Rate program has been faulted for inadequately allocating money in the fund, which is provided through a tax on consumers’ phone bills, a monthly charge between 50 cents and $1.

Commissioner Ajit Pai, the lone Republican on the five-member commission (where two seats are vacant), criticized allocations of the fund, saying an average of only $1.8 billion had been spent in each of the last 10 years, leaving more than $5 billion unused in the E-Rate account.

Mr. Pai also complained that the program placed greater emphasis on the wrong services.

“E-Rate today prioritizes long-distance telephone calls and getting phone service to a school’s bus garage over wiring up a classroom,” Mr. Pai said in a speech this week at the American Enterprise Institute. “How can it be that E-Rate in the last few years committed about $600 million, more than one-quarter of its annual budget, to support voice telephone services while at the same time denying eight out of 10 applicants’ funding for connecting classrooms?”

At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing this week, both Republicans and Democrats spoke favorably of the fund, although some quoted Mr. Pai’s observations in a warning of reckless spending.

F.C.C. Backs Plan to Update a Fund That Helps Connect Schools to the Internet

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted on Friday to overhaul and possibly expand its E-Rate program, a $2.3 billion effort to provide schools and libraries with up-to-date telecommunications service and equipment, including high-speed Internet connections.

A proposal approved by the commission, which will be made available for public comment before a final version is completed, calls for funds to be moved away from outdated uses like paying for paging service and long-distance phone calls and into areas that will accelerate digital literacy, like Wi-Fi connections within a school or library.

The proposal also calls for measures that would drive down the cost of services, like adoption of purchasing consortiums, and the streamlining of administrative requirements — among them, shifting much of the required paperwork for applicants to electronic filings. “One of the biggest obstacles to seizing the opportunities of digital learning in America is inadequate bandwidth at our schools and libraries,” Mignon L. Clyburn, the F.C.C. chairwoman, said before voting. “Simply put, they need faster high-capacity connections and they need them now.”

Just last month in a visit to a North Carolina middle school, President Obama set a goal of connecting 99 percent of school students to the Internet through high-speed broadband and high-speed wireless within five years.

“To get there, we have to build connected classrooms that support modern teaching — investments we know our international competitors are already making,” Mr. Obama said on Friday.

The E-Rate fund has financed Internet connections to more than 95 percent of American public school classrooms, while only 14 percent were connected when E-Rate was established in 1997.

In 2010, however, an F.C.C. study found that more than half of the schools and libraries reported that their Internet connections were too slow to meet their needs. For the coming school year, libraries and schools requested more than $4.9 billion to pay for connections and equipment, more than twice the size of the fund.

“We fail our students if we expect digital-age learning to take place at near dial-up speeds,” said Jessica Rosenworcel, an F.C.C. commissioner. “Contrast this with efforts under way in some of our world neighbors. They are pouring resources into these subjects, into schools and connectivity.”

The E-Rate program has been faulted for inadequately allocating money in the fund, which is provided through a tax on consumers’ phone bills, a monthly charge between 50 cents and $1.

Commissioner Ajit Pai, the lone Republican on the five-member commission (where two seats are vacant), criticized allocations of the fund, saying an average of only $1.8 billion had been spent in each of the last 10 years, leaving more than $5 billion unused in the E-Rate account.

Mr. Pai also complained that the program placed greater emphasis on the wrong services.

“E-Rate today prioritizes long-distance telephone calls and getting phone service to a school’s bus garage over wiring up a classroom,” Mr. Pai said in a speech this week at the American Enterprise Institute. “How can it be that E-Rate in the last few years committed about $600 million, more than one-quarter of its annual budget, to support voice telephone services while at the same time denying eight out of 10 applicants’ funding for connecting classrooms?”

At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing this week, both Republicans and Democrats spoke favorably of the fund, although some quoted Mr. Pai’s observations in a warning of reckless spending.