June 28, 2000

ALARMS ARE GOING OFF FOR CHILDREN IN THE AMERICAS! IS ANYONE LISTENING?

Shelly Weinstein

Just imagine, if you will, hundreds of rural and big city schools with a teacher and 30 to 40 children in each class, simultaneously getting ready for a science or math course via Internet, viewed on a computer or TV screen. Up comes a message "Pardon the Interruption -School is Out -We're negotiating "tolls"!

This is not as farfetched as it may seem. Something went awry when TV viewers became victims caught in the war between two corporate titans only to be left without programming. That's what happened when the private owners of an electronic highway (Time/Warner Cable) shut down access to the broadcasters (ABC/Disney) over fees. Government officials thinking about wiring schools and colleges to these "toll roads" took note!

Although a recent settlement has been reached between the two corporations questions remain about whether or not corporations, broadcasters and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should be allowed to merge their corporate interests? Why? It's the wrong question! What difference will it make as long as the roadway -transportation-- is "privately" controlled?

Dwight Eisenhower gave this country an open connected interstate highway system to grow economic, cultural and social development for the industrial economy, which far surpassed everyone's expectations and dreams. He certainly didn't start off with "toll" roads connecting wealthy communities and then offer subsidies to the poor and hard to reach in hopes they might connect up with the better off! Years before that, citizens and their representatives pushed railroad barons to lay standardized tracks on the public's right of way. It encouraged competition and brought services to communities of all sizes and levels of income.

Will telephone companies or ISPs make a difference in control or costs? Hardly, most ISPs have some partnership with the telecom corporations, or will have before long. Telephone companies would have us believe rates have come down and are likely to become even cheaper. It is hard to find a consumer whose monthly phone bill has dropped for residential use.

Imagine if you will how operating costs for new services and fees have increased for "volume" users, such as business and schools in the US and elsewhere in this hemisphere. Internet operating costs already limit a student's classroom use on line to about 5 to 6 minutes, each month.

Other countries frequently look to the US for answers. But we still put subsidies in the hands of the consumers to close, what is commonly called, the "digital divide." However, subsidies haven't produced universal services nor "evened out the playing field" for more than 60 years in many US ethnic and indigenous communities and more recently for senior citizens, students, the unemployed and poor in rural and large urban pockets, and low income communities. What have we here, Baltimore, Ecuador, South Dakota, Appalachia, New York City or all of the aforementioned?

There is no guarantee that schools, colleges and health care institutions will not also experience the same fate as the ABC viewers when they demand access for teaching, research and information on private roads controlled primarily by broadcast, telephone or cable companies.

Additionally, wealthy US higher education institutions are swiftly partnering with global venture capitalists, creating for-profit business ventures to deliver costly distance education and training for the elite on a global scale. This further limits access and opportunities to an open and affordable highway for education, health care and other public services.

The Time Warner/ABC/Disney fight should serve as a wake up call to elected officials and educators who are relying on these modern day telecommunications barons for the delivery of education, public health and other government services! Consumers have learned it won't happen if private telecoms are in control.

The message is that if all roadways, under, on or above ground, are privately controlled, whether by single or multiple industries, in a global economy and society, it is very likely that public services will be left by the side of the road. The ever widening education and health care "gap" between the have and have nots in US cities and rural areas, as well as for all Americas children will morph into a "virtual gorge"!

In '94 and '98 all Americas leaders committed to establish hemispheric telecommunications and make basic quality education accessible to all Americas' children by 2010. It is time to put education, health care and other public services on modern day connected roadways, open to all!

Shelly Weinstein
President & CEO,
The National Education Tele's Org & EDSAT-Americas
 

National Education Telecommunications Organization/Education Satellite
Email: edsatamericas@netoedsat.org