The initial announcement last year about the federal government's proposal of a National Broadband Network was met with a lot of scepticism.
I think that despite its flaws, the network seems quite necessary considering the inequality of access experienced by thousands of Australians due to the broad geographical scope of the country.
The digital divide is being decreased - but there are still widespread inequalities. Within one continent there are countries with radically different percentages of citizens online.
There are great benefits from once isolated communities in terms of sharing their heritage online, as well as accessing healthcare.
This is my second blog entry on the topic of the 'digital divide'. I would have posted it earlier but I haven't been able to access wordpress.com from home.
There is also an introductory post from a few weeks ago.
A comprehensive study conducted by the Pew Center for Research in the States looks at one of the demographics that experience the 'digital divide' - people with a chronic illness.
The results indicate that although people with chronic diseases are less likely to have access to the internet, those that do use it productively to contribute to the online bank of knowledge about health-realated topics, as well as forming supportive online communities.
The digital divide is also a matter of language and even if the arabic language has progressed in web presence, English has still the wider presence and it is one big fact in the Digital Divide.