- Can mobile phones narrow the digital divide?, By Omar L. Gallaga, July 3, 2010, Austin American-Statesman: “Jared Esquivel has had his new cell phone, a white Nokia Nuron, for only a week. But it’s the fifth one he’s owned since he was 10 years old. Jared is 16. The Travis High School student uses the phone to text family members, check in constantly on Facebook and view World Cup scores on ESPN’s mobile website. His family’s T-Mobile account includes phones for his sister, mother, father and grandmother. Most of them are enabled for unlimited Web access and texting. When Jared and his 13-year-old sister both need to use the family’s aging computer for homework, their mother, Juanita Esquivel, sends one of them to the mobile Web. ‘One of them would be up until 2 in the morning because the other one was sitting there using their computer,’ Juanita said. ‘I eventually was like, ‘Just use your phone!” The country has been swept up into an intoxicating romance with cell phones, especially smart phones such as Apple ‘s iPhone 4, with 1.7 million units sold in its first three days on the market. A global study by research firm Gartner Inc. suggests that by as soon as 2013, mobile devices will overtake personal computers as the most common way people access the Internet. But nowhere in the U.S. is the shift from desktop and laptop computers to cell phones making as much of an impact as in Latino households like Jared’s or in African American and low-income households, in which the cell phone is often the primary tool used to get online…”
- Pew study finds rapid increase in mobile Internet use by low-income Americans, By Matt Hamblen, July 9, 2010, Computerworld: “Wireless access to the Internet has long been seen as a potential economic bridge for disadvantaged groups in those regions of the world that lack a wired infrastructure. For example, in poorer countries like Haiti, where landlines are limited, three mobile service providers have moved to widely offer the ability for cell phone users to complete wireless banking and e-commerce transactions. Some observers note that low-income groups in the U.S. can also gain profound benefits from wireless access by using some key applications. This week, the Pew Research Center in Washington said that a survey of 2,252 adults over 18 in April and May found that low-income groups in the U.S. are now the fastest adopters mobile Web devices. The survey found that 46% of households earning less than $30,000 a year are wireless Internet users. That lowest income group surveyed was the fastest growing — up by 11 percentage points from 35% in April 2009…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty