We appreciate your conducting this vital hearing because our serviced populations will be the beneficiaries of your legislation. 

I joined Keep America Connected because I wanted to make a difference and empower many in our community that are disenfranchised. I serve on the Keep America Connected Board of Directors and on the Technology Committee for the National Association of Community Action Agencies or NACCAA.   

Keep America Connected was begun in 1997 to provide a new voice for consumers in the telecommunications arena. Traditionally, organizations that claim to speak for consumers on these issues seemed to have on one main concern: low rates. 

Naturally, we do not disagree that consumers should pay only just and reasonable rates. However, we believe that this is not the only interest that consumers have with respect to telecommunications. It is equally important that consumers have the option to choose these services. As the current focus on the digital divide demonstrates, without this legislation it is likely that some parts of this country will not see these benefits for some time to come. 

The goal of Keep America Connected is to make sure that we all have access to the wonders of modern telecommunications and that policy makers remember that consumers have more than one issue, rates, that they are concerned with. I think that my own experience illustrates the need for this focus. 

The Community Action Agencies with which I work were established under the Johnson administration to help fight the war on poverty.  These agencies operate in 96% of the nation's counties supporting a wide range of programs. These agencies perform services for more than 34.5 million people who are living in poverty in the United States.  Programs include referrals, emergency services, education, and family development, to name a few.  

One of my major responsibilities is developing a program that will support more than 900 community action agencies upgrade their technology capabilities. This includes equipping low-income clients with technical skills and facilitating high-speed Internet access. In short, NACCAA shares Keep America Connected's commitment to bring affordable broadband services to all Americans. 

NACAA's Board of Directors has approved a strategic plan that will better enable the organization to bring technology to all of its member organizations. This will be a daunting task.  We are confronted with traditional and non-traditional problems associated with the Digital Divide. 

While building up the technology in the individual agencies, we are focused on providing cutting edge training to pre-schoolers, troubled teens, and the elderly. With the help of broadband technology, we intend to use video and audio streaming to augment our education programs.  Broadband access will allow the use of streaming video and audio in teaching and training modules.  However, with more than 60 percent of CAA's located in rural areas, the only hope of high speed access will be for Congress to allow Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers to build out networks. 

Finally, the work performed by CAA's generates a vast amount of data that is shared between organizations.  Because we do not have significant resources, we will need to depend more on high-speed Internet access as the conduit for data sharing and transfer. Data relief will allow the incumbent local exchange carriers to provide high speed access to members of Keep America Connected, thereby allowing our individual organizations to provide our services in an efficient and affordable manner.   

For all of the stakeholder groups that I've mentioned, affordable access to high-speed telecommunications -- broadband access -- brings the promise of the Information Age closer to reality.  

Access to broadband means very different things to different groups, but the needs and interests of various stakeholders are not mutually exclusive. They share common concerns of economic development and quality-of-life issues. The wide range of benefit for the whole is very great. 

For example, for consumers, data relief leads to reduced costs, greater availability and choice of high-speed Internet service through increased competition. For small businesses, greater broadband promotes business development and economic equality. Greater deployment of broadband will allow smaller businesses to compete with larger ones. For those living in rural areas, social applications, which includes telemedicine and distance learning, help to bridge the distance of geography. For minorities, increased broadband access helps to level the playing field in the New Economy - this means greater educational and economic opportunities. For individuals with disabilities broadband provides an increase in independent living.   

It is our belief that the real benefits of competition will not be delivered until it reaches all classes of consumers.  Consumers need more choices in local and long distance providers, not the 'cherry-picking' marketing strategies currently driving competition. America cannot and should not be divided into a society of the information haves and have-nots. Predictable, sufficient supports are needed to make sure the availability of affordable, universal telephone service. 

From my work at the community level I can clearly see the promise that the Internet can bring to consumers.  While it can help our centers to manage information, it can also provide the members of these communities with the latest online applications in education, medicine, e-commerce and many other areas.  But none of this will be possible without an acceleration of broadband deployment. 

We strongly support the Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act of 2001. It is an important step to achieve a more rapid deployment of broadband technology to all consumers. The bill meets the test of a common sense, pro-consumer approach to do two things:  

First, it eliminates unnecessary government restrictions on who can offer data services, providing additional consumer choice and benefiting all. 

Second, it proposes to eliminate regulations that have discouraged deployment of advanced services to consumers.   

We feel that the Tauzin Dingell bill is an essential element in eliminating the digital divide and we urge the Congress to enact it quickly. Those Americans stuck in the digital divide have already lost too much time.