To make good on a pledge to prioritize high-speed Internet attack, President-elect Obama mustiness address inner cities, at which place many journey without a connection

Watch full size video:

Getty Images

By Arik Hesseldahl

Outside Harlem’s Apollo Theater upon 125th Street, New York City. Getty Images

Anthony Celestine was a latecomer to the Internet Age. The 40-year-old Harlem resident has owned a small Jani-King commercial cleaning franchise since 2004, but until recently, the New Yorker hadn’cheek by jowl owned a computer or even surfed the Web or had an e-mail address. "I didn’t know what none of that twaddle was," he says.

Now he uses the Internet the whole of the time to scout out new customers, communicate with Jani-King headquarters in Dallas, and exchange in commerce e-mails with mate franchisees on how to do positive kinds of jobs better. "I talk to my franchise brothers encircling what works and what doesn’t," says Celestine, "I’m lore about new procedures faster than before. It’sitting like riding a bike and sooner or later switching to a car. It’s just a whole superior globe with the PC."

Celestine entered that globe earlier this year when he moved from Brooklyn to an chamber in Harlem and got a PC and a high-speed Web hookup as part of his rental agreement. Celestine’s apartment is owned by Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement (HCCI), a 22-year-old, $240 million nonprofit community development organization based in Harlem’s Bradhurst neighborhood. HCCI was quick to provide the computer and Internet kindred thanks to the efforts of other nonprofit groups and an organization that funds affordable housing projects.

Millions of Americans—many of them also residents of the inner city—be left behind on the other side of the chasm that separates those who have high-speed Internet access from those who don’t. President-elect Barack Obama has taken to delivering a hebdomadary address not merely from one side to the other the radio but also end videos on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. Yet almost half of U.S. adults don’t have the necessary broadband connections that make it easy to survey those messages, according to recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. A survey by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation ranked the U.S. 15th on household broadband penetration, having slipped from fourth place in 2001, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development. (Denmark ranked No. 1.)

In a Dec. 6 speech, Obama called the current state of U.S. broadband access "unacceptable" and said plans to "renew our Information Superhighway" would be a priority of his Administration. To deliver, Obama will need to address the wide swaths of the U.S. that remain unconnected. In some places—most of them rural areas through low population density—the public who are willing to pay for advantage have existence able to’t get it because telecom providers have power to’t justify the necessary investment.

In the case of the urban poor, service may be readily profitable, but many families can’t afford the $30 to $50 it costs each month to get broadband. Many also lack computers at pointedly. Among households with an annual income of $50,000 or less—about moiety the abiding habitation—only 35% have broadband advantage, according to Free Press, a technology advocacy collection. Households with yearly incomes in the heavenly heights $50,000 are more than two times as likely to have broadband service.

Telecommunications companies have made some efforts to make broadband affordable. AT&T (T), the largest U.S. phone company, offers DSL access for $10 a month to recent customers in 22 states, a condition for administration approval of the 2006 merger between SBC and BellSouth that created AT&T. In another concession to Uncle Sam in exchange conducive to merger approval, AT&T agreed to donate 50,000 DSL lines to low-income households. Verizon Communications (VZ) has a subsidiary called Verizon Enhanced Communities that works with developers and apartment building owners to do high-speed connections available in low-income and other housing complexes.