One year into its three year programme, the scope of the project has expanded to the area surrounding Newcastle and now caters for individual groups, such as Asian women and older people. This and other projects have revealed that one of the keys to getting the disadvantaged across the digital divide is to talk to people in the environment in which they feel most comfortable. Giving people the confidence to consider trying the Internet. A van may seem like an unlikely place to start bridging the digital divide, but it's getting a significant number of people on the first step of the bridge. Guardian Society, page 4.
Government is the availability of broadband.
For the UK Government to meet its 2005 targets it needs to create a telecommunications framework that not only reduces the cost of access, but gives consumers the real choice of accessing broadband regardless of cost and location. With the creation of the UK Online Broadband Stakeholders Group, the actions will now be taken forward. Interviewed two months after the report' s release the E-Envoy, Andrew Pinder, admitted to Computing Magazine that the digital divide did indeed exist and that the lack of broadband was a major contributing factor. Progress will be of great interest to Government departments who are developing online services. The UK Government has set itself ambitious targets for universal online delivery of services.