In some instances, as part of local regulation, cable television companies are being required to make contributions to help fund local CTCs, education and training programs, and Internet access for community groups. Regulation in Canada requires contributions from cable and broadcasting companies for television programming and new media content development. The focus for these has largely been commercial content as opposed to public content. Neither cable nor telecommunications regulation requires funding for these types of community access, training or related activities. ³⁰

As with Canada, there are sub-national government-level initiatives intended to achieve connectivity. For example, Texas introduced a ten-year, US$1.5 billion program to connect schools, libraries, and rural health facilities, and to create community networks.³¹

There is a certain irony with the U.S. programs for indigenous content development. At international trade for a, and in trade agreements, the U.S. makes great efforts to have other countries remove their national regulatory and program initiatives that support domestic culture and content, including those of Canada. However, domestically, the U.S. spends billions of dollars supporting the development of exactly this type of content for the American public.

Content development for new media is supported through defence and aerospace programs, procurement by the federal and state governments, and direct expenditures by federal agencies totalling several billion dollars. For example, the three largest government agencies involved in the support of multimedia content in the areas of education, arts, heritage and culture are the National Endowment of the Arts (US$94 million in 1997); the National Endowment for the Humanities (several hundred million since 1970’s); and the U.S. Department of Education. Other agencies involved in public content development include NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the National Library of Medicine, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. While Canada also supports culture and content through, for example, different levels of government, cultural agencies and funds based on industry contributions, the amount for non-commercial cultural and social public information is comparatively much smaller in breadth and scope.³²

The importance of employing a diversity of approaches to address the digital divide based on individual, community and regional needs is further reinforced by the wide range of initiatives being adopted in other countries, as demonstrated by some selected examples described below.

³⁰ "Cable contracts and community technology funding", digitaldivide@list.benton.org, September 27, 2000; "Good news for Cleveland", digitaldivide@list.benton.org, October 3, 2000.
³¹ "All the divides", digitaldivide@list.benton.org, September 21, 2000.
³² "Multimedia Policy for Canada and the United States: Industrial Development as Public Interest", Reddick, A. and Rideout, V. in (Eds. V. Mosco and D. Schiller) Integrating a Continent for Cyber Capitalism, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., Boulder, forthcoming, 2001.