UPDATE 1-Clinton says high-tech will give $100 million
By Steve Holland
EAST PALO ALTO, Calif., April 17 (Reuters) - President Bill Clinton, at a Silicon Valley
community left behind by the U.S. economic boom, announced on Monday that high-tech
companies will donate computer services and training worth $100 million to help get
low-income people educated for Internet futures.
``Even here in Silicon Valley there are people who could be left behind,' Clinton said as he
began a two-day trip aimed at calling attention to his ``national call to action' to close the
digital divide between computer haves and have-nots.
Despite his pleas for young people to become computer literate, Clinton admitted he does not use e-mail much himself when
asked by a boy how much he used computers.
``I confess, I don't use it much for e-mail but that's for very personal reasons,' Clinton said with a chuckle. ``If you work for
the government, you don't use e-mail much, unless you want it all in the newspaper.'
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how thousands of computer e-mails under subpoena were
withheld. The White House says it was inadvertent.
At an event on a damp morning in the parking lot for Plugged In, a community technology centre, Clinton said the Gateway Inc.
(NYSE:GTW - news) computer company will pay for technology training for 75,000 teachers across the country, including all
244 in East Palo Alto.
Other corporate highlights he announced were:
-- Novell Inc. (NasdaqNM:NOVL - news) will donate $20 million in software to nonprofits devoted to disadvantaged
Hispanics.
-- Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HWP - news) will invest up to $15 million in products, partnerships and people to help homes,
schools and community centres learn how to use computers.
-- QUALCOMM Inc. (NasdaqNM:QCOM - news) committed $25 million to bridge the digital divide in San Diego.
-- PowerUp, a Silicon Valley nonprofit organisation, will expand its programme to give youths access to technology and
guidance from 19 sites to 250 in 43 states.
-- America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) pledged 100,000 free accounts valued at $26 million a year to PowerUp sites.
-- The Kaiser Family Foundation will produce public-service announcements featuring celebrities active in the technology
movement and encourage young people to recognise that becoming ``technologically literate' can open doors.
Television networks NBC, ABC, CBS, TBS, TNT, BET, MTV, UPN, Fox and others have agreed to air the announcements.
At a stop later at the Navajo Nation reservation in Shiprock, New Mexico, Clinton was to announce a plan to get telephone
service to native Americans at a cost of $1 a month. He would raise the surcharge on long-distance phone calls slightly to pay
for the $17 million plan.
Clinton's national economic adviser, Gene Sperling, said if telephone companies pass along the charge to consumers, it would
cost them about a penny a month.
``You can't get on the Internet if you don't even have a (phone) line,' Clinton said in explaining why the native Americans
deserve the programme.
The programme could help as many as 300,000 low-income Indian households on reservations. Only 47 percent of such
households have phones, compared with 94 percent of households nationwide.
East Palo Alto is a town of 28,000 people, mostly Latinos and blacks, where the ratio of students to computers in the
classroom is 28-to-1, compared with 7-to-1 in better-off parts of the country.
Clinton said 100 years ago it was known as Ravenswood and suffered when the transcontinental railroad passed it by. In the
information age, he said, ``No one has to be bypassed this time around.'
According to a nationwide telephone poll of 1,014 households commissioned by the Round Table Group, a Chicago-based
consortium that focuses on the high-tech industry, 46 percent of Americans live in households with access to the Internet.
But the digital divide looms large: in American households with incomes less than $25,000, 68 percent do not have access to
the Internet, and 67 percent of Americans who have not completed high school do not have Internet users in their households.
Clinton was on his third trip devoted to what he calls ``new markets,' areas still plagued by high unemployment despite the
lowest national jobless rate in three decades. The president is trying to attract investment to these lagging areas.
Clinton is due to visit Chicago on Tuesday to speak at the COMDEX computer industry trade show.
More Quotes
and News:
America Online Inc (NYSE:AOL - news)
Gateway Inc (NYSE:GTW - news)
Hewlett-Packard Co (NYSE:HWP - news)
Novell Inc (NasdaqNM:NOVL - news)
Qualcomm Inc (NasdaqNM:QCOM - news)
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