At a campus where lightening-fast Ethernet connections can instantly put thousands of students and faculty online, it can be hard to remember that, perhaps a short drive away, there are people who don't even have a modem.

When it comes to Internet access, there is a disturbing disparity between rural and urban, rich and poor, according to a recent report by Amy Glasmeier and Lawrence Wood for the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that deals with economic issues.

The report, entitled "On Hold: Telecommunications in Rural America," gives various statistics on Internet connection availability, broken down by race, income, and location of residence. Overall, people who are poor, part of a minority, live in rural areas, or a combination of the three are less likely to have the stable Internet connection available in richer, more urban areas of the United States.

"The story is not just a geography story; it's also a race/class issue," said Glasmeier, professor of geography and director of the Center for Regional Research and Industrial Studies in the Institute for Policy Research and Evaluation. "You have more than 10 times the likelihood of having Internet access if you make $50,000 a year and live in an urban area."

The report, which took about five months to complete, is especially applicable in Pennsylvania, said Wood (graduate-geography and agricultural economics). "In terms of absolute numbers, Pennsylvania has more rural residents than any other state in the country."

Many people in rural areas who do not have Internet access might not even have telephone service, Wood said.

"It's kind of an indicator," he said of the phone. "If these people don't have basic phone service ... then it can be certain that they don't have access to more elaborate forms of telecommunications."

Of course, in the 21st century, "Telecommunications is a lot more than just telephone access," Wood said. Even if people in rural areas have telephones and modems, the Internet connection could be too slow for practical use, he added.

"Telecommunications, in the beginning it was wire and Morse code, but now we're talking about cable television, Internet, satellites," he said.

It might not be particularly apparent why rural areas need fast and reliable Internet access, but that access has the potential to help rural areas, especially in health care and education, Wood said. Potentially, doctors could give patients advice and teachers could give lessons all over the Information Superhighway, increasing the quality of life in rural areas.

"The question really is, is there going to be some type of baseline technology that the government believes rural areas should have?" Wood said.

Jorge Schement, professor of communications and information policy, said it is more a matter of Internet access itself than it is a matter of technology.

"The baseline isn't of any particular technology, the baseline is that people in rural areas shouldn't be isolated," he said.

The reason behind Internet access complicated, but much of it has to do with recent telecommunications deregulation, Glasmeier said.

"Historically, we had a national telecom act that basically cross-subsidized rural telecom availability," she said. "Under deregulation that cross-subsidy is decreasing."

With deregulation, telecommunications companies have little motive to provide rural areas with the same quality of technology as urban areas. "It's kind of a difficult issue, because the technology is changing really fast, so to put a lot of investment in one type of technology in a rural area, it might not be efficient or profitable," Wood said.

The creation of an adequate infrastructure to support Internet access would be costly for any company to tackle. "It gets real expensive real fast," Schement said.

Even with ubiquitous technology in urban areas, "The changes in technology so far are not moving in the direction where their broad applications would bring their price down," Glasmeier said.

Glasmeier suggested that re-regulation must occur, the government must provide incentive to private companies to provide access to rural areas, or the government itself must become even more involved to provide telecommunications.

"The bottom line is that it's, A, not going to be cheap, and, B, the disparity is going to increase."

No matter how long or expensive the process is, there should not be a large telecommunications disparity between certain groups of people, which would only create an unhealthy two-tiered economy, Schement said. "That's not good economically and that's not good politically."