The Obama administration has poured billions of dollars into expanding the reach of the Internet, and nearly 98 percent of American homes now have access to some form of high-speed broadband. But tens of millions of people are still on the sidelines of the digital revolution. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/technology/a-push-to-connect-millions-who-live-offline-to-the-internet.html?pagewanted=1&ref=us   Barack Obama took office as president in 2009 and initiated a $7 billion effort to expand access, chiefly through grants to build wired and wireless systems in neglected areas of the country.
Internet use is lowest in the South, particularly in Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas.

Willa Ohnoutka, 78,  said she did not use the Internet at all. “I use my telephone,” Ms. Ohnoutka said. “I get news on the TV. I’m just not comfortable involving myself with that Internet.”

The Obama administration allocated $7 billion to broadband expansion as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package. Most of it went to build physical networks. About half of those infrastructure programs have been completed, with Internet availability growing to 98 percent of homes from fewer than 90 percent.
About $500 million from the package went toward helping people learn to use the Internet. Those programs were highly successful, though on a small scale, producing more than half a million new household subscribers to Internet service

“We recognize more work needs to be done to ensure that no Americans are left behind,” said John B. Morris Jr., director of Internet policy at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the Commerce Department.

When nonusers were asked if they believed they were missing out or were disadvantaged by not using the Internet, most of the older Americans said no, it was not relevant to them. “But when you excluded the seniors, most people said, ‘Yeah, I feel like I’m not getting the access to all the things that I need.’ ”

Smart Communities, a $7 million effort in Chicago that was part of the administration’s $7 billion investment, provided basic Internet training in English and Spanish for individuals and small businesses. Between 2008 and 2011, the Smart Communities participants registered a statistically significant 15 percentage-point increase in Internet use compared with that in other Chicago community areas.

The Federal Communications Commission and some Internet providers have started programs to make Internet service more affordable for low-income households. Comcast’s two-year-old Internet Essentials program, which offers broadband service for $10 a month to low-income families, has signed up 220,000 households out of 2.6 million eligible homes in Comcast service areas.

“I’ve seen enough to know that we’re making good progress,” said Thomas C. Power, the administration’s deputy chief technology officer for telecommunications. “But I also know we need to make more progress.”

UPDATE: An initiative to bring internet access to the “next five billion” people has been launched by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23779172
The social network has teamed up with Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung, among others, to lower the cost of mobile data.
The group said it wanted to help those in developing countries to become part of the internet community.