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QUESTION: Hello. Thank you so much. I appreciated your wonderful program speech. I’m Mary Perkins from Howard University, and at Howard University, we – very much interested in particular aspects of the internet with respect to the digital divide. Or – in your story about the young girl being pulled out of the rubble because of the text message she was able to send brings to mind – the question in my mind, how many others could have been saved had they had that technology?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Absolutely.
QUESTION: And so we’re very interested in knowing, in terms of access, the – not only internet freedom but free internet for all, the universal service aspect, and what can be done, particularly right now for Haiti, with this.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, as – thank you for that. As you know, that is a continuing issue for us and for many countries around the world. We’re at 4 billion cell phones. And certainly, the cell phone is becoming the principal tool of communication, both through the applications that are on it, through the texting that it enables. And there are a lot of groups, NGOs, and even businesses that are passing out and providing cell phones at very low cost.
We just have to keep incentivizing and encouraging the technology to be as low cost as possible so it can be as ubiquitous as possible.
But I think we’ve made enormous progress. Ten years ago, we talked a lot about the digital divide even in our own country. We are overcoming it, but there are still questions of access, still questions of cost. Now, obviously, we have to recognize that a lot of the search engines are run by for-profit companies. They’re not – it’s not going to be free. But there are lots of ways of trying to encourage more universal access. And that’s part of the Obama Administration’s overall policy on technology, not just the diplomatic and development aspects of it.
Thank you, Professor.
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