03/23/2001 - Updated 07:36 PM ET
Bush administration mulls high-speed options
MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — The Internet is so important for improving education that the Bush administration will consider several ways to extend high-speed access throughout the country, including tax incentives for broadband companies, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans said Friday.
After a breakfast meeting with high-tech leaders and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, Evans said high-speed access, or broadband, could be "an incredibly powerful tool to play a role in the education of America, going to the very basics of teaching our children to read."
"I think it's important that we understand why we need to move it out there as quickly as we can to the inner cities, to the rural areas of America, and get as many children and homes connected to it as quickly as we can," Evans said.
"It's how you transport information and how you transport knowledge as we rapidly move into this knowledge-based economy," Evans added. "We want all of our people to have the knowledge. So to me that's a pretty fundamental part of the infrastructure that needs to be out there in America."
Evans, who met with Gov. Gray Davis, Mexican President Vicente Fox and business leaders in Southern California on Thursday, said he had come to Silicon Valley mainly to listen to the high-tech community "and let them know that they have a friend in Washington, D.C."
Among the companies represented at the meeting with Evans were Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and broadband provider Excite@Home.
"People seemed to be very comfortable giving him some frank advice," said Rick White, chief executive of TechNet, the high-tech lobbying organization that organized the meeting.
