Last Off-Ramp on Information Highway : Communications: Disadvantaged communities likely to be slow to benefit, FCC member tells Urban League.

The much-heralded information superhighway will improve some people’s lives, but already-disadvantaged communities will probably be the last to benefit, Federal Communications Commission member Andrew Barrett told members of the Los Angeles Urban League in Inglewood on Friday.

At an Urban League-sponsored seminar titled “The Super Information Highway and Minorities: An On-Ramp to Opportunity or an Off-Ramp to Nowhere?” Barrett said cable and phone companies will roll out an array of new services first in areas most likely to offer the fastest rate of return on their investments.

And while telecommuting will save time and enhance the work environment for some, that may be bad news for minority-owned businesses and the Latinos, African Americans and Asian Americans working at service jobs in business districts such as Downtown Los Angeles, he said.

“I would suggest to you that you will have an inner city where you will have less and less jobs,” Barrett said. “At that point, you had better ask whose quality of life we’re talking about.”

But Barrett and several other speakers from companies involved in building the so-called data highway said the technology that will enable the delivery of hundreds of TV channels to consumer homes will also create opportunities for small, minority-owned businesses.

For example, a program about African American history that has a small viewership might not be commercially viable in a local market, said David Baylor, vice president of operations for Hughes Satellite DirecTV. But with the new Hughes system of national satellite broadcasting, such “niche” programming could reach hundreds of smaller markets, turning it into a profitable venture.

Other opportunities for minority businesses are electrical subcontracting--phone and cable firms are laying miles of fiber-optic cables daily and often contract those jobs out--and marketing to minority communities, the panelists suggested.