Broadband: Good Enough For Government Work?

I was reading this report on the apparent "success" of the broadband rollout here in the US, and I couldn't believe it. Typical government adheres to the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" quote that I love to quote.

Here are the salient points:

- broadband is defined as a connection > 200 kilobits per second (which is quite slow, and not what most of us are looking for)

- the US, that invented the internet, is in 15th place worldwide as of 2006 for access to broadband

- if any residence in a zip code has access to broadband, then the entire area gets counted as a broadband area which makes about as much sense as the Electoral College

- 82.5 million broadband lines exist in the US

Now personally, I can't rant too much about my access to broadband. Where I live, I can get DSL or Fios from the phone company (although I had to practically beg for the cheaper DSL a few years ago), or could go the cable route. I have good cell phone coverage as well and could theoretically use a wireless broadband approach if I was off the grid. However, a few towns over, a friend of mine still persists in using dialup due to a combination of cost, and usability issues (more like computer crashing is the tale) when he tried to do the broadband thing. I also hear quite often about folks that are too far away from the phone company for DSL, Fios hasn't reached them yet (they're still in only a handful of states), or cable isn't available.

Can the US do better, especially at the prices we're paying for this? Check out this on South Korea where 90% of the country has access at better than 3 mbps, and the price is only $20 monthly. Now when we have that penetration at that price, than our leaders can think they delivered on their promise.

--Jonas