Recently, the U.S. Government published the report "Networked Nation: Broadband in America" that paints a rosy picture of how the United States nearly reached President Bush's goal of giving high-speed Internet access by 2007. However, the report results may not be quite what they seem.

Its conclusions were drawn from Federal Communications Commission data and other sources, and claimed that more than 99 percent of all U.S. ZIP codes received broadband service from at least one provider by the end of 2006. The FCC numbers indicate that the total number of broadband lines has grown from 6.8 million in December 2000 to 82.5 million in December 2006.

However, critics say the FCC's data is misleading. A broadband provider has to serve only a single residence in a ZIP code for it to be counted. The FCC defined broadband as 200 kilobits per second - about four times the speed of a good dial-up connection and barely fast enough to stream video.

Derek Turner, research director for Free Press, a nonprofit public interest group that studies media and technology issues, agrees that there have been great strides in the growth of broadband since 2004, but said there is still a digital divide. And the notion that a 200-kilobit connection can be called broadband is, he said, ludicrous.

Meanwhile, we continue to fall behind, as Trylon has documented more than once. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked the U.S. in 15th place for broadband lines per person in 2006, down from No. 4 in 2001.