The Benton Foundation recently called to task the Bush Administration and Acting NTIA Administrator Meredith Baker for claiming that we’re there as far as universal broadband goes.

Just like my 3 year old who is not faster her older sisters – the administration seems to think that if you shout “I won” as loud as you can that’s what counts.

As the folks at Benton point out – in 2004 President Bush set out a goal to have universal, affordable access to broadband by 2007. According to a September 2007 report by Pew Internet & American Life – about half of all Americans half broadband at home, which might indicate that broadband is neither universal nor affordable.

For more information – Benton’s report, Broadband for All is definitely worth the read. The stats and stories are not necessarily new – but they have put an interesting historical spin on our situation in the US and the need to act soon or be left behind. (I love the analogy of French using water power to build fountains for the rich and the UK used it to create jobs for everyone.)

Also I think the do a great job of making policy suggestions in plain language – some of these point I think were new – and once I read them were so clearly right!

An excerpt (not necessarily policy-related) that’s pertinent to many of our readers & leaders in rural areas:

The gap between rural and urban America persists. The broadband penetration rate in urban and suburban households is almost double the rate in rural areas. Though growing, rural Internet penetration has remained roughly 10 percentage points behind the national average. It is critical that the 25 percent of Americans who live in the rural areas of the United States are not left behind in this increasingly information- and technology-driven economy. For example, the Government Accountability Office has indicated that while about 30 percent of households in urban and suburban areas have access to broadband, only 17 percent of rural households have access.

Also they point to a recent paper that focuses on the rural perspective: What can be done to enable rural America to keep pace with the rest of the country?