Sometimes, what looks like good news really isn't. Pew just released survey results today showing that the percentage of Americans with home "high speed broadband" connections has ticked up from 66 to 70 since April 2012. Pew calls this a "small but statistically significant rise." The report also shows that 32 percent of the people without home "high speed broadband" connections (or another 10 percent of Americans) have a smartphone.

The news of an overall rise in "high-speed broadband" adoption will likely be trumpeted by America's giant communications companies and policymakers as the bright spot: "We're not doing so badly!" But before we start celebrating, it's a good idea to look closely at the results.

For starters, Pew's results demonstrate that the digital divide is persistent, with close correlations between socioeconomic status and home Internet access. The report is also a reminder that policymakers use the words "high-speed broadband" to include everything other than dialup access, which is far too broad a definition.

Indeed, we've set an alarmingly low bar for ourselves: America should be dominating the information-centric global economy, but we won't unless we raise our standards.

The Digital Divide Here in America ———————————-

According to the report, almost 90 percent of college graduates have high-speed Internet access at home, as do households earning more than $75,000. Compare that to only 37 percent of those who have not completed high school – as well as 54 percent of households with income less than $30,000 – that have such access.

There continue to be racial differences as well, with blacks and Latinos less likely to have high-speed Internet access than whites.

Pew points out that many blacks and Latinos have smartphones – bringing their "high-speed broadband" adoption numbers almost equal to whites –* if *smartphone access is included in "broadband.”

Don’t Call Me "High Speed Broadband" ————————————

Both the Pew study and the FCC label any connection of 4 Mbps for downloads and 1 Mbps for uploads as fast enough to be counted as “broadband.” That's absurd.

[#contributor: /contributors/5932739a2a990b06268aab71]|||Susan Crawford is a professor at the Cardozo School of Law and an adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She is also a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. Crawford has been an ICANN board member and a Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy. She is the author of *[Captive Audience](http://www.amazon.com/Captive-Audience-Telecom-Industry-Monopoly/dp/0300153139): The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age*.|||

It's also dangerous to call everything "broadband" because it allows us to pretend there's a vibrant marketplace for high-speed Internet access, with satellite duking it out with cable modem access, mobile wireless supplanting the need for a wire at home, and no need for oversight or a change in industrial policy.

Yes, you could say DSL, satellite, and mobile wireless are all "high-speed broadband," but that's just like putting your local high-school football team in the same market as the New York Giants. It's all football, but the two don't – and can't – compete.

Let’s take use Netflix as an example of what happens when current DSL (over copper phone lines) is included in "high-speed broadband."

The minimum recommended speed to stream just a single DVD-quality Netflix movie is 3 Mbps (and 5 Mbps for a single HD-quality movie). DSL connections that allow download speeds of at least 3 Mbps make up less than 20 percent of the fixed connection subscriptions in the U.S., and less than 9 percent of 5 Mbps subscriptions.

If, heaven forbid, you wanted to use two devices in your home at one time to watch two HD movies at once, you'd need a 10 Mbps connection – and DSL just won't do the job. Less than 3 percent of fixed connection subscriptions in the U.S. that are capable of 10 Mbps speeds are DSL, yet all of them would be included in the Pew (and FCC) definition of "high-speed broadband."

Oh, but it’s just Netflix; watching movies is frivolous. Think again. If you substitute "first-class interactive education" or "telemedicine" instead of Netflix movies, then you’ll understand why current and future applications need a high-capacity connection.

Mobile Won't Fully Substitute for a Wire —————————————-

Here are some inconvenient truths: The wired and mobile wireless marketplaces are separate. A mobile wireless device can't substitute for a 21st century wire at home, because of the physics of a wireless connection and the expense of using a lot of bits per month.

>You could say DSL, satellite, and mobile wireless are all 'high-speed broadband,' but that’s like putting your local high-school football team in the same market as the New York Giants.

Although Verizon and AT&T both claim their 4G LTE services will have download speeds equal to a slow cable connection (say, 13 to 16 Mbps), data caps make these connections an entirely different deal.

Capacity matters. If we watch a single HD movie (again, remember I’m using movies as a proxy for all sorts of useful applications) on a smartphone, we'll be using up to 3.5 GB of data – likely an entire monthly allowance of bits, thus running into steep overage charges for additional use. Users understand that, which is why mobile usage of Netflix is in the low single digits as a percentage of overall Netflix use.

It’s telling that at least 83 percent of people with smartphones also have a high-speed Internet access connection at home – because these technologies complement, and don't replace, one another. This means that people who use smartphones only will be able to do much less with their connections than those with actual high-speed, high-capacity Internet access.

And that brings us back to the digital divide: People within the smartphone population who are relying on a smartphone alone for access are likely to be low-income, members of minority groups, or both.

If these services were affordable, everyone would have both.

But the marketplace for high-capacity (200 GB per month), high-download speed (100 Mbps per month) wired connections is increasingly dominated by a series of local cable monopolies that can charge whatever they want. Bottom line: As a result of consolidation and deregulation, many Americans pay too much for Internet access services that are second-class – because they aren't fiber to the home – and not enough Americans can afford service.

We must do better. We must define high-speed Internet access to be fixed service of 100 Mbps, upload and download; get away from the use of the word "broadband," with all of its confusing connotations; and make sure that these services are available to all Americans at reasonable prices.

The Pew report shows that the digital divide persists. And we've still got a stagnant, noncompetitive set of divided markets with no real plan for an upgrade.

Editor: Sonal Chokshi @smc90