Up to 24 million Americans lack access to broadband, the Federal Communications Commission announced Tuesday, which is now defined as 4-Mbits/s service.

Up to 24 million Americans lack access to broadband, the Federal Communications Commission announced Tuesday.

Between 14 and 24 million people in the country lack access to high-speed Internet, and immediate prospects for them accessing this service is bleak, the commission said in its sixth annual report to Congress about the state of deployment. The 14 million tally would about equal the 2005 estimated populations of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago combined.

The FCC said the results underscore the need for reform to the Universal Service Fund, innovative approaches to spectrum allocation, the removal of barriers to infrastructure investment, and better broadband data collection.

None of these suggestions are really new, of course. The need for more for ages, and are already under way.

The report did, however, update its definition of what constitutes broadband service. For over a decade, the standard has been set at 200 kilobits per second downstream, but the FCC now puts it at 4 Mbits/s downstream and 1 Mbits/s upstream.

"This is a minimum speed generally required for using today's video-rich broadband applications and services, while retaining sufficient capacity for basic web browsing and e-mail," the FCC said.

The report also outlines states that would qualify as being "unserved" by broadband. The data used to calculate this, however, is based on Census Tract information, as well as ISP subscriber information, so the FCC cautioned that it is not as complete as possible. More detailed broadband data information is in the process of being collected.

Tuesday's study, however, identified 39 states that have areas without broadband access. States not on that list are mostly in the Northeast, including New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, and Rhode Island.