ACCESS to a fast Internet connection has become more than a convenience. It’s being enshrined in some countries as a legal right of all citizens. Finland, for example, announced last week that it was moving up its timetable to next year from 2015 for guaranteeing broadband access to all, according to YLE, the Finnish broadcasting company.

Congress is clearly irritated that the United States has not done well in the international broadband Olympics. Other countries have national plans to accelerate the diffusion of broadband; America does not. So Congress has given the Federal Communications Commission a mandate to produce a plan with specific recommendations by next February.

We shouldn’t get caught up, however, in a space-race panic. We’ve actually done surprisingly well making a broadband connection accessible to a vast majority of American households. No less than 96 percent of households either subscribe to or have access to broadband service, according to an F.C.C. task force, which presented a status report to the commission last month.

The report does not play up the fact that almost all homes have, or could have, broadband service.

Nor does it highlight the actual median speed of 3 megabits a second among households that now have broadband, (which is based on data that probably understates the speeds substantially). The authors seem happily caught up in the thrill of playing an international game of catch-up.