User erin1 writes in: "The Senate Commerce Committee today voted unanimously in favor of S. 1492 (pdf), which would require the FCC to come up with a revised definition for broadband within 120 days of the bill's enactment, report broadband access by nine-digit ZIP codes rather than five, and create a $40 million, five-year matching grant program for organizations that work to spur broadband adoption."

The FCC has long qualified anything over 200kbps as broadband, and considers a zip-code to be "wired" for service if just one user in that zip-code has service. This has led to countless rosy FCC reports, despite very obvious coverage gaps when the states themselves look more closely. Rosy reports make the FCC look good and telco/cable lobbyists very happy.

Only recently did the FCC admit their methodology is flawed, though they've been largely uncooperative when consumer advocates have tried to obtain more comprehensive broadband data. This push to improve the data collection comes nearly a half-decade after people (us included) started really griping.

It should only take another five years to decide how to properly measure broadband, and perhaps another five after that to determine how exactly to proceed -- at which point hopefully we'll all already have 10Gbps firing directly into our cerebellums.