Broadband measurement

It seems dumb to me that the government would waste tax dollars trying to figure out how broadband connected we are based on some arbitrary 200kbps definition of what broadband is. Come on guys, just give us a frigging spreadsheet with the number of people in each bandwidth group <56kbps, <200kbps, <512kbps, <1.2Mbps, < 3Mpbs, < 6Mbps, < 20 Mbps etc. Can it really be so hard? Then everyone else can examine and analyze the data however they want it.

The problem, of course, is such data will reveal a long tail of users with just barely broadband connectivity speeds which is exactly where the lobbyists want them to be. I mean technically you could say anything that isn't dial up modem achievable is broadband, but in this day and age (or dare I say it "this century") shouldn't America, self proclaimed "leader of the free world" be striving for something a bit beyond the bare minimum broadband grade? How about we introduce some new terminology like dialband (0-56kbps), mediumband (57-1.1Mbps), broadband (1.2Mbps-6Mbps), highband (7-20Mbps), phatband (21Mbps-50Mbps) and bad-assband (51Mpbs and up). There that's better.