The United States Department of Agriculture has had a role to play in improving the nation's broadband fortunes for some time, overseeing the delivery of rural funds for infrastructure improvement with mixed results. With the agency poised to hand out additional $2.5 billion in grants and loans, the agency today released a report noting a continued divide in broadband availability between urban, suburban, and rural areas (utterly and completely shocking, to say the least).

The USDA says 55% of U.S. adults had broadband access as of 2007, though that number drops to around 4% when measuring adults in rural households. 70% of rural households with an Internet connection have broadband, while that number jumps to 84% for urban households. Some of this is due to high prices and limited availability, but some of it is due to people simply not wanting broadband.

Stat farm Comscore has also released a study showing that on the bright side, rural broadband growth is heavily outpacing suburban and urban broadband growth. According to Comscore, rural broadband markets (defined as a population of less than 10,000 people) saw a 16% increase in broadband penetration from Q2 2007 to Q2 2009. "Micropolitan" areas (10,000-50,000 residents) grew 14% during th at time, while metropolitan areas (50,000+ residents) grew 11%.

One problem, however, is that most of these calculations are based somewhere along the line on FCC data. FCC data, which as we've discussed for years, is borderline unusable because the FCC (until recently) considered a single broadband-enabled (defined as 200kbps or faster) home in a zip code to mean that whole zip code was broadband enabled. The only way to get more accurate data is to force ISPs to finally hand over comprehensive service data, or actually go into the field and measure penetration. We've done neither. Says the USDA:$300 million has been set aside in broadband stimulus funds to more accurately map broadband penetration, but as we noted last week, a significant chunk of that money may be thrown at organizations with a vested interest in making broadband penetration look rosier than it actually is. Most Americans (particularly rural ones) know first hand we have broadband issues, but nobody will actually know just how bad it is until ISPs agree to turn over their data -- and somebody actually bothers to go into the field to confirm the data's accuracy.