The Pew Research Center poll (.pdf) released yesterday on Americans' general political knowledge has garnered a fair deal of attention within the blogosphere. But a different set of numbers from the survey -- and I'm not talking about how many people can correctly identify the Vice President as Dick Cheney -- jumped out at me in particular: How many people are going online.

Back when Pew began asking questions about Americans' use of the internet back in 1995, just 14 percent of respondents self-identified as being online. By 1998, that number was closer to 40 percent, and by 1999 Pew's polling estimated that a majority of Americans were online. As of 2003, the proportion of respondents saying they use the internet was closer to two-thirds. Yet in the most recent polling conducted in February of this year, just 63 percent of respondents reported being online -- a decline that can probably be accounted for by the margin of error of the polling, but certainly not a number that indicates a continuation of the increase in internet access within the country seen previously.

During this period in which the rate of internet access within the United States has topped out in the 60 percent to 70 percent range, more Americans have begun to move from dial-up connections to high speed internet in the form of cable, DSL or the like. Specifically, in the past three and a half years or so, the proportion of respondents indicating to Pew that they had a high-speed internet connection in their homes nearly doubled, from 23 percent in August 2003 to 45 percent this past January. However, while there has been growth in access to high-speed connections within America, there is reason to believe that the United States is greatly lagging behind other countries in the area. An OECD survey released in late 2005 showed that America is not among the top-ten most connected countries, in terms of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants, and in absolute terms there are reports that China will overtake the United States in terms of the sheer number of inhabitants with broadband subscribers some time this year.

Back in 2004, President Bush called for universal broadband access by 2007 -- a goal that has not yet been achieved even if you take "universal broadband access" to mean access to buy connections rather than actual access to high-speed internet connections. Some reports even put the United States behind Estonia on this metric.

Clearly, something needs to be done within Congress to ensure that America does not fall further behind and so that, in fact, America can reclaim its position as one of the leaders in internet access around the world. Hawaii's Democratic Senator Dan Inouye, the chairman of the commerce committee, has spoken to this issue in recent months, and as Matt has written about before and I've been harping on for years, there is spectrum already available, owned by the American people, that could make universal broadband internet using wireless technology feasible. This is not the only answer, but it is one. And it's high time that we actually have a debate about putting the resources towards ensuring that not only every American has the ability to buy a high-speed internet connection but that every American who wants it indeed has broadband access.