To hear the Federal Communications Commission tell it, this is a golden age for broadband access in the United States. According to a newly released report from the agency on the digital divide, the gap between rural and urban internet access has “narrowed substantially, and more Americans than ever before have access to high-speed broadband.” Between the end of 2016 and the end of 2017, the number of Americans without broadband access fell from about 26 million to about 21 million, the report found.

But experts, and even some commissioners at the FCC, say the report is flawed. The data underlying it, they argue, doesn’t truly capture what broadband looks like in rural America — leaving lawmakers and government officials with a warped view of internet access.

The report is an annual release, and started well before the Trump-appointed administration of chairman Ajit Pai. But the 2019 version of the report has come with an unusual amount of political baggage, and is raising hard questions over the quality of the data used in the process.

More at The Verge.