US regulators unveiled details Monday of an ambitious plan designed to vault the United States into the ranks of world leaders in high-speed Internet access over the next decade.

The National Broadband Plan, which is to be presented to Congress on Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission, sets a 10-year goal of connecting 100 million US households to affordable 100-megabits-per-second Internet service.

President Barack Obama has pledged to put broadband in every American home and his administration designated more than seven billion dollars in economic stimulus money to expand broadband access in underserved communities.

The United States lags behind many other countries in high-speed Internet penetration and connection speeds, and the FCC plan proposes broadband speeds 25 times faster than the current national average.

US connection speeds average less than 4.0 mbps according to the latest report by Web analytics firm Akamai, placing the United States 18th in the global rankings behind leaders South Korea (14.6 mbps) and Japan (7.9 mbps).

The United States ranks 12th in terms of broadband connectivity with 24 percent of the population enjoying average speeds of over 5.0 mbps compared with 74 percent in South Korea and 60 percent in Japan, according to Akamai.

"The National Broadband Plan is a 21st century roadmap to spur economic growth and investment, create jobs, educate our children, protect our citizens and engage in our democracy," FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said.

"It's an action plan, and action is necessary to meet the challenges of global competitiveness, and harness the power of broadband to help address so many vital national issues," Genachowski said in a statement.

According to the FCC, 93 million Americans -- a third of the US population -- currently lack home broadband service and 14 million Americans do not have access to broadband even if they want it.

The FCC plan calls for providing ultra high-speed broadband of at least one gigabit per second to schools, hospitals and military installations.

It proposes more competition among broadband providers and to make 500 megahertz of spectrum available for broadband, including 300 megahertz for wireless mobile broadband.

That FCC proposal is likely to meet with resistance from the broadcast television stations that currently own the rights to 120 megahertz of that spectrum.

"We are concerned by reports today that suggest many aspects of the plan may in fact not be as voluntary as originally promised," Dennis Wharton, executive vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters, said.

"As the nation's only communications service that is free, local and ubiquitous, we would oppose any attempt to impose onerous new spectrum fees on broadcasters," Wharton said.

Full implementation of the plan, which is estimated to carry a price tag as high as 350 billion dollars, would require a substantial commitment from both the public and private sectors.

Some US telecom giants and cable television companies -- the main Internet Service Providers in the United States -- have also been wary of the broadband plan and what they see as too much government intervention.

The call for greater competition was welcomed, however, by Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association.

"The FCC plan recognizes that while the biggest network operators are investing billions, we have too few network operators," Black said. "That is, there's not enough competition, and we're stuck with local market duopoly unless new entrants can break through with next generation mobile broadband."

Some companies have expressed support. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, in a blog post Monday, compared broadband deployment with the US-Soviet space race.

"Networks in many countries, from Western Europe to East Asia, are faster and more advanced than our own," Schmidt said. "This broadband gap will be a dead weight on American businesses and workers, unless we act now.

"As with the space race in the 1960s, America needs a national effort by our scientists, engineers, companies, educational institutions and government agencies," he said.

Google announced plans last month to build and test one-gigabit-per-second broadband networks that would allow streaming of 3-D medical imaging over the Web or downloading of a full high-definition movie in less than five minutes.