Yesterday, the New America Foundation and many others issued "A National Broadband Strategy Call to Action," which asks President-elect Obama and the next Congress to make the development of a national broadband strategy a priority.
Former Berkman fellow Persephone Miel, with a squad of other Berkmanites, offers up a (somewhat cautious) cheer for the Call to Action on the Media Re:public blog:
I bring it to your attention because I think that they are right that making affordable high-speed broadband Internet available to everyone in the United States (not just Americans, btw) should be a top priority for the Obama administration. I even agree with many of their arguments...But, as those who know much more than I do have pointed out, the full Call to Action doesn’t go nearly far enough. Several colleagues from the Berkman Center commented... CONTINUED
The Call to Action is the latest word in an ongoing conversation on broadband in the US--a conversation that included two FCC en banc hearings, at Harvard and Stanford, on broadband management practices earlier this year.
We may have to wait a little while longer for the page to load on America's broadband future. In the meantime, sit back as Doc Searls sings the broadband blues in his blog post, "Welcome to the Out Age" from June 2008:
I’d forgotten how it is, dealing with Cox High Speed Internet here in Santa Barbara. We got spoiled with Verizon FiOSin Boston. It’s never down. Customer support is solid. And the data rates rock: 15-20Mb/s, symmetrical, for about the same as we’re paying here.
But here we are, back in town for as much of the Summer as we can take in. Everything is beautiful, except for the Net. CONTINUED