It's a good day to blog broadband with Senator Durbin, who will be coming onto the site at 7pm tonight. Yesterday was the Youtube/CNN debate where citizens had input into the process. And this morning at 9:30am, the House subcommittee on telecom is holding hearings on oversight of the FCC, which in the wake of Google's stunning spectrum bid have taken on added importance. You can watch the hearings on streaming video here.
The response to Senator Durbin's offer has been remarkable. Jason Lee Miller reported on the effort at WebProNews, and we have a diverse and compelling group coming onto the site (and on their own sites) to give input into this discussion today. Here's a round-up of what's already been said.
Markos of Dailykos, telecom expert David Isenberg of Isenblog, and Illinois blogger Archpundit are interested to see how this experiment plays out, while Jeff Nolan, a former venture capitalist for Software Giant SAP, wants to know why we need a national broadband strategy. Carpetbagger Report has a good response - America has fallen far behind in broadband penetration because of a poor regulatory framework and corporate capture. Much of the conversation so far off of Durbin's initial post has actually focused on net neutrality and the structural separation of the physical and content/application layers. There's a bit of trust lacking in terms of letting the telecom and cable companies own the network and sell the content.
But Durbin's experiment - namely calling on the wisdom of the web crowd to craft legislation - may, in the end, prove to be a passing thing. He's fighting the well-entrenched industries who run the country's broadband networks and he's fighting, well, the nature of political power itself. Legislation rarely reflects the ideal policy approach to any topic and almost always reflect rank, raw political power by special interests. It's hard to see how a sweet experiment could stand up to hundreds, if not thousands, of years of lawmaking.
On the other hand, there have been good laws and programs created at some point in the last thousand years.
STATE BLOGS
It's a good day to blog broadband with Senator Durbin, who will be coming onto the site at 7pm tonight. Yesterday was the Youtube/CNN debate where citizens had input into the process. And this morning at 9:30am, 
