Archive for January, 2013

As Cox Communications joins Cablevision, Comcast and Time Warner Cable in offering its customers free Wi-Fi Hotspots (Cox just announcing 769 new Hotspots in Northern Virginia), it occurs to us that cable has officially provided well over 100,000 Wi-Fi locations nationwide.

The 19th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards were held last night and continuing their pattern of resounding success at the Golden Globes and the Emmy’s, cable shows took over half of the TV awards given.

Today’s #broaddata comes from Connect2Compete. Knowing how important the Internet is to finding a job, starting a business, and getting an education, Connect2Compete and Cable are finding ways to bring access to families that wouldn’t ordinarily be able to get broadband.

The growth of business and broadband was the featured topic during the panel, “Big Broadband: What Happens when the Psychology of Abundance Confronts Both the Economics of Deployment and the Rules of Regulators” at today’s 9th Annual State of the Net Conference in Washington, DC.

NCTA has been a strong supporter of the major universal service reforms adopted by the FCC in November 2011.  Reforming the universal service regime was an incredibly complex and difficult challenge and the Commission deserves great credit for establishing a long-term path to a modern program that supports broadband only where necessary and that relies on market-based mechanisms to the greatest extent possible.

 State of the Net, the largest information and technology policy conference in the US, starts this upcoming Tuesday, January 22nd. The 2-day event is host to hundreds of Congressional staffers and lawmakers discussing key issues surrounding both the Internet and the business, policy, and security of broadband.

Some interesting 2012 Internet usage statistics have been moving around the blogosphere this week. One that stood out was that North America has the highest Internet penetration of any region in the world.

Of the eleven awards given to television last night at the 70th annual Golden Globes, ten were given to cable shows. Taking most of the awards were premium channels, with Showtime’s Homeland taking three awards, HBO’s Girls with two, and HBO’s TV Movie Game Change with three.

Some of the best stuff we’ve seen at CES has been the tech that works with all types of content, with all manner of IP devices, and with an eye towards integration and collaboration.

Big screens, wide screens, ultra-mega-super-high-definitions screens. Touch screens, smart screens, 100 inch laser screens (laser screens?!). I’m sure it comes as no surprise that so much of what we’re seeing at CES is a newer, faster, brighter, bigger screen that enhances the home TV, computer, and movie experience.

As we at NCTA gear up for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week, we wanted to share that we will be keeping you on top of key show moments related to cable, television, and telecom (and yes – all the cool gadgets) as the show progresses.

When we hosted the first NCTA Connects event last month with Professors Steven Wildman and Daniel Lyons, our goal was to start a discussion about the consumer benefits of broadband usage based pricing.

Professor Steven Wildman, Michigan State University Professor of Information Studies, has been named as the FCC’s newest Chief Economist. In December Wildman spoke at NCTA Connects, a new event series at NCTA which hosts national thought leaders discussing issues that are impacting the media and communications industries.