The good news is that we have significant research which shows why these households haven’t yet subscribed.  In some cases, challenges in reaching these homes have been facilities-based – finding new and innovative ways of getting broadband service to rural and remote areas.

But in many other cases, as Pew Research and other firms have pointed out, the challenges involve “barriers to adoption,” namely, the availability of affordable computers, digital and technical literacy, an understanding of the relevance of broadband service, or the ability to afford the service itself (For further details, see the FCC paper entitled "Broadband Adoption and Use in America.").

We’ve been concerned about these issues for a long time.  Cable ISPs have invested heavily in building out their networks, making broadband service available to 92% of American households.  We’ve also focused on elements of digital literacy to help families better understand how to manage the content coming into their homes.  And, we are sensitive to the affordability of broadband service.  Many cable ISPs have established tiers of broadband service which allow subscribers to buy whatever level of service makes the most sense for them.

Broadband access for the two-thirds of American households that have it wouldn’t have been possible without the leadership of the private sector.  So we strongly agree with the Plan that one of the best ways to help connect more homes is through partnerships in which both the government and private industry bring something to the table.

Last December, after consultation with federal policy makers and other stakeholders, we proposed the Adoption Plus (“A+”) initiative.  A+ is a proposed two-year, public-private partnership.  It’s designed to promote sustainable broadband adoption for a vitally important population, middle school-aged children in low income households that don’t currently subscribe to broadband service.  Under the proposal, cable ISPs are prepared to offer deeply discounted broadband service and equipment, in partnership with schools, companies, and digital literacy groups that could help provide – to households where students qualify for free or reduced school meals – a package of affordable hardware and software, and training in digital literacy (See more in this previous post.).

Our strong interest in this kind of collaborative approach is why we’re happy to participate in a new pilot program that includes broadband ISPs, computer technology companies, nonprofits and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to help bring broadband service to low-income homes around the country.

Under the leadership of One Economy, a global nonprofit committed to stimulating broadband adoption efforts in the neediest households, several parties have jointly filed an application to the National Telecommunications & Information Administration for funding through the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.  The coalition will work with HUD to increase broadband adoption efforts in public housing and multi-family assisted communities. If the stimulus application is approved, federal funding – combined with actual and in-kind contributions from the various members of the coalition – would help bring broadband service to families in up to 250,000 government-supported housing units nationwide.  This target group encompasses many of the same families we propose to reach with the Adoption Plus proposal.

The coalition built around this HUD initiative comprises a unique collection of seemingly strange bedfellows.  There are the non-profits – One Economy and Connected Nation.  There are the hardware and software manufacturers – Intel, Dell, and Microsoft.  Telco ISP AT&T is involved in supporting the application, as are 14 of our member companies – BendBroadband; Bresnan Communications; Bright House Networks; Cablevision Systems Corp.; Charter Communications; Comcast; Cox Communications; Eagle Communications, Inc.; Mediacom Communications Corp.; Midcontinent Communications; Sjoberg’s Cable TV; Suddenlink Communications; Time Warner Cable; and US Cable Group, covering some 85%  of households across the country. Two trade associations – NCTA and USTelecom – also are in the mix.

The concept is simple.  Each entity involved in the initiative plays to its strengths in helping low-income families overcome barriers to adoption.  HUD will identify eligible households for the service.  The computer companies provide affordable hardware – which would be partly subsidized by the stimulus funding – and software, to help make families broadband-ready.  The nonprofits then provide training in digital skills and literacy, to families that are new to broadband.  And once these pieces are in place, the ISPs would offer deep discounts on broadband service, reduced-price or free modems, and free standard installation.

If you have read the Broadband Plan or its executive summary, the rationale behind this coalition may sound familiar.  The Plan highlighted the importance of creating, “public-private partnerships of hardware manufacturers, software companies, broadband service providers, and digital literacy training partners to improve broadband adoption and utilization by working with federal agencies already serving non-adopting communities.”

We think that with the formation of this coalition, and our ongoing efforts around Adoption Plus, we have hit the mark.

Our sister organization Cable in the Classroom, the U.S. cable industry’s education foundation, is dedicated to this mission: To foster the use of cable content and technology to expand and enhance learning for children and youth nationwide.

A few years ago, CIC launched the Leaders in Learning Awards (LIL) in order to recognize outstanding educators, administrators, policymakers and other community leaders at the forefront of innovation in education.

There are profiles of this year’s winners on here; there is a short video and an audio interview on each winner.

All of which is simply prelude to announcing that the application process has opened for the 2009 LIL Awards. LIL winners – who typically represent a national cross-section of cable systems, programming services, schools and other educational institutions – are recognized annually in Washington, D.C., at the annual Leaders in Learning Awards Gala, scheduled for June 10, 2009. Winners receive a $3,000 cash stipend, an all-expense-paid trip to D.C., and the chance to visit with Members of Congress and other federal officials.

The application period will expire on Wednesday, December 17, 2008. If you know of a deserving educator, administrator, public official, or community leader at any level, in all disciplines, and in all kinds of learning settings, then suggest that they enter.

Enjoy!

• Proposals to create a fund tailored to expanding broadband into unserved areas.
• The Broadband Data Improvement Act which would improve federal data collection regarding where broadband services have been deployed in the United States to achieve the goal of ubiquitous broadband availability for all Americans.
• Tax credits or other tax incentives to providers that build out in rural areas that are unserved by an existing broadband provider.
• Reform of the RUS broadband loan program so that funding is targeted specifically to unserved areas.
• Expansion of the FCC’s Lifeline and Link-Up Programs to help ensure that broadband access is extended to low-income households.
• Public-private partnerships to provide broadband in unserved areas.

We recognize that the government can play an important role in making certain that the economic and social benefits of broadband connectivity are extended to all areas of this country. While broadband deployment to every community in America merits the full attention of policymakers, legislation calling for “network neutrality” or government intervention into the operation of networks would undermine the goals of broadband deployment and adoption.

The government’s consistent light regulatory touch since the introduction of broadband has worked. Only that continued regulatory freedom is likely to spur the investment and innovation that consumers have come to expect.

The cable industry is on the verge of making the leap — from “broadband” to “wideband” — with a technology which can enable dramatically higher download and upload speeds. Several weeks ago, for example, Comcast launched a “wideband” service in Minneapolis-St. Paul that offers speeds of 50 Megabits per second. Comcast expects to have wideband available to 20% of its systems by year-end 2008 and to all homes passed by mid 2010.

The efforts of broadband network providers to build larger and faster networks have helped ensure the success of countless numbers of new Internet businesses and applications. Despite concerns about alleged limited access to broadband, use of Internet video on demand has grown at the most dramatic rate. In February 2008, nearly 135 million U.S. Internet users spent an average of 204 minutes viewing 10.1 billion online videos. YouTube represented 34% of those online videos, or nearly 3.5 billion.

For years, net neutrality proponents have argued that without government intervention, broadband providers would stifle competing services and content providers; Internet development and usage would stagnate; and consumers would be unable to use their broadband connections to download video or access other emerging applications. In fact, cable’s investment in broadband has driven innovation and investment in new content and applications at the edge — the exact opposite of what was predicted by advocates of net regulation.

There is no better proof than YouTube. YouTube would have been a pipe dream in 2002. Six years later, however, YouTube — the proverbial “two guys in a garage” who allegedly could not survive, let alone thrive, unless the Internet was regulated — has become a multi-billion dollar enterprise. In 2006, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet consumed in the year 2000.

Here’s an incontrovertible truth: the staggering growth of these companies would not have occurred without cable’s investment in and deployment of the reliable high-speed broadband service that provides the ecosystem in which Google, YouTube, Yahoo! and other Internet services flourish.

In 2006, I testified before the Senate Commerce committee and stated that cable operators do not and would not block subscribers’ access to any lawful content, applications or services. That statement remains true today.

Cable modem subscribers have the ability to do anything they want to on the Internet. They can download or stream videos, upload and send pictures to friends, or call family across the world. They can also attach gaming devices, or any other computing device they want to use to the network. They can use file-sharing software from peer-to-peer networks. If they couldn’t do what they wanted, they would soon not be cable modem subscribers. They would go to our competitors.

Cable providers built a smart infrastructure that has the capability to evolve and meet the challenges of multimedia, file sharing, and other bandwidth-intensive applications. Cable broadband subscribers currently enjoy the full benefits of broadband because cable operators manage their networks on a content-agnostic basis to provide seamless connectivity, deter spam and viruses, and make sure that a tiny minority of users don’t slow down the Internet for everyone else.

Various estimates are that as few as 5% of customers use from 50 to 90% of the total capacity of the network. In Japan, it is estimated that 1% of Internet users consume 47% of the total Internet traffic.

There have been some recent concerns that network management practices affecting certain high-bandwidth-consuming peer-to-peer (P2P) applications are “discriminatory.” P2P traffic can consume a disproportionately large amount of network resources — far, far more than any other Internet use. If even a small fraction of customers are using these bandwidth-intensive applications at the same time, it can interfere with the ability of the vast majority of all other customers in that area to surf the web, watch streaming video, make voice-over-IP calls, or engage in other routine uses of the Internet.

Providers can’t build their way out of this problem — in spite of increasing capacity, many P2P protocols are written specifically to commandeer as much bandwidth as is available. Instead, providers optimize their networks in order to balance the needs of all of their customers.

Far from inhibiting access, smart network techniques protect the ability of our customers to make the greatest and most flexible use of the Internet. They are a reasonable response to an identified congestion problem that has the benefit of allowing all other applications – particularly latency sensitive applications like VoIP and streaming video — to work better.

As the Institute for Policy Innovation recently stated, “[i]n almost all cases, network management today is unnoticed by consumers. The opposite, a total lack of management, would not be true. If network operators were precluded from managing their networks, consumers would be negatively affected.”

Far from being “neutral,” a network that is not managed simply allows those who want to demand all the bandwidth for themselves to do so unchecked.

Some P2P developers are creating new ways to make that technology more bandwidth efficient and network-friendly, so that it may continue to emerge as a useful way to distribute legal content. Cable companies and other broadband providers are working hard to find ways to address concerns about network congestion and create consumer-friendly options that allow the majority of users to access content at the speeds needed. The “P4P Working Group” – a collaborative industry effort to develop network management solutions that benefit cable and other broadband operators, P2P software firms, and consumers — is one such effort.

Broadband providers have also begun testing and dialogue with P2P applications providers to make networks and P2P applications friendlier to one another. Just last week, Comcast and Pando Networks, a P2P software developer, announced their intention to lead an industry-wide effort to create a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.” Comcast and BitTorrent recently reached an agreement in which Comcast pledged to adopt a capacity management technique based on individual users’ consumption during peak periods rather than based on a particular protocol.

Under the guise of preventing discrimination, “net neutrality” proponents would have the government determine which network management techniques are permissible. Putting every network management strategy up for debate before regulators would severely hamper the ability of network providers to ensure high-quality and reliable Internet access for their subscribers. Depriving network operators of certain bandwidth management tools only makes the network less efficient for everyone. Adept network optimization techniques are fundamental to creating and preserving the stable “ecosystem” for online service providers that ensures an optimal customer experience.

Misplaced concerns over legitimate and reasonable network management practices do not justify the enactment of open-ended regulation of the Internet, particularly where the costs of such regulation are foreseeable and substantial. Given the growth of broadband competition and the breathtaking pace of technological change, government intervention is unwarranted. As the Federal Trade Commission has warned, regulation of Internet access at this stage of market development could have “potentially adverse and unintended effects,” including reduced product and service innovation.

Congress should resist calls to interfere with broadband providers’ freedom to manage their respective networks in order to satisfy the evolving needs of American consumers. The disaster scenarios voiced by network neutrality proponents for many years have never happened. In fact, the opposite has happened — the Internet is booming without regulation. There is quite simply no problem requiring a government solution.

Today’s hands-off policy has given us the flexibility to innovate and respond to consumer demand. By contrast, proposals for “net neutrality” amount to regulation of the Internet that would undermine — not promote – consumer choice and welfare.

In other news, the DTV Transition Coalition, of which NCTA is a founding member, put out a media release on Friday pointing out their tremendous growth in membership. It’s a long and varied list that includes “consumer groups, broadcast, cable and consumer electronics companies, retailers, civil rights and grassroots organizations, trade associations, and state and local government organizations.”

The study drilled in on two influential groups – future shapers and future makers, who collectively represent 30% of consumers. Most people these days have heard of early adopters, a term created by Geoffrey A. Moore in his book Crossing the Chasm, which discussed the gap that exists between those consumers who will adopt new tech products and services early in their lifecycle and the “early majority” users, who are pragmatists and will wait longer.

A Light Reading article on the study explains their significance:

…future shapers (10 percent) are the early adopters of technology who readily spread the word and whose opinions are sought out. Future makers (20 percent) are second stage adopters who will tout the benefits of new technologies. The largest group of consumers is classified as today consumers (40 percent) who wait until technologies are proven before adopting them.

(For more on the significance of influencers, see Malcolm Gladwell’s classic The Tipping Point.)

The CTAM study, Future Shapers and Makers: An Examination of Consumer Segments, conducted by TNS Media & Entertainment, found:

Almost half of today’s technology influencers are choosing television service provided by their cable company over a satellite or telephone company provider. Forty-six percent of technology’s earliest adopters choose cable, while 26 percent chose satellite and 2 percent chose to receive video services from their telephone service provider.

From the article in Multichannel News:

Doing their homework is what sets the future shapers and future makers apart. According to the survey, 67% of future shapers and 59% of future makers are likely to get information about TV services from the Internet, compared to 45% of today’s consumers. The two influencer groups are also more likely than others to obtain information from TV, newspapers, and magazines.

According to the survey, 89% of consumers are concerned primarily with the reliability of the provider, over price

In addition, the study examined the trend in watching video on alternative platforms, such as laptops, portable DVD players or devices like iPods or iPhones. The study found that 37% choose a desktop computer or laptop as their preferred method. You won’t be surprised to learn that younger consumers are most likely to watch programming online, coming in over 50% greater in their tendency to watch video on desktop computers or laptops.

UPDATE: Along these lines, it’s probably worth pointing out another study that came out this week.

In a study conducted by Canadian research firm Solutions Research Group, nearly 80 million Americans, or 43% of the online population, watched a TV show on the Internet, as of November, up from 25% a year ago.

You can read the press release on the Digital Life America study here.

Why the name change?

The tru2way brand was developed by the global brand consulting firm Siegel + Gale, in consultation with the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), and marketing and technology representatives of a variety of major cable providers.

Which basically means that, based on talking with consumers, it was felt that a new name would help with branding. Manufacturers can then make products under that name.

For example: Panasonic and Comcast Announce Products With Tru2way(TM) Technology. Specifically, this means that you’ll be able to soon be able to get a portable DVR which you can take on the road, watching those TV shows you recorded.

In an effort to ensure those analog TVs will work after the transition, the government created a coupon program that will allow consumers to purchase low-cost converter boxes that will convert the digital signal to analog for older TVs.

33.5 million coupons will be made available and each is good for $40 towards the purchase of a coupon-eligible converter box. These converter boxes are expected to cost between $40 and $70. Two-thirds are available to every household. One-third will be reserved solely for OTA households. Each household may request up to two coupons.

The application process to request a coupon began last week with coupon distribution beginning February 17. So far the response has been strong with 1.1 million requests for 2 million coupons having been received so far.

Last day to request is 3/31/09 (that date is correct and assumes some people will wake up next February with TVs that don’t receive a signal. Coupons can be requested through March of next year and will be accepted through July 9, 2009.

For a list of eligible converter boxes and participating retailers, visit www.ntiadtv.gov or www.dtv2009.gov.

For more information about the digital transition, you can visit www.dtvtransition.org.