The WSJ’s Digits blog offered an accounting of the panel:

Panelist Josh Silver, the executive director and co-founder of Free Press, a media advocacy organization, ripped into his co-panelists, who represented the wireless and telecommunications industries.

He accused them of price-gauging Americans on Internet service and monopolizing the industry rather than engaging in competitiveness and helping provide affordable access to the poor. “We’re looking at industries which are protecting a very lucrative business model, and there are starting to be increasing numbers of people at the gates understanding that the ISP market should be competitive,” Mr. Silver said.

It was a very spirited discussion.

Let me quote a few notable remarks on Twitter:

@mikemathieu: AT&T and cable industry reps wriggling on stage as Josh Silver points out price protection schemes of broadband providers.
@zbrisson: One of the best things of the day, Silver from free press calling the cable companies out for their oligarchic greed.
@abenamer: josh silver points out that the lack of competition with the cable and telephone duopoly keeps prices artificially high
@jonathanpberger: The hatred for ATT & Cable co.’s is palpable. The people want blood.

Tough crowd.

Among James Assey’s comments, he pointed out that companies are investing significantly in infrastructure, which will encourage faster speeds. As he put it, “We’re leaning forward to the future.” As we’ve said many times, the cable industry along has invested well over $100 billion since 1996. Assey also noted that there is competition in the broadband marketplace; however, it costs a lot to build & maintain robust broadband networks and private capital is generally required. He also pointed to a recent Pew report (Home Broadband Adoption 2009) that found that value & utility beat availability & price when it comes to why respondents did or did not take broadband.

This national discussion of America’s broadband future is important and we’re committed to taking part in the conversation. We look forward to other events like PDF as the process moves forward.

PDF explores how we, as a society, are changing the way we interact with issue advocacy and candidate campaigns as well as our governemnt.

If you’re interested, use Twitter Search to follow the discussion.  You can find a full program and schedule for the panels at PersonalDemocracy.com

The main takeaway from today’s briefing is that Comcast and Time Warner will begin a trial to provide 5,000 Comcast customers access to cable programming (TBS and TNT for now) on a platform (the computer screen) where it wasn’t previously available, for no additional charge.  It is no more complicated than that.

The primary details released today include a set of principles that the companies agreed to:

• Bring more TV content, more easily to more people across platforms.
• Video subscribers can watch programming from their favorite TV networks online for no additional charge.
• Video subscribers can access this content using any broadband connection.
• Programmers should make their best and highest-rated programming available online.
• Both networks and video distributors should provide high-quality, consumer-friendly sites for viewing broadband content with easy authentication.
• A new process should be created to measure ratings for online viewing. The goal should be to extend the current viewer measurement system to include advertiser ratings for TV content viewed on all platforms.
• TV Everywhere is open and non-exclusive; cable, satellite or telco video distributors can enter into similar agreements with other programmers.

You can check out this story from CNET’s Marguerite Reardon – Comcast and Time Warner team up to deliver TV online – for a complete recap.

More details about the trial will undoubtedly be forthcoming, but the immediate knee-jerk negativity by some in the blogosphere was not only predictable, but uninformed.

But thankfully, there are also some more reasoned voices weighing in that recognize the potential of this announcement to bring real benefits to consumers by offering them access to more content in more places.  Will Richmond from VideoNuze boldly declares:

Despite what some skeptics say, consumers also stand to gain.  All that great cable programming that’s been locked to the set-top box in the home would now be available online. It sort of like cable’s version of on demand Sling, but without any upfront or monthly charge (at least that’s what we’re hearing for now).

Richmond takes a more rational view that this model is one that benefits both programmers and consumers, but they still need to work out some of the technical issues:

Comcast and Time Warner are taking a solid step forward in delivering more value to their subscribers who increasingly live their lives online. Now they need to tamp down the hype and just focus on executing in a logical, user-friendly way.

The rest of Richmond’s post is available here and he also aptly highlights some of the challenges that this trial will face including the necessary business model issues that the free lunch crowd tend to ignore.

The study notes that now, “63% of adult Americans now have broadband internet connections at home, a 15% increases from a year earlier.” That is up from 54 percent in 2007.

In addition, Pew’s study also looked at specific populations, like seniors, rural Americans and lower income households. Some key statistics from the report include:

• “Respondents reporting that they live in homes with annual household incomes below $30,000 experienced a 34% growth in home broadband adoption from 2008 to 2009.”
• “Broadband usage among adults ages 65 or older grew from 19% in May, 2008 to 30% in April, 2009.”
• “Adults living in rural America had home high-speed usage grow from 8% in 2008 to 46% in 2009.”

The broadband adoption numbers have definitely moved upwards in recent years and we should take a moment to applaud this progress. At the same time, there is still work to be done. We should ensure that all American households have access to some kind of broadband connection.

Broadband can be engine of job creation, a facilitator of educational and health care opportunities, and a means of shrinking the distances between isolated communities. Yet, without access, some folks are left behind.

This is why a broadband stimulus package (part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) is so important. The stats demonstrate while broadband usage is going up, there is still a clear need to increase broadband adoption and use.

How these stimulus grant funds are used is critical. Earlier this year, we laid out a few ideas on how program should be structured around the following priorities:

1. Extending broadband facilities to unserved areas.
2. Supporting programs that enable underserved populations to acquire and to make effective use of broadband service where it is already available.
3. If funds remain, extending broadband facilities to underserved areas defined in terms of below-standard speed and other qualitative measures relative to today’s current-generation broadband services.

We’ve talked about the broadband stimulus package several times of the past few months. A white paper we released back in March provides our perspective on how funds should be implemented. And NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow shares his thought on this issue in this video. We also posted a White Paper from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about the impact of broadband on senior citizens.

Cable industry customer care professionals reported only marginally-higher levels of consumer phone calls to cable call centers.  They said that while call volume was up on Friday and Saturday, it had begun to tail-off on Sunday and was returning to close to normal levels by mid-day Monday.

We don’t think the transition is “over” yet, probably for millions of Americans.  Broadcast stations in many markets are working now to adjust technical parameters and “ease in” to their new frequencies and digital formats.  Hundreds of thousands of Americans are still waiting to receive government discount coupons for over-the-air converter boxes – in order to retrofit their analog TV sets for over-the-air reception – so they’ll still be installing hardware, hooking up boxes, and evaluating reception of their new digital pictures for some time to come.  Likewise, some over-the air households may still reach out to cable companies, or our satellite and telephone company competitors, in order to sign up for multichannel video service…which we still think is a good option for any consumer who wants to see broadcast television on an analog set.  As an industry, we’ll need to stay vigilant as the transition winds down, to ensure that our customers and other consumers get the most from their cable service.

If there’s any lesson to be learned from the DTV Transition of 2009…it’s that preparation pays off.  It was probably helpful when the President and Congress pushed the culminating transition date from February to June, and we appreciate what the FCC did to coordinate the activities of the many disparate stakeholders in the transition.  But even before that time, we believe the quarter-of-a-billion-dollar investment the cable industry made in consumer education for cable customers starting in 2007 – paired with the billion dollars of commercial airtime that the broadcasting industry kicked in for public service advertising – raised awareness of the transition to virtually universal levels and gave consumers some clues about how to get ready.  Our industry-wide contribution of call center support for the FCC from February through April 2009 not only helped fill the gap in meeting the need for consumer response efforts; it too became a consumer education tool and helped our own companies better understand the questions on the minds of consumers as the transition played out.  And the low-cost digital basic tiers that some of our companies rolled out also have proven to be a great way to introduce over-the-air viewers to multichannel video while serving the public good by helping local broadcast stations preserve their base of viewers.

Despite any hiccups, the effort to prepare American consumers for the age of digital broadcasting is likely to be remembered as a healthy public-private partnership that brought together both collaborators and competitors in a common cause.

Cable’s DTV “war room” operation has been under way since Thursday, featuring daily conference calls with more than 100 cable executives around the country, constant electronic communications with those executives, daily conference calls with FCC officials, and regular communications with representatives of the broadcasting and consumer electronics industries.  All of these outreach efforts turned up remarkably few problems.

Broadcast stations in a handful of markets had lost their digital signal, or were forced to reduce the power of their new digital transmission.  As we reported on Friday, this created some challenges for cable engineers in those markets who had to work hard to obtain and keep those signals up and running on cable systems.  As of the time of this writing, a very small number of broadcast stations are still having transmission problems, meaning that some of them can’t be carried by cable systems until the problems are fixed.  In all of those cases, broadcasting and cable engineers are collaborating closely to ensure continued cable carriage of the signals.  And the vast majority of issues that arose over the weekend were resolved within a matter of hours.

As far as we can tell, cable customer care has been largely unaffected by the transition as well.  A few cable call centers reported small “spikes” in call volumes this weekend at times when broadcast transmissions may have failed.  But as broadcast signals have been restored in most of those areas, call volumes have returned to normal.

We’re continuing to work with the FCC and to keep a close eye on all developments.  We’d appreciate knowing of any issues you’ve come across…or hearing any comment you might have about the course of the broadcasters’ DTV transition.

If you put aside time zones and look just at “dayparts,” here are the number of stations and time of day they told the FCC they would switch off their analog signals:

• midnight to 6:00 a.m. -   186 stations
• 6 a.m. to 12 noon - 239stations
• 12 noon to 6:00 p.m. -  155 stations
• 6 p.m. to midnight - 391 stations

All things considered, the turn-off of analog seems to be going as well as could be hoped. Cable personnel in the field have reported technical issues for about 15 broadcast stations, in markets within states including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, and West Virginia.

In most of these cases, the issues involved broadcast signals temporarily going off the air – where analog has been turned off but for some reason the digital transmission has failed. We think there has been only a minimal impact on cable subscribers. In some cases, the same broadcast stations are delivering their signals to cable “headends” through a fiber line, so even if there’s a problem with over the air transmission, the station’s signal is still getting to cable subscribers. In cases in which signals have gone down, but where that fiber feed may not be available, cable customers along with over the air viewers have temporarily lost access to those broadcast signals.

Broadcast and cable engineers have been quick to pounce on those problems, however, and most of them have been resolved in a matter of hours.

We’re keeping a close eye on the situation through a contingent of dozens of cable executives at corporate and field-based locations.  Cable execs are trading email updates with an extensive list of colleagues around the country.  Those same people are jumping on conference calls once a day to compare notes.  We are talking regularly with FCC officials, both by email and conference calls.  And we’re regularly exchanging information with our counterparts at trade associations representing broadcasters and consumer electronics manufacturers.

That same regimen will be up and running through the course of the weekend as well, so we’ll continue to post on developments as they occur.  We’d be interested in knowing any of your experiences as well, so please comment away.

This has not been the traditional province of cable operators, who have typically provided services to homes and businesses. But that’s been changing recently as operators look to provide community Wi-Fi.

Last September, Cablevision began deploying thousands of Wi-Fi access points in its Long Island, Connecticut, Westchester/Dutchess and New Jersey service areas. Subscribers to Cablevision’s Optimum Online high-speed Internet service can then connect to at no additional cost. “Optimum WiFi” is located in “high-traffic and commercial locations like downtown areas, parks and other outdoor locations,” as well as “hundreds of commuter rail platforms and station parking lots.”

(I’m constantly whipping out my iPod Touch to check for Wi-Fi and I’ve found Optimum hotspots in strip malls in Long Island.)

Yesterday, Cablevision announced “its Optimum Online customers have accessed the Internet more than two million times for free over Optimum WiFi, and are averaging more than one million minutes online per day.”  Plans call for the Optimum WiFi network to be completely deployed throughout its New York-Connecticut-New Jersey footprint by early next year.

Earlier this week, a similar service was announced out west in Oregon. BendBroadband announced plans to provide wi-fi access to their high-speed Internet customers at major public parks, the Deschutes County Fairgrounds, the Les Schwab Amphitheater and other popular locations in Bend, Redmond and Sisters.

Detailed information on Optimum WiFi and interactive network coverage maps are available online at www.optimumwifi.com. Residents of Central Oregon can cast their vote for additional Wi-Fi locations at www.bendbroadband.com.

The first launch was in the Twin Cities market in April of 2008. Since then, it’s been popping up all over America: Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, Indiana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York.

Now, Washington, DC will also be benefiting from more robust bandwidth. In May, Cox deployed its Ultimate Internet service to residential and business customers in Northern Virginia. Today, Comcast announced that its Extreme 50 service will be launched in the DC Metro area. The service is first being offered in the Anacostia neighborhood, with the entire area expected to have wideband by year’s end. Most existing high-speed Internet customers will see their speeds double for no additional cost.

Now that cable is the broadband leader in Our Nation’s Capitol, you can look for continued wideband deployment by operators all over the country. Stay tuned!

In exactly one week, the rest of the nation’s full power, OTA stations will make complete the transition, capping an effort that began many years ago.  The transition has not been without its challenges, but it represents the culmination of a lot of hard work by broadcasters, consumer electronics companies, subscription television services, and government at every level.  Cable, for its part, has contributed hundreds of millions in advertising to educate consumers on about the transition and so they will continue receiving signals next week.

We have also coordinated efforts between cable engineers and MSTV - the group representing broadcast engineers - to limit any technical problems.  That effort began over a year ago and identified issues early on that might have impacted the transition.  When the first stations moved from analog to digital in February, NCTA Science & Technology office  staffed a “war room” to give cable engineers an opportunity to report on activities in the field. We exchanged information with MSTV to address issues as they arose and in virtually all of such cases, the impact on cable carriage of the broadcast signal in question was minimal, with any problems being resolved in a matter of hours.

In addition, as Kyle McSlarrow noted Wednesday in his remarks before the FCC, cable also initially organized the DTV call center operation and contributed significant sums in cash grants to community groups to educate their constituents or assist them.  In addition, we placed tens of thousands of dollars in advertisements to reach at-risk groups with information.

Cable has gone beyond the call to ensure every American, not just our customers, is aware of, and is ready for transition.  We did this because we realize the transition is an important milestone for our country and we want it to be a success.  Our industry has worked tirelessly and with every level of government to guarantee that next week’s switch goes as smoothly as possible.

Should you, or anyone you know have questions or concerns about the switch, call 1-888-CALLFCC (1-888-225-5322).  The DTV hotline will be able to assist you.