Kyle McSlarrow, President & CEO of NCTA, recently sat down for a chat with Nate Anderson of Ars Technica. Anderson has written about that conversation today in a post entitled
Cable: let us experiment with metered Internet.

First up, they discuss the issue of caps & metering, which was in the news last month.

McSlarrow doesn’t defend any model; he’s not even partial to metering, having happily lived under flat-rate plans himself for many years. He also won’t defend particular business plans, like those advanced by Time Warner Cable. But what he will defend is cable’s right to experiment.

“I’ve lived under a flat rate plan,” he said, “but I don’t assume… that’s it’s necessarily impossible to believe that you could have a different model in the future.”

That means experimentation, and lots of it, done in the most transparent well with full input from consumers. Without even doing the tests, McSlarrow says there’s simply no way to know whether certain business models will work better than others.

As usage increases over time, McSlarrow says that eventually something will have to be done to handle capacity issues.

“As demand goes in a certain direction,” he says, “someone’s going to have to build a network” to deal with “not just instantaneous peak but, more importantly, average peak usage. The whole point is to do it in a way, and to serve your customers in a way, that they have a great experience. If you fail on the network side to do that, particularly with our shared network, that’s a real problem.”

You can read the whole thing here.

Just met with Robert Scoble of fast company.tv . . . fun to meet with one of the leading bloggers in the tech sphere, and we both agreed that more conversations between those of us who do Washington policy work and those who do (and write about) technology should take place.  We covered the usual suspects . . . net neutrality, media and first amendment issues etc.  And we talked about how technology has changed, not just since we were teenagers but in the last five years, and what’s coming down the road.  My basic pitch:  the trend of the last 10 years is that consumers have more competition and more choice than ever before, and it is not likely that trend would continue with more government regulation.

NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow will participate in a National Press Club “Newsmaker” Media Briefing today at noon (ET).

In his address, entitled “Cable’s Broadband Platform: Innovation for the Consumer,” he is expected to challenge the notion that there is a rivalry between innovation taking place at the edge of or in the network. In contrast, he will discuss the notion of an interactive “Internet ecosystem.” He will also discuss new developments in tru2way.

His speech will be webcast through this link [Archive available at this link for 6 months].

UPDATE: It’s also being streamed at C-SPAN’s site. The text of the speech has been posted at NCTA’s website.

On Tuesday, NCTA filed a Petition for Stay pending its appeal of an order of the FCC entitled Exclusive Service Contracts for Provision of Video Services in Multiple Dwelling Units and Other Real Estate Developments.

As described in the Multichannel News article by Ted Hearn:

NCTA sought a stay in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on one key issue: the FCC’s decision to apply the ban to existing contracts, not just to future deals, between cable operators and the owners of multiple dwelling units (MDUs.).

You can find NCTA’s filing on our website. There’s another article on this action at Light Reading. And you can read the Oct. 29 article in the NY Times that kicked this whole thing off: F.C.C. Set to End Sole Cable Deals for Apartments.

UPDATE: Apartment owners appeal FCC decision banning exclusive cable contracts.

Now the National Multi Housing Council and National Apartment Association who represent the owners of many of these buildings are challenging the ruling in the U.S. District Court of Appeals’ District of Columbia division. The complaint alleges that the ruling exceeds FCC authority and is “arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, unsupported by substantial evidence.”

And a Dow Jones story on NCTA’s filing as well.

In addition to the earlier CES panel on the DTV Transition (which had focused on the coupon program and retailers), there was another session later that afternoon entitled “Goodbye Analog Hello DTV” which examined current educational efforts to get the public ready for the big change.

The panel started with remarks from Meredith A. Baker, Acting Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information, National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), outlining how the Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program is going so far. She indicated that consumers can expect to start receiving their coupons in late February and also said that of people contacting NTIA for information on the program, 74% were using the website and 26% were using the phone number.

Then a discussion followed, with moderator Jason Oxman, Vice President, Communications and Member Relations, Consumer Electronics Association; and a panel made up of members of the DTV Transition Coalition: Debra Berlyn, President, Consumer Policy Solutions, Federal Affairs Consultant, AARP; Jonathan Collegio, Vice President, Digital Television Transition, National Association of Broadcasters; Catherine Seidel, Chief, Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau, Federal Communications Commission; Rob Stoddard, Senior Vice President, Communications and Public Affairs, National Cable & Telecommunications Association; and Tony Wilhelm, Director, Consumer Education and Public Information Television Converter Coupon Program, NTIA (panel pictured in order, from left to right).

Everyone painted a very positive picture of how education efforts have been going so far, but there were a couple of key takeaways. The panel said that the measure of success is in terms of awareness, not response. As Seidel said, “Some people do get the message, but don’t act.” Collegio warned that for consumers who wait until the last minute to get a converter, there will be a lag until they get their coupon which may mean some people will be left out on February 17, 2009.

Berlyn said that AARP was particularly concerned about groups like seniors, minorities, non-English speaking households, disabled persons, and those living in rural and tribal areas. She also said there was concern about consumers knowing how to connect the converters once they obtain them and suggested that local community groups such as Meals on Wheels may be useful in working directly with consumers.

NTIA is focused on over-the-air population, said Wilhelm. Households that don’t get television via cable or satellite are most in need of information about the Transition. The key questions are where these people are to be found and where the key markets are. For example, Wilhelm noted that Los Angeles is the #1 over-the-air market and that along the Mexican border, there are a larger number of over-the-air households. Coupon requests will allow NTIA to track the consumer response and make mid-course corrections.

The initial stages of education efforts seem to be effective, with consumers’ questions evolving over time and becoming action-oriented. As Stoddard noted, there is a need for “articulate communication” which helps people understand when they need to do something and when they don’t.

For more on cable’s education initiative, visit our Get Ready for Digital TV site (also available en Español).