The folks at Cisco (an NCTA member) have put together a fun little game that lets you build your own ISP.  Starting in 1990, your dial-up internet company has to attract customers, make money, invest in new technologies, and remain profitable.  If you do it well, you’ll progress through the years and become a broadband innovator.

If you’re a tech/telecom junkie like me, you’ll find this very addictive.  If you can make it through the 1990s, please drop us a note in the comments and let us know.

We at NCTA have been using Twitter for about a year and a half to provide updates on our blog content, to promote the Cable Show, and for conversation with and commentary by our CEO Kyle McSlarrow. We’re pleased to see the FCC adopting Twitter and welcome them to this vibrant online discussion.

The FCC account already has over 1,000 followers, and we’re a few of them.  The Internet provides a healthy forum for telecom policy discussion and debate. The number of followers they’ve already amassed indicates the interest level for that dialog.  To welcome them to Twitter, and to share some of our favorites with you, we thought we’d put together a list of our favorite follows.  These are in no particular order, they’re just good content from some very engaging viewpoints.

• @Normative – Julian Sanchez is the Washington Editor for Ars Technica. He covers politics, technology, and even comic books.
• @RobPegoraro – Rob has been critical of cable in the past, but he always brings a fresh perspective to technology. While he styles himself as a local reporter covering the DC area, he has attracted an audience much larger in scope.
• @BlankBaby – Scott McNulty recently took the helm of Comcast Voices – the company’s corporate blog. The blog provides the perspective of the nation’s largest cable provider. Prior to joining Comcast, McNulty was a prolific contributor to The Unofficial Apple Weblog
• @KyleMcSlarrow – Even if he wasn’t our boss, we’d have to recommend Kyle. He does, after all, represent the industry that brings voice, video and broadband to more than 63 million American homes.
• @CZ – While Verizon is a competitor, John Czwartacki does a great job handling their social media outreach.
• @msilbey – Mari Silbey writes for ZatzNotFunny and also handles corporate blogging for Motorola at Media Experiences 2 Go.
• @DaveZatz – Dave is the editor and creator of ZatzNotFunny. He also writes for Engadget and PC Magazine.
• @Om – To many readers of tech publications, Om Malik needs no introduction. His blog GigaOm is a must read for the tech and gadget fan.
• @mmasnick – Mike Masnick is the author of TechDirt, a group blog that covers policy and technology as they shape business innovation.
• @SchatzWSJ – Amy Schatz covers telecom policy for the Wall Street Journal. She covers the FCC and Tech policy, so she’s a definite must.
• @ReginaHopper – Regina is the face of NextGenWeb and a prolific Tweeter. Much of her stream is news and information about broadband – a good source for stories you might have missed.
• @SaulHansell – Saul is the editor of the NY Times Bits Blog and covers everything from advertising to pricing and policy.
• @AdamThierer – Adam is the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s technology policy guru.
• @FreePress – We often disagree on the issues, but we always respect their position.  That’s why we follow them.
• @CJSettles – Craig Settles is a telecom industry analyst.
• @mcuban – You may know him as the Dallas Mavericks Owner or former Dancing With the Stars Contestant, but before that, he made his fortune on Internet content and has a lot to say about telecommunications.
• @linkhoe – Assistant Vice President for Internet and Technology at Verizon. An important player in telecom and frequent contributor to Verizon’s policy blog.
• @joseiswriting – Jose Antonio Vargas formerly covered technology and politics for the Washington Post and is now Technology Editor for the Huffington Post.
• @waltmossberg – Walt is the author and creator of the Personal Technology column in the Wall Street Journal and a Contributor to AllThingsD
• @artbrodsky – Art’s another person with whom we often disagree, but he always brings an interesting perspective as an advocate and blogger for Public Knowledge.

These are some of the really interesting voices in telecommunications on Twitter. Our friends at the FCC will learn a lot from them, and we hope you will, too.

Update: We probably should have added this at the start, but if you think we’ve missed someone, please drop a comment and let us know.  We’re always looking for more people to follow.

Much of it is the kind of thing we write about on this blog all the time, such as wideband Internet access based on the DOCSIS 3.0 standard and tru2way sets that don’t require a set-top box. Plus, the media release mentions an “enhanced cordless telephone… with email, IM, text and Yellow Pages.”

You can read coverage of the launch here, here and here. Also, I thought I’d throw a couple photos down below. And Sony Electronics has some more shots on Flickr.

Nvidia GEForce 3d Gaming glasses

Nvidia’s 3D Gaming glasses make any DirectX based PC game a 3D experience. They split the geometry of the game graphics into two channels – right and left – and render them to the glasses. they don’t work with console gaming, though. For console gamers, you’ll need to keep an eye out for my report on 3D TVs on display at CES. They retail at $199.

Creative X-Fi

The Creative X-Fi wireless music system works like the Sonos wireless music system I saw last year but with a significant difference in price.  The small dongle transmitter (indicated by the red arrow) and the receiver (below) retail as a pair for about $150. The speakers shown above actually retail for about $130, and have the built in wireless receiver.

Creative X-Fi receiver

The receiver has standard RCA jacks to allow connection to a home theater or any powered speakers. The transmitter works on a proprietary 2.4 Ghz band, so you don’t need to consume your wi-fi network bandwidth for music.  The included software works on PC or Mac and is compatible with media players like Windows Media and iTunes or Internet music like Last.fm.

inPerson Video Conferencing

The inPerson video conferencing system takes broadband video calling to a new level.  The video feed is customizable based on your connection from 128k to 1MB.  The camera shoots in 640×480, and includes an output jack that be easily attached to a large screen TV.  The unit retails about $800, making it a bit pricey for most consumers.  However, it starts to make video conferencing more affordable for small businesses with multiple offices, or distributed collaboration.

As we look forward to the new year, a new administration, a new Congress, and new policy challenges and opportunities, we’ll continue to take a closer look at the impact of policy changes on cable operators, programmers, and customers.  We’ll also continue looking for ways to get the most out of your cable connection.

Thanks for being with us over the past year.  It has been a lot of fun, and we’ve enjoyed the conversation.  And stick with us over the next few days for the best that CES has to offer.

Today a friend sent a link to a video that illustrates that point beautifully. It’s a spoof of the Fox series 24. Allegedly the ‘long lost’ original pilot made in 1994, the video clearly shows the changes in technology we’ve seen over the period of time that we were building our network. Take a look.

Digital Phone

Consumers now have access to more competition than ever thanks to cable. Digital telephone service provides consumers with a true alternative to standard telephone service. While some cable operators have offered traditional circuit-switched telephone service for years, most are now offering digital phone service. This service often comes as part of a “bundle” where multichannel video, high-speed Internet and voice services are offered as a package and billed in a single invoice, providing a better value and more simplicity for customers.Through the use of software, digital phone service provides all the functionality of the public switched telephone network (PSTN), while making possible new features not available through traditional telephone service, such as Web portals that allows customers to review their calling history or listen to voicemail messages online when away from home. Digital phone service is a revolutionary technology that has the potential to completely change how phone calls are made and how voice services are used.

More Video Choices

Cable’s digital video services generally include hundreds of channels, high definition TV (HDTV), Video-on-Demand (VOD), Digital Video Recorders (DVRs), Interactive Program Guides (IPGs), Enhanced TV services (ETV, including web access), and commercial free, CD-quality music channels. Cable companies are aggressively deploying HDTV nationwide. By March 2007, 100 million U.S. television households were passed by at least one cable system offering HDTV service, which represents all of the top 100 designated market areas (DMAs). Of all DMAs, a total of 209 markets (out of 210) were served by at least one cable system that offers high-definition programming. Local cable systems also were carrying the digital signal of 999 unique broadcast stations in March 2007, nine-and-a-half times the amount in January 2003, when 92 such stations were carried, and national cable program networks currently offer 66 channels in high definition.

Lightning Fast Internet

Cable’s hybrid fiber-coaxial infrastructure provides 35.6 million cable modem customers with high-speed access to the Internet. With downloads speeds reaching up to 50 Mbps, cable’s broadband can’t be touched by the telco’s DSL offering and other services from the phone companies are only available in very limited areas. The cable industry also has developed standards to make interoperable, nonproprietary cable modems available through retail stores.

Competition Works. Consumers Win.

Competition has provided consumers with more choice, and more savings. Cable competes every day for voice, video and broadband customers. We take the competitive marketplace seriously which explains why we have the most video customers, the most broadband customers, are adding millions of voice customers every year, and in 2007 lead the J.D. Power and Associates customer satisfaction rankings for telephone services in all six US regions.

Because cable competes, you win.

A couple years ago, NCTA created a video to explain cable’s impact on America. Take a look and skip ahead about two minutes in. That image of the phone industry as stodgy is amusing because it was so true. Rotary dials, touch-tone, mobile phones – the pace of these innovations was pretty slow.

But today, consumers are finally enjoying true facilities based competition in local phone service. Cable’s service is reliable plus it offers many of the standard features for a great price. Generally, you get unlimited calls anywhere in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. You get to keep your current home phones, wall jacks and phone number. Many operators include services like Call Waiting, Caller ID, Call Forwarding, Speed Dial, and so on. But you also see features like digital voicemail that can be accessed over the Internet from any location, and new features like Caller ID on the TV are beginning to be introduced in some communities.

How does cable’s digital phone service work?

Cable’s phone service relies on new technology, different from traditional circuit-switched telephone service that uses 100-year old copper wires. Cable’s voice calls are traveling over the same fiber optic lines on your local cable system that are also carrying digital video, high-speed Internet and other services.

Through the use of software, calls from a cable phone household are placed over an IP-based data network and voice is transmitted with data “packets.” You may have heard of some VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone services before, but their IP data packets travel over the public Internet. Cable phone providers are sometimes referred to as being “facilities-based,” since they move IP data packets over their private managed IP networks, offering end-to-end quality of service monitoring, while still interconnecting with the PSTN as necessary.

Bottom line: Consumers have a lot more choices today when it comes to talking to friends and family over the phone. Cable’s phone offering offers a great option for people looking for both useful features and savings.