Brian Roberts, CEO and President of Comcast, took the stage yesterday in the first keynote address to the assembly from a cable company chief in the entire 41-year history of the CES. Riding on the coattails of Monday's keynote by Panasonic President Toshihiro Sakamoto in which the Roberts made a cameo to announce new tru2way devices, Roberts' Tuesday speech highlighted Comcast’s plans for implementation of DOCSIS 3.0 and delivery of more HD content.

"The age of the closed, proprietary set-top box is behind us," said Roberts, who, like others, says open source development must be a priority for the electronics industry. The new tru2way technology will allow consumers to go to a retail store, purchase a new component such as a DVR or set-top, bring it home and plug it in, "and expect it to support all cable interactive services," Roberts said. He reminded the audience that the cable industry learned a great deal about how open-source stimulates innovation and consumer adoption with the development of the cable modem, based on the old DOCSIS standards.

Bill Gates officially launched CES 2008 with a Guitar Hero duel against Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash, yet attendees were most likely more impressed with the product demos in the Microsoft front man’s keynote address. In his final of eight consecutive CES introductions, Gates spoke about how content and software will define what he calls “the Next Digital Decade,” and showed off new levels of device interconnectivity and user-centric experiences that always seemed to be just over the horizon. Yet suddenly they’ve arrived.

I came into this year’s show expecting Sync, the Ford Motors and Microsoft partnership in mobile integration, to be the buzz on the floor and a major part of Gates’ address. However, the Sync demonstration was merely a thread of Microsoft’s envisioned blanket of interactive interfaces and entertainment devices. From the web-based Silverlight interface that will help NBC provide the “most most comprehensive broadband coverage of any event, ever” during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, to the continued development of the Xbox 360 platform as a central device in home entertainment and content delivery, Microsoft seems to have all bases covered.

I knew I should have paid more attention in typing class. It seems like I’m always getting "fat fingers" and typing the wrong thing in the Internet Explorer address bar. www.cox.com usually ends up www.cox.con and so on. The good thing is that my Internet service catches these mistakes and sends me in the right direction.

Cox calls this Enhanced Error Results – but not everyone likes it. Some argue that it interferes with their Internet experience. Here’s how it works: when you type in a misspelled Web address or simply a keyword in your browser bar, the network attempts to find what you’re looking for online, but if the information you typed is not resolveable to a valid URL, you see a results page with choices. More often than not, the Web site you were looking for is right there, just a click away. This option is presented along with results from sponsors who pay to have their links provided alongside the search results. This is really no different than seeing sponsor ads when you Google “new movie releases.”

Because not everyone likes this service, Cox makes it easy for you to opt out – even providing step-by-step instructions online. Personally, I’m keeping it – it keeps my fat fingers from interfering with my Internet experience.

Congrats to CableLabs! It’s another sign that collaboration truly pays off. CableLabs, the cable industry’s non-profit research and development consortium, announced this week that its awarded “qualification” status to DOCSIS 3.0. What does that mean for the customer? This opens the door to even faster Internet speeds and a broader variety of services that can be offered over cable’s broadband network.

According to CableLabs experts, DOCSIS 3.0 specifications enable “downstream data rates of 160 Mbps or higher and upstream data rates of 120 Mbps or higher.” In the CableLabs release, Cox President Pat Esser is quoted as saying, “This DOCSIS 3.0 specification is yet another example of how cable is continuing to advance the power of broadband. This technology ensures that our customers will have access to the fastest and most robust Internet service available and allows us to introduce a new generation of advanced service offerings to our customers.” Click here to read the full CableLabs announcement.

Last week the Associated Press reported on AT&T’s 4-hour DSL outage which impacted their customers across the Southeast on December 3. We don’t usually use this forum to discuss our competitors’ network outages. An outage can happen to an telecommunications company for a variety reasons ranging from simple human error to technological failings and natural disasters.

What brings us to mention this on Digitalstraighttalk.com are reported comments made by Dave Burstein, editor of the industry newsletter DSL Prime who said that broadband outages are not unusual. He is quoted, "Broadband goes down much more often than telephone lines because they didn't build the system for the same level of reliability. We do not know how often it happens, however, because they're not obligated to report it."

In a recent Senate Commerce Committee hearing and in Cox’s National Teen Summit on Internet Safety, there was much discussion on the need for Internet safety education in schools. Today, the state of Florida announced an encouraging step toward such a program. The state’s attorney general said Florida students will begin receiving cyber safety education this fall. From the attorney general’s press release: “Designed to empower children to use the Internet safely, the program combines real-life stories and examples to help students identify the ways they could be victimized online as well as important safety tips to protect themselves from Internet child predators.” Reaching middle and high school students, the program also will include an Internet Student Advisory Council that wisely links tech-savvy teens with law enforcement to identify Internet trends and potential dangers. Click here for the full announcement from Florida.

The secret sauce of the Internet is “IP” (short, of course, for Internet Protocol). IP is the fabric upon which the whole Internet ecosystem is based. Fortunately, as complex as the Internet Protocol is, it’s largely transparent to end users. But as network engineers are aware, the predominate version of the Internet Protocol in use today is version 4, commonly written as IPv4. However, IPv4 can only support 4.2 billion unique addresses, a painfully small number given the explosive growth of the Internet and IP connected devices. IPv6, the version to succeed IPv4, allows for a nearly infinite number of addresses.

It appears that IANA, the International Internet authority that doles out addresses to the regional registrars, will more than likely run out of IPv4 address allocations to the registries somewhere in the late '09 or early '10 timeline. However this does not imply that there won't be any space left to distribute. Most operators that we have spoken with place a realistic 'red zone' date in the 2011 time frame. Of course IPv4 is not going to just miraculously disappear or be mass converted to all v6 addresses within the next decade. We will be dealing with the support of v6-only devices, v4-only devices and dual-stack devices for a very long time. I asked one of Cox’s ace engineers, Jason Weil, to summarize what this will mean for cable operators, and here's what he told me:

Cox’s 2nd quarter highlights included the lowest customer churn (2.5%) in company history. (Here’s some media coverage of the announcement and here’s the official Cox release.) It’s a testament to the power of a “bundle” of services, even in the face of increasing competition. Another highlight is that, by selling multiple services into single homes, the company’s subscriber gains in the past year have more than made up for the loss of customers due to the company sale of cable operations representing about a million subscribers to Cebridge Connections last year. Overall, more than 60% of Cox’s roughly 6 million customers subscribe to at least two of the three major services, and bundled customers increased 11.9% over 2006. Speaking of the bundle, Cox will celebrate a full decade of delivering the bundle of cable, phone and high-speed Internet next month. It was September 1997 when Cox launched telephone in Orange County, Calif., completing the bundle and becoming the first major provider to commercially deliver cable, phone and high-speed Internet over a single broadband network.

The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee addressed Internet safety in a hearing today about protecting children online. In opening remarks Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) referred to the “distinguished and lovely panel” – apparently directed in particular to one of the five panelists, Miss America 2007 Lauren Nelson. The central thrust of testimony was the importance of educating parents, students, teachers and school administrators on encouraging safe online use, rather than relying only on technology tools. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) asked if parental controls and filtering tools are the answer. Panelists agreed they play a role in protecting children online, but aren’t the silver bullet. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) seemed more dismissive of parental control tools, remarking earlier in the two-hour hearing that “blocking doesn’t seem to work.”

What would seem to work, the witnesses and Senators generally agreed, is making Internet safety education a mandatory part of computer education for all children. Cited as a model is a Virginia program incorporating Internet safety into the school curriculum. Lan Neugent, Assistant Superintendent for Technology and Human Resources with the Virginia Department of Education, remarked that “Internet safety cannot be covered in a single lesson or unit or by using a single program or resource…. It must be integrated into the curriculum as part of a teacher’s daily practice.” He also cited several other elements that must be in place for Internet safety programs to operate effectively: technical assistance, professional development for teachers, and implementation monitoring. Clearly understanding the direction of the hearing, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) announced his intention to offer legislation establishing a grant program to fund the development of online safety courses.

How safe are teens online? The delegates at Cox Communications' 2nd Annual National Teen Summit on Internet Safety, held yesterday in Washington, D.C, addressed that and many other questions regarding how teens use the Internet. Judging from the discussion at the Summit and in the delegates' meetings with several lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), these 14 teens are a safe and Internet savvy group, although most of them expressed that they have peers whose online behavior is potentially risky. They added that parents should be particularly concerned about younger kids’ Internet use and that it’s never too early to discuss the importance of Internet safety with youngsters. Hosted by children’s advocate and TV host John Walsh and Miss America 2007 Lauren Nelson, the Summit will air on Cox Cable channels starting later this summer. The eye-opening dialogue also included the teens’ parents, who participated in their own discussions and in Internet safety and media literacy training conducted by Netsmartz and Common Sense Media. Afterward, at a press briefing in the National Press Club, Walsh and Nelson were joined at the podium by one of the teen participants, Christina Johnson (above, with Nelson), who represented her fellow delegates in answering questions from the media and other guests and advising the adults on Internet safety from a teen's perspective. For more on the Summit, click here.

There are some intriguing findings in new research on teen Internet use that Cox and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) released today. Generally, it seems parents are talking to their teens more and more about Internet Safety. And, generally, teens are listening and are curbing their risky online behavior – although some poor choices continue. John Walsh, Cox’s partner in the Take Charge program and well-known fighter for children’s safety, will talk about the findings in a webcast today that’s open to everyone – to register, just click here ). Afterward, the replay will be available here.

The full findings are here. Some highlights:
• Nearly seven of 10 teens regularly receive personal messages online from people they don’t know.
• Teens readily post personal info online – in fact, 64% post photos or videos of themselves. Far more females than males post personal photos or videos of themselves.

Cox’s Greater Louisiana operation hosted a Teen Summit on Internet Safety this week in Baton Rouge with more than 200 parents and teens from around the state. The students attended workshops to learn Internet safety tips and discussed reasons why teens take risks online by sharing personal information. Following the summit, the teen delegates met with lawmakers to advocate for Internet safety education.

Miss America 2007 Lauren Nelson, Cox's Internet safety partner, participated in the Summit and shared that when she was 13, she and her friends provided personal info online to someone who ended up being an online predator. (Fortunately, the situation was defused without incident.) She also gave the audience tips on how to be safer on the Web. This week, it was erroneously reported that Miss America would not testify against online predators that she helped catch during a recent sting broadcast on “America’s Most Wanted” (FOX). During interviews with local media in Baton Rouge, she set the record straight that she would testify and had always planned to testify.

One of the most powerful aspects of the Summit was hearing many of the kids commit to making changes in their Internet activities, after learning more about the potential risks. The Summit is part of Cox's companywide Take Charge initiative that helps parents understand how to use parental controls for the TV and Internet and encourages teens to be safer online.

A panel of execs kicked off the Cable Television Public Affairs Association (CTPAA) FORUM conference in D.C. this morning. Before they took the stage, the group’s president, Mark Harrad of Time Warner Cable, revealed that CTPAA is disappearing. At least, the unwieldy acronym will bid adieu. The group will live on with a new name—Association of Cable Communicators (ACC)—that, he said, better reflects the full array of accountabilities of the industry's PR professionals today.

Back to the panel: It covered familiar ground, with moderator Mark Robichaux of Broadcasting & Cable covering the gamut of topics from a la carte to retransmission consent. This one quickly became the Robichaux and Willner Show, as the wittily dry reporter goaded always-quotable Insight Communications CEO Michael Willner, who delivered the best quips and most memorable insights. He started by giving props to bloggers, revealing that at the height of the company’s prolonged high-speed Internet outage last summer, they turned to blogs “to learn what we didn’t know about (our own network).” Of the rapid rise of blogs and other new-media outlets companies must pay attention to, he said, “If we’re not listening as much to our constituents as we are speaking to them, we’re only doing half our job.”

This year at Cox Communications, we’re celebrating 10 years of delivering a bundle of cable, telephone and high-speed Internet services. As our 2006 accomplishments demonstrate, the benefits of bundling continue to make a huge positive impact. Some highlights: The number of new cable customers who also subscribe to Cox’s phone and/or Internet services is 60%, a record high. Customer churn (i.e., disconnects) is at an all-time low. In all, as of the end of 2006, Cox had 3.4 million “bundled” customers, representing an increase of about 15% over 2005. The bundle will soon grow larger with the addition of a fourth service, wireless. In related bundling news, Verizon said this week that, in an effort to compete with the cable bundle, it will integrate its wireless service, previously offered separate from landline and other services, into its bundle. Verizon also said its FiOS service added 89,000 TV customers in the quarter, although the company's profits declined 38% due to its aggressive fiber roll-out. Meanwhile, AT&T’s U-verse TV service added zero customers in the fourth quarter.

The New York Times had a business-section front page article over the weekend about broadband speeds. The gist was that consumers are frequently confused by marketing that touts speeds “up to” a certain point. It chided the RBOCs and cable companies alike because, it claimed, users routinely don’t get those maximum speeds. Among the companies reporters Matt Richtel and Ken Belson talked to was Verizon. One particular quote from its spokesman, Eric Rabe, was classic Verizon-speak:

While Mr. Rabe defended his company’s advertising policies, he said he could not do the same for competitors, particularly in the cable industry. “We deliver the full speed or close to it more often than our competitors,” he said. But Mr. Rabe said he did not have statistics that would back up that contention.

Over the past several years, cable companies have made the transition to multi-service providers of more than just cable—a journey that started for Cox Communications with the launch of high speed Internet in 1996 and digital telephone in 1997. Cox has led the industry in “bundling” services. Yesterday, Cox announced that 57% of its nearly 6 million residential customers subscribe to more than one service—a 16% increase in bundled customers over the past year. But reflecting the ongoing transition away from just cable, Cox also has made a concerted effort recently to ensure a “line into every home” and pursue business out of every home passed by its network, even if that home has no interest in cable. Yesterday Cox announced success with that strategy, reporting an industry-leading number of non-video customers (432,000 of them) who choose Cox for high speed Internet and/or telephone, but not cable. Cox President Pat Esser described the rationale of Cox's "line in every home" strategy this way: “Our world is changing, and we needed to change our marketing strategies too.” Even so, Cox also saw strong video growth in the third quarter, growing basic cable subscriptions by 1.6%. Click here for Multichannel News' coverage of Cox's announcement.

Yet another new research report underscores the growing popularity of bundling up on multiple communications services. According to consumer research firm Telephia, nearly 43% of online households subscribe to a bundle of at least two services (among Internet, phone and TV) from a single provider. The company’s research revealed that price was the leader in driving consumers to bundle, along with customer service and convenience. While we certainly love reading more and more about the business and consumer benefits of bundling, we can hardly resist the urge to respond (oh so maturely) “duh.” From the time Cox Communications launched high-speed Internet in 1996 and digital telephone shortly thereafter, we’ve experienced first-hand that customers love the convenience and value of getting multiple services from a single source. However, for a long while, it was pretty lonely in the bundling camp; only recently have most other major providers woken up to the benefits of bundling. Meanwhile, Cox remains the best bundler, and more than 50% of the company’s nearly 6 million customers subscribe to at least two of Cox’s major residential services (cable TV, phone and high-speed Internet services).

Intriguing quote from Forrester Research analyst Maribel Lopez in an Associated Press article today about the major RBOCs' TV strategies: "Telcos expect to grab 20 percent-30 percent of the market just by showing up. We think acquiring TV subs in a three-way battle will be much tougher than that.... Assuming telcos execute flawlessly, they still have to steal customers in a saturated market whose growth is largely tied to population growth." The article reports that the major telcos are seeing higher stock values following a tough 2005, citing wireless growth and cost-cutting, but noting that the rise in stock price comes as the telcos suffer continued loss of phone customers to VoIP providers, including Cable. In fact, as of the end of the second quarter, the number of Internet-based phone customers had risen 150% from a year earlier, to 7 million. As we all know by now, the loss of phone customers is driving Verizon and AT&T's push to upgrade their networks with fiber. Speaking of which, Verizon says its $20 billion fiber-to-the-home project had helped garner 110,000 FiOS customers at the end of the second quarter—“a level the company said represented an average market penetration of 15 percent,” according to the AP.

But some analysts aren't sure that early success can be seen as indicative of how the battle will play out. Already, Verizon's FiOS rollout has sparked a nasty arms race in the Long Island region of New York, where cable provider Cablevision Systems Corp. has been boosting its Internet speeds in retaliation. Meanwhile, in a possible sign of the technological challenges phone companies face with their foray into cable, the new AT&T has fallen well behind with its original timetable for U-verse. That service, which uses Internet technologies to deliver TV over a copper phone line, costs only a fraction of the investment of FiOS, but the company has yet to show enough confidence for a full-scale market launch.