>> host: welcome to "the communicators." the national cable and telecommunications association recently held its annual meeting in washington, d.c., and on this week's program we'll look at some of the new telecommunications technology displayed at the meeting particularly as it works with broadband. but first, attendees had a chance to hear from the commerce secretary, gary locke. >> this is absolutely spectacular. when we think about the advantages and opportunities of broadband, i don't think any of us really understand the full potential of this technology. i mean, we talk about hooking up doctors' offices to teaching

hospitals and medical centers, but when you think about it actually being able to record some of your medical history at home and having that transmitted to the doctor's office and then having that relayed to the teaching hospitals, having all those medical records in one place, the power of technology really to read the cards and know your insurance provider, all that. and then, of course, the power of education. you know, there's a hunger out there for education. so many students who live in rural, remote parts of the country who want as advanced an education as those who live in the urban areas. but even in the urban areas school districts are limited by funds, and it's impossible for a school, an elementary school, a middle school or a high school to offer a teacher in every single subject matter that a student may be interested in. but through the power of technology, the internet and, of course, the incredible speeds offered by cable, those students can be taking courses not just

from, in a subject matter that's not offered in school, there's really no reason why they can't be sitting in on lectures at mit, harvard or stanford, and there's no reason why an adult can't use the power of technology and broadband and cable and the internet to actually sit in on courses that he or she may have always wanted to take some 20, 30 years ago but didn't have the time to. that's really the power of technology. and i'm really excited to be at the department of commerce where we're having a whole host of programs, and the association is very familiar with that. the president's economic stimulus package includes several billions of dollars through the department of commerce, almost $5 billion for broadband deployment. now, we know that the money is not enough to serve the entire nation, but clearly this is a down payment on the vision that the president has of advanced

telecommunications at the fingertips of every single individual throughout america. broadband telecommunications. you know, in the 1930s we had a great depression, and there were so many people out of work. but there are two things that really moved our country forward at that period of time. it was the tva, tennessee valley authority which brought electricity to so many moments across -- homes across the country starting in the east and then, of course, grand cooley dam, several projects in the west, but also it was rural electrification that really moved economic development in the rural parts. the advent of broadband, the advent of cable and all my yards of telecommunications is the next great thing of economic development that will rival the electrification of rural america. it will enable students to take

courses in any subject matter that he or she may want, it will enable businesses to hook up to markets all around the world, it will enable medical centers to be in touch with all the doctors and the patients they might serve throughout the country, and the list goes on and on. it is truly the next american century, all promise and premised on the use of technology. >> host: commerce secretary gary locke at the ncta annual meeting in washington, d.c. earlier this year. also at the meeting the ncta set up a display which they called broadband nation, and exhibiters showed how increased background can be used in real world situations such as the medical industry. helen thompson, why are you at a medical show? >> guest: i'm here talking to the community around the need for broadband access around

america. >> host: and you're a communications officer with heartland health. >> guest: i am, and i have responsibility for our electronic medical record and all the technology that's used in a hospital to deliver health care. >> host: over the last couple of weeks we've heard a lot about information technology and using it for health records. could you paint a picture of what that would mean in real-world situations like you deal with? >> guest: actually, we have an electronic medical record that you might find in any medical office, and you can see that it brings together the summary of this patient's care as well as their own personal health record. the patient here happens to be a juvenile diabetic patient, and you can see her labs, her home medication, the health maintenance visits if she's had any, and with any medical record there's a great deal of stuff that goes on here, and this is how the physicians communicate. if we look behind us here --

>> host: and what are we -- this says children's hospital. >> guest: right. this is a mocked-up solution of what it might look like if you were at children's hospital. again, a center corporation product, but this is what the patient might see. >> host: so what kind of information are we looking at? >> guest: the patient would be able to see patient documents, they would be able to see their care team and know who is going to be caring for them, there are pictures behind that. they would be able to do an opinion survey, they could order their meals, they could look at what's in their chart, so there's a lot of different things they can do besides intertape themselves with things like internet access and games, movies, music, so this is really the interaction system in the room. >> host: so each schedule would look different depending on the patient's needs. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: as far as the ability for hospitals to do that now. i know you deal with one

hospital, but is this a trend that's going nationwide? >> guest: absolutely. you will see this across all different types of hospitals as we try to engage the patient more and more in their care and goal setting and things like that around moving from the acute setting back into their homes and working with the physicians. >> host: as far as states and loamties go, they have to be prepared for broadband. >> guest: absolutely. it's a critical function of all of this because a lot of this information can be delivered both in the acute care setting and again in their home if we have the right bandwidth available, and if you can imagine what it might be like to live in a home that is connected to your medical care provider so if we look at the aging population and the baby boomers, we're going to need to keep them in their homes much longer, and we'll do that through the use of technology so we can put monitoring in there for people who have high pressure or need

to take medication on a routine basis. we can use technology to track if that's happening. if you're a die wettic, you can feed your insulin results in through a device that's connected to your own personal health record, and your physician can see that data. if you get outside of your limits, the system could alert your physician. >> host: one of the discussions that's been going on as far as digitizing health records is privacy. is that a concern of yours? >> guest: we're always concerned about making sure data is kept private, and the systems have a very robust security model behind them, so i'm confident that the security model will allow only those who need to see the record see it. >> host: up next again from the national cable and telecommunications association meeting a look at how broadband can be inimportant inside the classroom. frank gallagher, we're in somewhat of a classroom setting. where does technology fit into

this picture? >> guest: well, for the last 20 years the cable industry's been providing free video, now broadband internet, in some cases digital phone connectivity to schools as well as free content, and this exhibit pulls together all that to show the effect that broadband interconnectivity is having in teaching and learning both in schools and at home, and the only way to really do that is to show it. so that's the purpose of this exhibit. >> host: as far as the ability to learn, are students learning more efficiently thanks to broadband efforts? >> guest: there are a couple really good examples of how that can happen. for instance, if you're a student in, say, a rural community without access to museums or the ability to talk to scientists or authors, with a broadband connection and a video camera you can conference with them and interview the author of

a book you're reading, you can talk to a scientist about an experiment you're doing in your chemistry lab, you can do simulations that you could never do in real life because they're too expensive. there are ways that a teacher can use different types of media to reach kids at different levels with different learning styles all in the same classroom and more efficiently target the instruction, and as part of the last stop on the tour we can show how they have hand held devices that operate kind of like cell phones where in the middle of a lesson you can stop, ask a question and have all the students respond so you know instantly whether you have to reteach it or move on to the next topic. >> host: give us the highlights of some of the things that are interesting as far as teaching is concerned. >> guest: one of the things is the safety aspect. the internet brings great

content to people, but how do you manage that, how do you make sure that the kids are safe and secure while they're online? and for 15 years or so cable in the classroom has been involved in media literacy, that is helping parents and teachers and kids understand how media works. what is a producer trying to do when he uses that technique, how do you tell what their intent is, how do you tell whether the information on a site is accurate or inaccurate in order to be safe, secure, and thoughtful user of these resources? >> host: we have something like a medical office here now. >> guest: we do, and broadband is allowing school nurses to take over some of the day-to-day management of children's health care particularly in areas without access to specialists. you might be in a city or town without a pediatric cardiologist but have a small child with a

heart condition that needs regular monitoring, and you can video conference with a specialist at a teaching hospital, you can send vital signs to that doctor and tell you whether it's just a passing phase so it allows you to keep kids in school and avoid visits to the hospital. >> host: and it looks like someone's talking to someone via distance learning. >> guest: here we are at a convention center in washington, d.c., and we're talking to someone in indianapolis, indiana. >> host: so this is realtime? >> guest: this is realtime. a little while ago we had a teacher sitting here teaching his class in north carolina eyeing video -- using video conference. >> host: what are they teaching now? >> guest: it aggregates science museums, history museums and libraries that are able to video

conference to school, so you might have a school in the middle of the country learning about colonial history and do a video conference with historical reenactors in colonial williamsburg. you could be studying oceans and fish and talk to the fish handlers at sea world. that's the kind of thing they set up, and that's the kind of access any kid has no matter where he lives. >> host: i've seen a lot of white boards as far as teaching is concerned, but this one has an electronic quality to it. what's this board about? >> guest: oh, this is a promete yang interactive white board, and it allows you to bring all of the resources together in one spot as a teacher where you can go online, project the web site up there, you can show video clips, you can use google earth to take you where you are now to the area you want to be studying. we could be studying about the great barrier reef off of

australia. the kids, most of them will never go there, but you can take them from google earth from where we are now to the great barrier reef, show them a video clip of what it looks like and what kind of fish and animals are there, stop, do a quiz, have the kids use handhelds that are similar to cell phones to answer the quiz and right away, instantly, you know whether those kids have the concepts you're trying to teach or whether you have to stop, go back and reteach them. it's a really good way of making sure you know what your kids are learning and at the same time engaging them. they can also control some of the white board themselves, sometimes you can do brainstorming and allow kids to categorize words and do a whole variety of activities there that get kids engaged, excited about learning while they're getting core curricular content. >> host: how much do one of these cost approximately? >> guest: about $1500 for a set

up and about 10, 15 percent of those schools in the country are now using interactive white boards similar to this. >> host: and if i understand correctly, the person that's demonstrating this is an actual teacher? >> guest: he is a teacher of teachers. he is the one for frederick county maryland schools that helps teachers understand how they can use products and media like this. >> host: what's your name? >> mike hack ri 9/11. >> we're not just displaying media and content, but we're inviting them to come up and engage with them, they're manipulate it, having a tangible access to media. so they can have direct response with the remotes, they're able to take a quiz without any paper right away, every teacher can look at their responses and know exactly what each child is thinking at that moment. so it's every people respondent instantaneous. with the white board then, we

can then take anything we do on the web, anything we do with word documents, you name it and actually physically move it around. >> host: how long has this technology been used as far as teaching is concerned? >> guest: well, interactive white boards have been around for a decade now, these boards are new in the last couple of years. we've gone with this and found it to be a huge success with teachers and students. >> host: when you talk to the schools about the investmented they have to make, how do they respond? >> >> guest: , well the most important thing is making sure we have result. there's a lot less paper, purchasing of books, and since we have that increase in student involvement and student success, it's worth it. >> host: well, we've looked at the future of the doctor's office and the classroom, but in this next interview we'll see how broadband can also be used for home entertainment. vince, we are sitting here in

what's being described as the suburban home, and it's how broadband is used. could you give us an overall view of what's the purpose of this room we're standing in? >> guest: so it's what we display as a connected home. interconnecting devices as well as content that's available on the internet itself. so if we're looking at the tv that's behind us, this is actually taking our home personal content and allowing it to display on your personal television set. the example we're displaying now is where we've taken internet content as well and allowed it to be displayed. typically, it was designed for a lot smaller screens, so we're wrapping it with a larger screen and some text around to actually more describe what we're looking at. >> host: so if people wanted to get a youtube on their television, theakd do that? >> guest: we could use the concept to actually do this. >> host: what other kinds of things besides video content wise would people be able to do?

>> guest: content wise it's video, but there's no reason we continue do flicker on this, we have pictures, video, as well as we could probably do music. the biggest requirement we have now is with video. >> host: so i'm on a family vacation, i download the video to my computer and -- >> guest: good example is you have your videos from vacation, and i upload it on an internet sharing site, and my relatives can actually display it on their television. >> host: does this technology come with your standard settop box that you will get with cable? >> it's currently available on them, but the question is the service writer allowing us to do that. >> host: is this something that the consumer wants? >> guest: we developed this primarily because of consumers, we see more and more people watching video on their television, currently on their computer, but they'd prefer to

watch it on their television, so we've actually built the system as something the consumers are asking for. >> host: now, we actually have another part of this that involves computers talking to each other. what's going on here? >> guest: we actually have everything connected to each other, so the set-top boxes in the computer are connected over their coax able via our media hub, so we're using the existing coax. the last thing we're actually showing you as well is i currently have any digital recorder, and what i want to do is take the content that i've recorded and bring it with me, mobility. so here i have my mobile phone so when i'm within my phone, it syncs up as a profile base of the content i've recorded before. if i'm actually on a plane, i can now watch what i've recorded before. there's really nothing new in

this concept except we're keeping all the copyright protection all in place. >> host: i see a little touch screen right next to it. what's that about? >> guest: so our touch screen is part of our home automation where we start integrating other aspects in the home and unifying, so now it allows me to have my touch screen for home automation, i can remote access my pc in the house as well as remotely as well as access it on my televisions within the home. so and this part i can arm my alarm system, see whether it's triggered, i can have a camera in the front room as well as actually dim lights. so i can actually turn lights on, i can turn lights off. >> host: and is the technology sophisticated enough you can do it from your mobile device? >> guest: i can have access into the home as well as check -- a good example, i want to check the security cameras in the home, that is available on the device. >> host: now, there's one more

tv screen in this room, what does this particular screen do? what's its purpose? >> guest: so this is a good example of it's about 8:30 at night, i start channel surfing, and i come across a channel, i really like this program. i wish i could have watched it from the beginning. the example here is a feature called start over. time warner is actually doing this where i can now hit start over, and it'll start from the beginning of the program. >> host: so it doesn't matter whether it's recorded on to a video recorder or a dvr, you're watching realtime shows. >> guest: this is realtime shows that i did not record previously. this is to add more features to people who do have the recording aspect as well as enhancements for current devices that don't have the recording capabilities. >> host: you said some technologies are available now, is most of it or some coming to market? what's the time frame? >> guest: so as i said before

the starter is currently available, the alarm in the home automation, that's actually in field trials, the intercontent itself, that's starting to be in trials itself. so really everything we're looking at is almost in trials. the sync-in with the mobile devices is just starting to go into field trials. >> host: one more interview to show you, this time courtesy of cable net which was a display that was sponsored by cable labs, a research arm of the cable company. we had a guided tour of some of the telecommunication products that are in the pipeline. mike schwartz, what is cable net? >> guest: hi. cable net is a technology showcase that basically serves as a way for the cable industry to show exciting application services and technologies to people in the cable industry who may not otherwise see them. >> host: isn't it obvious that people in the industry might know what's going on the

technology side? >> guest: some may not, so what we try to do is through a variety of companies, and we have about three dozen here, they bring in all their new and interesting innovative technologies, we provide this showcase of an exhibit and then enable the rest of the industry to walk through in their leisure and see what's cool and what's neat. >> host: you have a lot of television screens and exhibits, what goes into the process of deciding who gets showcased? >> guest: we have a request for a proposal system that we use enabling all companies if they so choose to be participants here, and then we determine based upon the technologies applicable to cable which would bees would be in which sectors of the booth, so we have advanced interactive digital video, you may also have things with high-speed -- it's interesting, one that enables

you to see it before it enters the marketplace. >> host: i think most people are familiar enough with their cable or they have their vod, from what you have here on display, what can you tell us about what's ahead for the consumer? >> guest: several things. consumers are beginning to have more and more bandwidth or throughput capability. we call that dock sis 3.0. another new service is being deployed by the industry, still in its early stages is called true twoway and that is interactive video services which will enable things like electronic commerce, interactive gaming, new ways of delivering movies and other services to the consumer on demand at their choice and convenience. >> host: how long does it take for a consumer to become comfortable with this technology and use examples like we've seen before where a consumer might understand it before, has to get

comfortable with it. >> guest: well, that's a question not for me. we're a laboratory, we don't do market research. i really can't help you though. what we've seen, though, each new generation of technology is being rolled out on a quicker basis. they're more mature, and they're coming to maturity on a more rapid basis. we see that in our labs every day. >> host: as far as the exhibits that you have here, how long before they become part of the market? >> guest: good question. in some cases it could be as current as this coming year, it could be within the next 2-5 years. i think you'll see -- and it depends on what penetration levels you're talking about. some of these services are already deployed like true twoway, for instance, is available in denver and chicago today. you can buy them in certain retail outlets. in the future you're going to have a lot more people accessible to this technology, and i'm saying 2-5 years. >> host: mike schwartz with

cable labs, thank you. >> guest: you're welcome. thank you. >> host: that's it for the program this week. don't forget, you can go to our c-span web site at c-span.org for archived programs of "the communicators," plus to find out how you can set up for a c-span podcast of this program. thanks for watching. >> and if you'd like to see this program again, we'll show you the "the communicators" with commerce secretary gary locke tonight at 8 eastern here on c-span2.

>> how is c-span funded? >> the u.s. government. >> private benefactors. >> i don't know. i think some of it's government-raised. >> it's not public funding -- >> probably donations? >> i'm going to say from me, my tax dollars. >> how is c-span funded? thirty years ago america's cable companies created c-span as a public service. a private business initiative. no government mandate, no government money.

[inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience. we appreciate it very much. we have a wonderful program in store for you this afternoon. i'm janice mathers, vice president of rainbow push coalition based in atlanta, georgia. it is my great honor and privilege to introduce a former colleague, someone i have great admiration for. he is mr. joe leonard, he is currently an official with the united states department of agriculture where he received a presidential appointment. previous to that he was executive directer of the congressional black caucus, and before that he was a staffer with the rainbow push coalition. please welcome joseph leonard. [applause] >> thank you very much, janice.

it's always good to come home, it's always good to come home. i'm very proud of having spent four years as the washington, d.c. bureau chief of rainbow push coalition, and it's good to come on, come on home. i'm very proud that my son cole is a push baby, and i tell him that all the time. i have the awesome task of introducing reverend jackson. but i really want to take the opportunity to kind of not only introduce reverend jackson, but also kind of illustrate the similarities between my, my new boss and my old boss, and you'll understand why i went to work for my new boss, and that is the 30th secretary of agriculture for the united states, and that's secretary tom vilsack. you won't see, youil