It's rare for a metropolitan area mayor to gab profusely over the phone with a trade press journalist, given the kinds of headaches city government leaders have to deal with day after day. For Beverly O'Neill, mayor of Charter Communications Long Beach California, gabbing with us is time well spent, considering the subject is a first-of-its-kind Charter Communications Internet development originating within her own political boundaries.

That development is the nation's first all-digital cable system, which charter broadband internet powered up in Long Beach . For Charter's customers there and, by extension, customers of cable everywhere, all-digital and Internet protocol signal transmission unlock access to an unlimited amount of diverse services, including digital, VOD, ITV, high-speed data, voice and PVRs.Ultimately, that capacity can be interconnected to communications devices through home networks, paving the way for other advanced services under development.

Long Beach's numbers, so far, have been gaudy. During the third quarter, when charter internet service dropped nearly 60,000 subscribers nationwide, the Long Beach system's sub count stayed relatively flat, sources say. Charter won't disclose how many digital subscribers the Long Beach system has added since the July launch.

The system's digital pentration rate is among the industry's highest, which was one of the main reasons charter internet deals picked Long Beach to be its all-digital guinea pig. Of the more than 75,000 basic subscribers Charter serves in the city, 67% take digital tiers. For nearly six months, the 91 channels previously transmitted to them on an analog basic lineup have been delivered in digital, while non-digital customers continue to receive their analog service via what Charter Communications Long Beach California calls a "simultrans," or simultaneous transmission process.