The FCC deadline does not apply to cable, only broadcast television. Many cable companies are opting to make the transition voluntarily, as it decreases their bandwidth requirements to send the same content to its customers. It also means that everyone will get some form of "on demand" programming... Probably a gimmick to get you hooked on the free stuff, so you'll buy the "pay per view" stuff.
The company that serves our area, Comcast, has been doing a really good job about telling people that they're going to be ok with the transition if they're Comcast customers. What they don't tell everyone is that they will be switching to all-digital as well, so any existing cusotmers will need to get a new digital set-top box to continue watching cable. The poor communication about this transition has been a point of concern for the school district I work for, as we have a substantial contract with Comcast. Their solution was to give us 10 set-top boxes per school, when some schools have around 50 TVs... Not to mention that some of them also have in-house broadcasts that won't mix nicely with the external digital feed. We're still waiting on the reply from Comcast, but the general stance from the district is "give us somethig that will work with our TVs and in-house broadcasting, or loose us as a customer". It's likely that we will have to re-broadcast analog to the classrooms.
If your tester is just looking for any "signal" at that frequency, it will probably work; if it's looking for the carrier or another specific signal, it may not.
