I love your line of reasoning and agree with you that it is promising that all astronomers are converging on similar estimates. However, I take away something a little different from these findings.

To me, it makes the quietness of the universe that much more strange. I think the fact that there are so many Earth-like planets makes it increasingly probable that there are no intelligent civilizations with even hundreds of thousands of years "under their belt" let alone millions or billions. We are only starting to grasp what an intelligent civilization with hundreds of thousands of years under their belt might look like. It seems to me very probable that if we don't kill ourselves our civilization will be quite loud in less than a thousand years. The fact that the rest of our galaxy is quite is telling (to me). I can't help but conclude either:

a) we are the first b) intelligent civilizations have a short life-span c) or the space expansion hypothesis is incorrect (and transcension hypothesis is more likely)