As we've been exploring, Verizon has all-but completed their first wave of FiOS deployment with the exception in major cities where they've recently signed franchise agreements. Verizon has made it clear they want to pause for a while and market the service more heavily to markets where they've installed the fiber to the home service. Cities that were left out of this initial wave (like Baltimore) are of course left wondering when and if they'll see the upgrades.

According to the Washington Business Journal, Alexandria, Virginia is another city that's been overlooked by the Verizon FiOS fairy. City leaders expected to see FiOS deployment shortly after signing a new phone franchise agreement with the company, but network upgrades never arrived. Verizon meanwhile is telling the city they don't know if that will change any time soon:Verizon of course is in the midst of a massive company refocusing that involves selling off (and neglecting according to unions and regulators) a lot of unwanted copper-based DSL and landline markets. Instead, Verizon's focusing on filling in the FiOS gaps with LTE wireless broadband service, which of course raises a lot of questions about the other 50% of Verizon's copper-based network that has yet to be upgraded. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg has publicly stated he'd like to see FiOS adoption rates hit 40% before deciding on the next wave of FiOS deployment.

As we recently noted, Time Warner Cable is a little behind in terms of DOCSIS 3.0 cable upgrades, and has sold faster 50 Mbps broadband service to just 2,000 users in parts of New York City. However, the company is poised for a fairly quick push into a number of additional markets over the next few weeks.

Most major carriers spend a lot of time complaining about regulation in the telecom sector being akin to puppy murder -- unless of course that regulation can be applied to the other guy. With that in mind, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision have petitioned the FCC to step in and do something about the kind of retransmission fee disputes that resulted in Cablevision customers almost missing the Oscars (gasp) over the weekend.

According to an FCC announcement (pdf), the FCC will officially unveil our first ever national broadband plan at an FCC meeting next Tuesday, March 16, at 10:30 EST. That's one day earlier than the plan was supposed to be unveiled before Congress, though technically it's about a month behind its originally-scheduled unveiling date.

The entertainment industry's efforts to impose U.S.-style DMCA copyright law on the globe (and push ISPs toward being network content nannies) has suffered a bit of a setback. EU Parliamant has voted overwhelmingly against the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) to the tune of 663 to 13. According to the EU the agreement, hashed out largely in secret between the entertainment industry and world governments, "flouts agreed EU laws on counterfeiting and piracy online." One EU lawmaker put his disdain of the entertainment industry's end-around this way:The past few weeks have seen a strong push in the European Parliament to have ACTA negotiations made more transparent, and to ensure that the rules don't force ISPs to impose "three strikes" rules that would require they boot copyright infringers from their networks.

The NFL loves their exclusive arrangements and the huge bags of money these make, be it with Electronic Arts (who is the sole publisher of video games allowed to use the NFL brand), or DirecTV (who pays a billion a year to be the sole TV carrier of out of market NFL games). For a while the NFL liked Sprint, who has been paying the NFL about $100 million a year to stream NFL games wirelessly and be the NFL's official wireless carrier. Now the NFL loves Verizon, who just ponied up $720 million to take Sprint's place. Sprint spokeswoman Melinda Tiemeyer tells the Kansas City Business Journal that Sprint chose not to extend the sponsorship because the cost "reached a point where we questioned the return on our investment." Verizon apparently had no such worries.

• The FCC's Misguided Spectrum Quest [wsj.com]
• Google, Yahoo, Ebay, UK's largest ISP's all agree: UK Internet law 'threatens free speech' [ft.com]
• Verizon sees Wi-Fi-only iPad as opportunity to sell 3G data plans [appleinsider.com]
• Fiber firm unplugs from Palo Alto, blaming power outages [mercurynews.com]
• NFL punts Sprint, signs with Verizon as official wireless partner [bizjournals.com]
• EU Politicians Get Serious Demanding ACTA Transparency And No Three Strikes [techdirt.com]
• Vodafone ships malware infested mobiles [theinquirer.net]
• White House Cyber Security Guy: There Is No Cyberwar - Just Espionage [techdirt.com]

• Speakeasy CEO talks VoIP success [networkworld.com]
• Comcast: ITV Ready For 50 Networks Later This Year; Targets 100% Deployment of EBIF in Motorola Footprint by Midyear [multichannel.com]
• FCC Plan Asks for Govt.-Funded Broadband Training [yahoo.com]
• Apple’s Draconian Secret iPhone Developer Agreement Goes Public [wired.com]
• Smartphone app botnet experiment blows up a storm [theregister.co.uk]
• New Internet Explorer code-execution attacks go wild [theregister.co.uk]
• It's official: Adobe Reader is world's most-exploited app [theregister.co.uk]
• Windows 7 SP1 will be brought forward [theinquirer.net]
• Iowa House OKs Cell Phone Ban for Young Drivers [wirelessweek.com]

The FCC has begun their sales pitch for the nation's first national broadband plan ahead of its formal unveiling next week. As we've been discussing, we haven't been too impressed by the plan's failure to tackle competition, or its tendency to make proclamations that sound good but are rather empty upon closer inspection.

According to a new 46 page Illinois study by a state Judge, Verizon's proposed sale of their networks in Illinois would harm consumers. The $8.5 billion deal immediately infuses Frontier, which has 2.3 million customers, with 4.8 million new residential and small-business phone lines and 1 million broadband connections.

Late last month Cisco began leaking word to media outlets that on March 9, they'd be "making a significant announcement that will forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments." Given the fact that the country was fawning over Google's new 1 Gbps fiber to the home trial announcement at the time, it seemed like Cisco was getting ready to announce some kind of significant counter punch.

Today's the day, so what was this Internet-changing, paradigm smashing announcement? According to Cisco, it's...a new router.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google continues to expand into, well, everything. The company is working in conjunction with Dish Network to test a Google-powered set top box based in part on the Android operating system.

Fresh off a suite of price hikes last fall that included an increase in the cable modem rental fee from $3 to $5 a month, Comcast is notifying customers they're raising prices again starting April 1. Many Comcast users are being sent these letters informing them that there's several new rate hikes for broadband and TV services starting April 1, including a hike in the cost of several of Comcast's lower-priced broadband tiers by $2 a month.

The "WiMax is dead, it just doesn't know it yet" crowd scored another talking point (even if wrong) against Mobile WiMax this week with the news that Cisco is going to stop developing and building WiMax gear. Cisco does provide equipment to Clearwire for their Mobile WiMax build, but only core hardware -- not radios.

AT&T's first foray into the business of offering Android-based phones isn't going particularly well, and it's pretty clear the company's general dislike of Google for their positions on competition, network neutrality and open access is spilling over into AT&T handset decisions. Last week AT&T launched their first Android phone (the Motorola Backflip), but pulled Google search from the device in favor of Yahoo.

• Treasury: Broadband Grants For Opex Taxed, Capex Not So Much [multichannel.com]
• Charter's Next Move: Grow, Shrink or Sell, What Happens Now Will Affect All of Cable [multichannel.com]
• WiMax Hitches a Ride on 1000 Taxis in Taipei [pcworld.com]
• Energizer warns of malware in battery chargers [v3.co.uk]
• Could Cisco be announcing a killer set-top box? [cnet.com]
• Google, Dish testing new TV search service: report [reuters.com]
• AT&T offers more detail on 3G capital investments [fiercebroadbandwireless.com]
• Navajo Nation May Get LTE Network [pcworld.com]
• Panasonic 3D TVs Arriving This Wednesday [pcworld.com]

• Making the most of 4G networks [fiercewireless.com]
• Rogers Boosts Internet Speeds for Select Markets [cable360.net]
• Verizon LTE Blazing Trails for Wireless Broadband [pcworld.com]
• Consumers In The Dark Over Their Broadband Speeds [npr.org]
• Verizon LTE test speed: 50 Mbps max [fiercewireless.com]
• Don't Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites [techdirt.com]
• Four Companies Join for Blu-ray Patent Licensing [cable360.net]
• Touchsreen Sales to Soar 97% in 2010 [internetnews.com]
• Stanford survey contemplates iPhone addiction [networkworld.com]

According to a new press statement from Verizon, the carrier is seeing peak download speeds of 40 to 50 megabits per second and peak upload speeds of 20 to 25 Mbps in the LTE (Long Term Evolution) wireless broadband tests they're conducting in Seattle and Boston. As we've already discussed however, real world speeds are going to be closer to between 5-10 Mbps downstream. Other than their announcement of peak speeds, there's really nothing new in Verizon's announcement: they're launching the service in 25-30 markets this year, but we still don't know what kind of pricing, caps or overages Verizon has planned for the service. Indications are that Verizon wants to employ some kind of usage-based billing model.

As we've repeatedly noted, a cornerstone of reliable 4G wireless broadband quality is going to be adequate backhaul. Most wireless carriers are rushing to improve backhaul ahead of plans to embrace HSPA+ and LTE service, and there's plenty of companies eager to make a profit from providing that needed bandwidth, including Time Warner Cable.

For years we've explored the difficulties of cancelling telecom services for the deceased. We've seen AOL go so far as to tell relatives that the deceased individual needs to call up and cancel themselves, though more commonly it's just a pain to cancel the deceased person's account unless you have the proper paperwork (sometimes the death certificate, sometimes it's a copy of the account holder's bills or lease).