The weekend has arrived, and we're heading back to our recharging station. Do us a favor and talk amongst yourselves in the comment section below until we come back to get you.

• RCN Metro to build Mass. broadband backbone [cedmagazine.com]
• Ranking Republican on the House Communications Subcommittee Wants Answers on Cost of FCC Broadband Plan [multichannel.com]
• NCTA Outlines Seven Consumer Principles For FCC [multichannel.com]
• MPAA Brags About How Awesome The Movie Business Is; Right After It Claims File Sharing Is Destroying The Industry [techdirt.com]
• iPad Kindle fighting tech and data limit warning revealed [electricpig.co.uk]
• Broadband for All - America's Best Weapon of Mass Connection [huffingtonpost.com]
• BT bundles voice, broadband and TV for first time [zdnet.co.uk]
• Sprint Picks Up ESPN Mobile TV [multichannel.com]
• Trojan armed with hardware-based anti-piracy control [theregister.co.uk]
• Safari update cages numerous security bugs [theregister.co.uk]

Last month we reported that Qwest had joined a relatively new trend among broadband carriers: making users pay Qwest -- so they can pay Qwest. The company recently implemented a new $4 fee for users who want to pay their Qwest bill by phone, and a new $1 bill for those who'd like to pay their Qwest bill via credit card at the official Qwest website.

Verizon's $23 billion investment into fiber to the home was frankly a bold and brilliant decision, spearheaded by CEO Ivan Seidenberg. Seidenberg understood that he needed to look past the myopic, short-term fears of investors and pour some serious money back into the network if Verizon truly wanted to be considered a next-generation broadband company over the next several decades.

Stacey Higganbotham over at GigaOM this week sat down with Clearwire's chief commercial officer Mike Sievert, who tells the website that the average Clear customer consumes more than 7GB of data a month. Of course that data is being consumed via laptop card -- but the company says they hope to offer their first Mobile WiMax smartphone "sometime this year." Sievert says that it costs Clearwire "somewhere in the mid-$20 range" per person to build out its WiMAX network, and the company continues to reiterate that they're willing to shift from Mobile WiMax to LTE if that's necessary.

We've consistently explored how incumbent wireless carriers are terrified of the evolution of mobile networks and being relegated to "dumb pipe" status. The rise of smartphones, mobile VoIP, and push IM clients all collectively not only threaten some huge cash cows (voice minutes, SMS), but also content revenues.

Just a few days before the FCC is poised to introduce our first ever national broadband plan, the agency has launched a new java-based speed test application at the Broadband.gov website. Like most tests you may have seen at a variety of broadband-centric websites (which we hear are filled with the worst sort of ruffians), the test will measure ping, jitter and downstream and upstream speeds.

Speaking at an investor conference this week in Florida, Comcast Chief Financial Officer Michael Angelakis informed investors that broadband pricing will "evolve" as broadband use grows. According to this Dow Jones Newswire report, Angelakis wouldn't get specific about what he meant, only stating that this change would occur as broadband "eclipses pay-television as the cable industry's core product." According to Angelakis, this vague broadband pricing evolution "will end up being positive for the company."

We asked Comcast for a clearer definition of what Angelakis was hinting at, but have yet to hear back (we'll of course update this post if/when we do).

• Skype Deliberately Crippling Functionality of iPhone and WinMo and Verizon Apps? [techdirt.com]
• Leaked Documents Show UK Web Censorship Proposal Written By Record Labels [techdirt.com]
• NZ internet filter goes live - gov forgets to tell public [theregister.co.uk]
• Small businesses "need a minimum of 8 meg broadband" [pcpro.co.uk]
• FCC to release broadband plan Tuesday [fiercewireless.com]
• New $900 million undersea cable aims to get Kiwis up to speed [tvnz.co.nz]
• McAfee inadvertently speeds creation of Metaploit IE exploit pack [theregister.co.uk]
• Windows Mobile usage plummets [theinquirer.net]

• The FCC Wants You to Test Your Broadband Speeds [wired.com]
• DSL Still Tops Broadband Market Share, Says ABI [cable360.net]
• Kaspersky calls for international internet government [v3.co.uk]
• AT&T CEO Calls For 'Light Touch' Regulations [advfn.com]
• Time Warner Cable Phasing Out Sprint VoIP [multichannel.com]
• Buying bandwidth in the app store [theregister.co.uk]
• Will Verizon 4G Mean the End of "All You Can Eat" Data? [pcworld.com]
• Cox Business lands state contracts in Va. [cedmagazine.com]
• Why the FCC National Broadband Plan Should Include Public Wi-Fi [pcworld.com]
• FCC Scammed Out Of Millions In Telco Scam [techdirt.com]
• ComScore: Motorola, BlackBerry rule U.S. market [fiercewireless.com]

France of course was one of the first countries to impose laws that require ISPs terminate the service of users who repeatedly engage in copyright infringement. Surprising, well, nobody, Torrent Freak points out since France's new antipiracy law was passed last September, piracy has continued to rise.

Earlier this week we noted how a Judge in Illinois had issued a 47-page report claiming that Verizon's sale of their DSL and landline networks in the state would be both bad for consumers, and bad for Frontier. According to Judge Lisa Tapial, the $8.5 billion deal (which would immediately infuse Frontier with nearly 6 million new voice and broadband connections) "will diminish Frontier’s ability to perform its duties to provide adequate, reliable, efficient, safe and least-cost public utility service." Frontier has issued a press release that unsurprisingly argues that the Judge doesn't know what she's talking about: story continues..

Back in March of last year a company by the name of OnLive unveiled their new broadband gaming service, which aims to replace the traditional game console with what's essentially a broadband-connected dumb terminal. Under the system, which has been proposed in various forums for a decade, major title games are streamed over your broadband connection -- for a monthly subscription fee.

According to Slashdot, Cox, Time Warner Cable and Comcast have created a joint venture called PolyCipher. PolyCipher in turn is funding research into a project called BitStalker, which according to the project explanation (pdf) will help copyright holders more effectively identify BitTorrent users trading copyrighted files.

Former FCC boss Kevin Martin has broken his silence this week as the newly reformed FCC gets ready to unveil their national broadband plan. He's also apparently busily engaging in some revisionist history, telling attendees of a Seattle breakfast event this week that he was a staunch supporter of consumer rights and of "open access" broadband policies during his tenure.

Windstream appears to be the latest carrier to embrace the fad of offering consumers "price for life" promotion, which locks down the monthly rate of service for the length of your life (or more likely, the length of the carrier). Light Reading notes that the carrier is now offering a double-play package with offer featuring 3 Mbps broadband and unlimited local and long-distance calling for $59.99 -- a price that's locked in for life.

Verizon CTO Tony Melone has been on a whirlwind press tour the last few weeks promoting Verizon's planned launch of LTE (Long Term Evolution) wireless broadband service later this year. Most of his statements have offered nothing that hasn't been known since last summer, the CTO repeating the fact the service will initially offer speeds between 5-12 Mbps, and will launch in between 25 to 30 markets.

• Consumers: we want our internet TV [reghardware.co.u]
• Verizon lauds FCC's public-safety plan--with a big caveat [fiercewireless.com]
• OnLive streaming video game service launches in June with one huge catch [dvice.com]
• Verizon gains efficiences through packet optical networking [fiercetelecom.com]
• Set-Top Data Under Lock & Key [multichannel.com]
• Verizon Wireless 4G LTE phone due in 2011 [mobileburn.com]
• AT&T: We’re Working Hard to Bring Tethering to iPhone [softpedia.com]
• Virgin to run fibre broadband over telegraph poles [itpro.co.uk]

• Former FCC Chair Martin Says More Fiber Will Help Wireless Crunch [pcworld.com]
• Since Three Strikes Went Into Effect, Unauthorized File Trading Has Increased In France [techdirt.com]
• RIM silent on data outages in North America, UK [computerworld.com]
• Overwhelming Majority Of EU Parliament Votes Against ACTA [techdirt.com]
• Smartphones are booming, but is there room for all the players? [fiercewireless.com]
• The Case for Mobile Broadband Offloading [xchangemag.com]
• Y2.01K hits Garmin satnav [theregister.co.uk]
• Researchers use light from LEDs to send data wirelessly; Speeds of 230Mbit/sec. reported [computerworld.com]

As we've recently noted, the cable industry's own data indicates that cable service passes roughly 125 million U.S. homes.