We've noted repeatedly that Verizon's done with expanding FiOS, and what's more -- they're essentially done worrying about what happens to the millions of DSL users they didn't upgrade, letting them flow freely to cable as the company focuses on more profitable wireless services. Users who remain are seeing prices jacked up through forced landline bundling. Numerous major cities including Boston, Baltimore, Alexandria and Buffalo have lamented for years that Verizon has focused on their outer suburbs, but ignored the entirety of most of these actual cities. Hoping to prompt some additional movement, nine upstate New York mayors have joined forces to issue a statement in the hopes of gaining some collective traction:It's unlikely that a letter from the mayors of several economically-struggling towns will change Verizon's mind, as their calculations were simply made based on their projected return on investment. While it remains possible that a select few of these markets may someday see further upgrades, it's more likely that many of them could be sold to a company like Frontier -- who services Rochester, New York and has their own problems in getting next-generation upgrades to users.

Comcast has announced a new voice service for Xfinity subscribers dubbed Voice2go, which will allow Comcast subscribers to use their home phone number to make "free" calls on smartphones and tablets using either Wi-Fi or a customers' 3G or 4G cellular connection. The announcement comes directly on the heels of a new cable industry initiative to offer expanded Wi-Fi service that will provide cross-ISP access to more than 50,000 hotspots.

While he was of course speaking to his audience at this week's Cable Show in Boston, FCC boss Julius Genachowski gave his full-throated support to the cap and overage pricing model. "Business model innovation is very important," told the Cable Show attendees, adding that "usage-based pricing could be healthy and beneficial." "There was a point of view a couple years ago that there was only one permissible pricing model for broadband," said Genachowski, adding that "I didn't agree."

The problem is that while many people (including us) have argued many things about metered billing, that there should be only one pricing model has never been among them.

4G has the potential to be a completely different animal from 3G in terms of coverage and speed from the various wireless carriers. This article takes a look at current coverage, average speeds across locations, and finally, future plans from the four major wireless telcos in the United States: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile.

Verizon has announced that the carrier will soon be allowing users to send text messages to get emergency help from 911 services. The company's new text-to-911 service will use Verizon's existing CDMA SMS network for 911 text notifications, and the company plans to make the functionality available to 911 center public-service answering points, or PSAPs, starting in early 2013. "While consumers should always first try to contact a 911 center by making a voice call, this enhanced SMS service, when deployed, will offer an alternative for customers on the Verizon Wireless network who are deaf or hard of hearing and cannot make voice calls or who could be placed in additional danger by speaking," says the company.

Stop the Cap directs our attention to a new ad campaign for Canadian cable operator Videotron, which involves secretly recording the company's installation techs sent on fake service calls, then posting videos of their service on the company's website. "Our conscientious technicians are ambassadors for Vidéotron and its values," said Manon Brouillette, president of consumer markets of the campaign. "We are very proud of them. They have achieved an impressive 96% customer satisfaction rate and this campaign is a tip of the hat to their great work." It would probably be safe to guess that any sub-standard installer performance work was left on the cutting room floor.

• A new technology called IPS can track your every move - or help you find a departure gate at the airport. Big Brother, or good business? [pcadvisor.co.uk]
• Cable's Still Finding Its Way on Wi-Fi [lightreading.com]
• The Cloud Backlash [lightreading.com]
• FBI quietly forms secretive Net-surveillance unit [cnet.com]
• Cable industry looks to millennials to sustain video business [totaltele.com]
• FCC eyes govt airwaves as answer to US spectrum crunch [totaltele.com]
• ITC Judge: Xbox Should Be Banned From U.S. Over Motorola Patent Violation [wired.com]
• As UK Government Considers Opt-Out Porn Censorship, Report Already Finds Overblocking On Mobile Networks [techdirt.com]
• Cloud access becoming next 'must have' for mobile as online storage requirements expected to grow 7x by 2016 [totaltele.com]
• Likely next-generation iPhone with 3.999-inch display, 1136 x 640 resolution in testing [9to5mac.com]

• Muni broadband provider files theft-of-service complaint against VoIP service with local police; VoIP provider files Net Neutrality complaint with FCC [cio.com]
• Free Press, Public Knowledge Pan FCC Chair's Usage-Based Pricing Shout-Out [broadcastingcable.com]
• Viewdini: Could this app be Verizon’s first pass at toll-free mobile data? [gigaom.com]
• FCC chairman supports broadband data caps amid Netflix protests [washingtonpost.com]
• Comcast Adds Free WiFi Calls For Xfinity Voice Customers [forbes.com]
• U.S. Cellular first carrier to curate Amazon Appstore for subscribers [cnet.com]
• Wi-Fi Looks to Upgrade to Carrier Class [mobilitytechzone.com]
• Kansas City-area task force recommends uses for Google fiber project [bizjournals.com]
• America's Most Innovative Neighborhood: 15 Square Miles In New Mexico, Population: 0 [fastcompany.com]
• TiVo streaming coming to iOS this summer [zdnet.com]
• VIA launches $49 Android PC [geek.com]
• Chelsea Clinton: Is the Internet hurting children? [cnn.com]

After selling the company's AWS spectrum holdings to Verizon, Cox is looking to offload additional spectrum to AT&T and U.S. Cellular.

Dish recently introduced "Hopper," a new HD DVR system that will automatically skip commercials from the biggest networks. Users watching any recorded prime time content from ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC won't even have to press a button to skip the ads -- provided they watch them a day after they air live.

Sprint has announced that the company is changing their phone-as-hotspot tethering pricing for smartphone and tablet customers. The company says they'll no longer offer their $30 per month, 5GB hotspot plan, but existing users on this plan will be grandfathered.

Last summer major ISPs including Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Cablevision signed off on a new plan by the RIAA and MPAA taking aim at copyright infringers on their networks. According to the plan, after four warnings ISPs are to begin taking "mitigation measures," which range from throttling a user connection to filtering access to websites until users acknowledge receipt of "educational material." As you might expect, that educational material's chapter on fair use rights likely won't exist.

The UK’s biggest ISPs have continued to consolidate their grasp on the market to the detriment of smaller providers, the release of financial results for the beginning of this year show. The three of the UK’s ‘big four’ providers to have released results so far all increased their broadband subscriber numbers:

Around 19 million UK households take a broadband service and, again very roughly, 17 million go to just four ISPs.

•BT: 136,000 new customers (new total: 6.2 million)
•Virgin Media: 30,500 new customers (new total: 4.3 million)
•Sky: 212,000 new customers (new total: 3.8 million)

The vast majority of UK broadband users get their services from the UK’s "big four," the three providers above plus TalkTalk broadband.

Responding to a slew of recent reports that AT&T and Verizon will soon (and quite belatedly, to some) offer shared data plans aimed at families, T-Mobile took to the company's blog to state they won't be following suit anytime soon. The idea is to provide users with plans that offer pooled data, so households don't need to have a separate data plan for each person and each device.

Both Ice and the FBI recently announced that they'd be making the unskippable anti-piracy warning messages at the beginning of DVDs longer and more obnoxious. The two new warnings come with updated, scarier looking logos, last ten seconds each, and won't be skippable by the consumer. The rather obvious irony of course is that only legitimate customers are seeing these warnings; download the same film from any BitTorrent tracker and you'll find those warnings stripped out. The fact that the entertainment industry (and their personal protection forces at the FBI and and ICE) are simply annoying paying customers continues to be an elusive realization.

• Education Group: Schools Need 100 Mbps per 1,000 Broadband Users [pcworld.com]
• Should telecom rules be upgraded for wireless? [politico.com]
• 'Connectivity is Like Oxygen' - Survey Finds Workers' Smartphone Addiction Increasing [ibtimes.co.uk]
• Deregulation Hurts Broadband Development, Former Officials Say [nationaljournal.com]
• Judge In Grooveshark Lawsuit Orders Blog To 'Preserve' Logs That Had Already Been Deleted [techdirt.com]
• America Movil calls on OECD to withdraw 'flawed' telecom report; study claimed Mexico's 'dysfunctional' telco sector cost consumers $129 billion between 2005 and 2009 [totaltele.com]
• Kodak patent declared invalid in case vs Apple, RIM [totaltele.com]
• Slow broadband connection affects 60% of companies based in the countryside [thisismoney.co.uk]
• NetNeutrality – It’s Baaack! [zatznotfunny.com]
• Verizon HomeFusion: 4G LTE for the home [zdnet.com]
• 3D TV fails to excite, gesture UIs to flop: analyst [theregister.co.uk]

• Hard data on the state of the Internet [fiercetelecom.com]
• The Docsis Addendum [lightreading.com]
• Is FaceTime over 3G really a good idea? [gigaom.com]
• Can cable companies keep the dream of municipal WiFi alive? [extremetech.com]
• Carriers Willing to Live With High iPhone Subsidies for Now [allthingsd.com]
• Supreme Court declines to hear $675,000 file-swapping case [arstechnica.com]
• Set-tops will become extinct: Time Warner Cable CEO [fiercecable.com]
• CenturyLink's Prism IPTV service continues to attract new customers [fiercetelecom.com]
• $74 PC on a USB Stick Sold Out (for Now) [laptopmag.com]

Speaking at the Cable Show this week in Boston, Comcast announced that they'll soon be launching their long-rumored "X1" DVR platform starting in Boston within weeks, with additional markets coming shortly thereafter. The revamped GUI and widget-heavy platform will launch alongside a remote-control DVR app for both the iPhone and the iPad. "This cloud-enabled platform, unlike any other video service existing today, delivers the world's largest collection of video and transforms the TV into an entirely new integrated entertainment experience," says Comcast of the launch in a press statement. "These new products will launch in Boston with several major markets planned to follow this year, and will be available to new Xfinity Triple Play with HD/DVR service customers at no additional cost."

Last Summer Dish Network started insisting that the company was very seriously interested in launching an LTE network, despite previous executive assurances that the company was accumulating spectrum just for fun. Run from a subsidiary, the company is hoping to launch an LTE-Advanced network under the brand "Ollo." Dish is planning to use the spectrum they acquired from DBSD North America and TerreStar Networks, a transaction that just received FCC approval.

Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications, and Time Warner Cable this week announced they'll be partnering further on offering Wi-Fi for free to the companies' subscribers, allowing users of any of the cable operators the ability to access hotspots owned by any other participating ISP. According to the combined company press statement, the initiative will be called "CableWifi" (that will also be the SSID) and involve over 50,000 hotspots that users can access with credentials from any participating cable ISP.