• Netflix's Traffic Problem Is Good for Big Cable [fool.com]
• Dish Said to Bid $2 Billion for LightSquared Wireless Spectrum [wallstreetpit.com]
• Outgoing FCC chairman Julius Genachowski looks back on his four years at the agency [newsfactor.com]
• Battle for the hearts, minds, time and wallets of broadband users shifts to the home [lightreading.com]
• Energy Efficiency Could Cut Wireless Data Power Demand 90% By 2020 [cleantechnica.com]
• AT&T says 'any' mobile video chat app will work on its network by the end of 2013 [theverge.com]
• Swedish Prosecutor Claims Registrar Of .se Domains An 'Accomplice' In Infringement Because Of Pirate Bay Domain [techdirt.com]
• Global smartphone shipments to outstrip feature phones in 2013 [fiercewireless.com]
• Google's free Wi-Fi network bogging down due to traffic [fiercebroadbandwireless.com]
• The iWatch is coming! The iWatch is coming! Reports: Apple's wrister to have 1.5-inch OLED, test units being built [theregister.co.uk]
• Roku CEO: Virtual cable MSOs 'inevitable' [fiercecable.com]

Hulu has consistently flailed and suffered from incomplete show catalogs because the company's owners, with a vested interest in the status quo, really don't have much of an interest in Hulu truly disrupting or succeeding. Now Disney and News Corporation, after years of bickering about what to do with the property, are again pushing for a sale on the heels of departures of top company executives last January.

As we've seen with both Sprint and T-Mobile, LTE launch locations pop up well ahead of official launch markets as the companies run pre-commercial launch tests. Users now say that they're seeing T-Mobile LTE signals pop up in Detroit, Minneapolis and New York City. Minneapolis is slated for a May launch, while both Detroit and New York City aren't officially expected to come online until June. T-Mobile previously stated they aim to cover 100 million potential customers with LTE by the middle of 2013, with 200 million potential customers covered by the end of this year.

Verizon's attempt to hang up on their copper networks in Sandy-impacted areas has gotten more complicated after the NY Public Service Commission last week indicated hesitation at letting Verizon disconnect users state wide without first understanding the repercussions. According to regional Long Island news reports, the PSC has granted Verizon temporary approval to pull DSL on Fire Island, NY, replacing it with Verizon's Voice Link wireless service.

A new joint study by Aalborg University, Northeastern University, and the Copenhagen Business School has found that piracy of video games on BitTorrent networks has been unsurprisingly over-stated by industry. The study analyzed a the BitTorrent trading of some 173 different computer games across 14 different gaming platforms over a three-month period between 2010 and 2011. "First and foremost, P2P game piracy is extraordinarily prevalent and geographically distributed [at least it was during the period analyzed]," said the researchers. "However, the numbers in our investigation suggest that previously reported magnitudes in game piracy are too high." The full study is available here (pdf).

• Confronting The Reality Of US Broadband Performance [techcrunch.com]
• Dish Network to launch satellite Internet service aimed at rural areas [nbcnews.com]
• Looming Health Crisis: Wireless Technology and the Toxification of America [rinf.com]
• Leaked Memo Shows Barnes & Noble Bringing Web Browser And Email To Simple Touch eReaders In June [techcrunch.com]
• Microsoft's New Xbox Girds for a Smartphone Battle [wsj.com]
• Yahoo board has approved a massive $1.1 billion all-cash deal to buy Tumblr [allthingsd.com]
• Want To Destroy Any Hope Of Serious Cybersecurity? Give The DOJ Its Desired Backdoor Wiretaps On All Communications [techdirt.com]
• Samsung: We'll hit 10M Galaxy S4 sales in less than a month [fiercewireless.com]
• 44% of operators will offer home automation through gateways by 2014 [fiercecable.com]
• The "PayPal 14": What happens to the hackers after the government cracks down? [huffingtonpost.com]

Please deposit your funniest, most insightful and intelligent commentary into the receptacle provided below.

• FCC Chair Julius Genachowski steps down today, but what will he leave behind? [theverge.com]
• Who Should Be Scared Of Samsung's 1Gb+ Wireless Technology? [forbes.com]
• FCC Nominee to Divest AT&T, Verizon to Avoid Conflict [bloomberg.com]
• Concerns Arise on U.S. Effort to Allow Internet ‘Wiretaps’ [nytimes.com]
• How Google beat Apple to a streaming music service while iRadio is still mired in licensing talks and not ready for WWDC [theverge.com]
• Apple Mobile Devices Cleared for Use on U.S. Military Networks [bloomberg.com]
• Truly unlimited mobile data plans are a rarity in Western Europe [fiercewireless.com]
• Android-powered gaming console Nvidia Shield pre-orders ($349) start today - 3 days earlier than expected; shipping in June [theverge.com]
• Launching the Internet of Everything One Startup at a Time [huffingtonpost.com]
• Driverless Car Could Be Hacked By '14-Year-Old From Indonesia,' Senator Warns [huffingtonpost.com]
• Google Glass testing prescription prototypes [cnet.com]

Amtrak has been offering Wi-Fi on board some of their trains for several years (a full list is here), though historically the quality of the connections have been ridiculed. Since earlier this year the company has been promising upgrades.

Earlier this week the government came under fire for hoovering up the personal call logs of more than twenty lines belonging to the Associated Press. Initially Uncle Same claimed the snooping and violation of press rights was due to an immediate and pressing life-risking investigation, but as the week rolled on it became clear the government was simply embarrassed by internal leaks and annoyed an AP story stole some public relations thunder.

For much of the last year, Verizon Wireless has been blocking Google Wallet, claiming that its use of a device's "secure element" is what has prohibited them from letting consumers use the app. Numerous people have explained in great detail (including the lawyer that filed the original complaint with the FCC) that this excuse is simply being used to keep Google Wallet permanently stuck in approval purgatory, while the wireless industry's own, competing Isis platform sees no such restrictions.

It is very quickly becoming clear that if you want the FCC to avoid enforcing their network neutrality rules, all you have to do is throw some half-assed, vague-sounding technical jargon at the agency to bog them down in inactivity indefinitely. With yesterday's news that AT&T is blocking yet another video chat application in order to drive users to more expensive data plans, it's rather clear that the FCC lacks the stomach to actually enforce the rules they designed.

In late 2011 after several delays, ViaSat finally launched their new KA-band satellite ViaSat 1, which allowed the company to finally start offering consumers some faster residential bandwidth speeds via the Exede brand. Now the company has announced that they're hard at work on ViaSat 2, with plans to launch it sometime in the middle of 2016 (in satellite launch parlance, that means probably around 2018). According to ViaSat, the launch of ViaSat 2 will double their existing bandwidth capacity and expand coverage across much of North and Central America. While satellite broadband is still considered the black sheep of the broadband industry because of high prices, high latency and low caps, the faster speeds made availability by this added capacity has clearly been reflected in our user Exede reviews.

Canadian wireless operator Telus today announced that the company would be buying smaller wireless competitor Mobilicity for $380 Million, the first of what's expected to be several similar deals. According to the Globe and Mail, while Telus is looking for quick regulatory approval, the government has suggested they're not entirely thrilled with the erosion of competition and the accumulation of floundering upstart spectrum by incumbents. As for Mobilicity, they insist they looked high and low for other options before sleeping with the enemy. "We beat the bushes as far as they could possibly be beaten and as hard as they could possibly be beaten ... There was not a deal to be found with the other new entrants," said the company.

• Innovator: Greg Raleigh's Zact, Pay-as-You-Go Custom Wireless [businessweek.com]
• How four wireless players are manoeuvring for advantage in Canada [theglobeandmail.com]
• Wireless charging still has strings attached - Which wireless charging standard will emerge the winner? One side now appears to have momentum thanks to backing from AT&T [cnet.com]
• Lawmakers fear privacy risks from Google Glass [thehill.com]
• Intel May Have Lost the iPhone Battle, But It Could Still Win the Mobile War [theatlantic.com]
• Australia's net filter sneaks into operation through back door - Regulator's ban on dodgy shares site wipes out hundreds, exposes censorship mechanism [theregister.co.uk]
• Half of youngsters would swap privacy for... cheaper insurance [theregister.co.uk]
• Copyright Owners Can't Sue YouTube As A Group, Judge Rules [huffingtonpost.com]

• ViaSat announces next-gen broadband satellite, will support fast-growing Exede Internet services [prnewswire.com]
• Wireless companies warm to unlimited streaming of some apps [washingtonpost.com]
• Canada's Telus Buys Smaller Wireless Rival Mobilicity for $380 Million [hollywoodreporter.com]
• New World Record in Wireless Data Transmission [pddnet.com]
• Verizon boosts data allottments in prepaid plans [fiercewireless.com]
• Pirate Bay cofounder to run for European Parliament [theregister.co.uk]
• AT&T Continues To Mock The Concept Of Net Neutrality; This Time With Google Hangouts Video Chat Block [techdirt.com]
• As iPhone Sleeve delays drag on, FreedomPop offers Photon and free 2 GB as consolation [fiercewireless.com]
• No one wants to be a Glasshole: Only 10% of U.S. smartphone users would buy Google Glass if they could afford it [huffingtonpost.com]
• London Olympics site to become digital mega-hub [theregister.co.uk]

As part of many announcements at Google's I/O Conference this week, Google announced that they would now be integrating video chat within Google Hangouts across platforms and devices. Well, unless you use AT&T.

Verizon today announced that they're increasing the usage allotments on the company's prepaid wireless offerings. According to the Verizon statement, Verizon's $60 prepaid plan will offer users unlimited voice, texting and 2 GB of data per month -- up from the previous cap of 500 MB per month. Verizon's $70 plan will now provide users with unlimited voice, texting and 4 GB of data per month -- up from the previous cap or 2 GB per month. As noted previously, these plans are for EVDO connectivity, not LTE. According to Verizon Wireless this new pricing is available to existing customers now, and to new customers starting on June 6.

While there's absolutely no doubt that Google Fiber has been a positive thing for the industry, critics have singled out two problems with Google's ultra-fast offering. One, the company backed off of open access promises that would have allowed multiple companies to come in and truly compete over the infrastructure.

ISPs which in the past had historically improved in Netflix performance because of faster speeds, are now finding themselves falling in Netflix's new monthly streaming ISP rankings because they're not signing up for Netflix's CDN network. As noted recently, Netflix stated they'd start offering users "Super HD" and 3D streams -- if their ISP signed up for Netflix's new Open Connect Content Delivery Network.