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"There's no question that putting Dish and DirecTV together makes a lot of sense," Dish CEO Charlie Ergen stated back in August, adding that Dish "would certainly look at DirecTV, and putting Dish and DirecTV together." The question however remains whether or not the government (which blocked such a deal in 2002) would approve such a deal this time. Speaking last week to investors, DirecTV CEO Michael White remains skeptical the government would approve such a deal, especially after blocking the AT&T and T-Mobile merger, as well as the merger of American Airlines and US Airways.

A new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that 44% of consumers want an a la carte system where they can pick and choose the channels they want. 73% of consumers would prefer a la carte -- or some kind of innovation in channel pricing and bundling -- than cable operators currently offer.

Last month, Netflix struck their first ever deal to bundle Netflix with existing cable services by UK provider Virgin Media. Last week, Netflix also struck a deal with Swedish cable operator Com Hem to offer Netflix to cable subscribers who use the cable operator's TiVo DVRs. So far however, such deals have been a no show here in the States. According to Netflix CFO David Wells they've been asking the cable industry for two years for such partnerships, but the cable industry continues to see the company as the enemy and has rebuffed all advances. "We would love to reduce the friction to the end consumer, and to be available via the existing device in the home, which is the set-top box," said Wells.

The London School of Economics and Political Science has issued a new report arguing that filesharing is helping creative industries more than it is hurting them, urging government leaders to look beyond the traditionally-myopic lobbying by the entertainment industry when drafting copyright and other policy. "Despite the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) claim that online piracy is devastating the movie industry, Hollywood achieved record-breaking global box office revenues of $35 billion in 2012, a 6% increase over 2011," the study's authors state. "Contrary to the industry claims, the music industry is (similarly) not in terminal decline, but still holding ground and showing healthy profits," it adds.

An Irish startup by the name of Multipath Networks is crowdfunding a new router they claim can combine up to four broadband connections to create a faster and more reliable broadband experience for customers. According to the company's ongoing IndieGogo funding effort, Multipath Networks and creator Justin Collery is hoping to get $30,000 in funding by the end of October in order to fund production of the unit.

The cable industry this week announced that their creatively named joint "CableWiFi" initiative now offers access to more than 200,000 hotspots if you're a paying customer of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Bright House Networks, or Cox Communications. That number is up from the 150,000 hotspots offered back in June, and the 50,000 hotspots offered back in May of 2012. The CableWiFi initiative piggybacked initially on the back of Cablevision's idea to deploy free Wi-Fi to paying customers across NYC commuter regions to better compete with Verizon FiOS.

"Allowing people to pay more and not have advertising at all, I think that’s the right path long term," recently stated Hulu CEO Andy Forssell. "I'm a big believer in choice… I believe over time we should introduce an ad-free service." Forsell says Hulu's $8 Hulu Plus service generates $7 per user in ad revenue monthly, so users would need to pay more to counter that lost revenue. Why hasn't this happened yet? Hulu's biggest problem continues to be that since it's owned by the cable and broadcast industry it's intentionally designed to only be marginally interesting as to not cannibalize traditional TV users.

• How Wired Is the World Today? [businessweek.com]
• Internet freedom: Death by government? [techeye.net]
• Mobile Fix: is the Internet really killing newspapers? [mediatel.co.uk]
• Sprint’s Creepy View of a Connected Future Has Little Room for Hollywood [variety.com]
• Adobe’s network compromised: 2.9 million customer names, encrypted credit and debit card numbers, and source code [thenextweb.com]
• Aereo shows that cord cutting has a long way to go [fiercecable.com]
• Amazon Set-Top Box Coming By End Of Year [huffingtonpost.com]
• Microsoft Said to Ask HTC for Windows on Android Phones [bloomberg.com]
• 13 members of Anonymous indicted on US hacking charges [phys.org]
• Apple TV Vs Chromecast: Streaming Gets on to a Higher Level [devicemag.com]

Not too surprisingly, the United States government is formally refusing (pdf) requests by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others to be able to disclose how many requests they get from the government for user information. "Such information would be invaluable to our adversaries, who could thereby derive a clear picture of where the Government’s surveillance efforts are directed and how its surveillance activities change over time," said the brief, filed on Monday. "If our adversaries know which platforms the Government does not surveil, they can communicate over those platforms when, for example, planning a terrorist attack or the theft of state secrets."

While some analysts are already rather bubbly about Sprint's fortunes, the sad reality is the company's LTE speeds and coverage are lagging noticeably behind the other big three carriers. Despite being acquired by Japanese carrier SoftBank, Sprint's stock value has dropped 14% since early August. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is begging investors for patience. "At the very least you need half a year or a year," said Son of an effective Sprint turnaround. "And for anything substantial you need one or two years."

While FiOS is considered cutting edge, Verizon's provisioned Wi-Fi gateways have long been considerably less so. For some time the only way that FiOS customers could even get anything faster than 802.11g was to buy a 802.11n router from somebody else.

In May of last year Comcast announced they would be experimenting with metered billing in several trial markets. Users in those markets suddenly found themselves facing a usage cap of 300 GB a month.

You'll recall that back in August Lavabit, the secure e-mail provider used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, announced they were shutting down operations while ambiguously blaming Uncle Sam. At the time, Lavabit founder Ladar Levison stated his choice was either to be "complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit." He obviously chose the latter, but offered no hard details.

Carriage fee disputes claimed more victims this week as the roughly 600,000 customers of the Washington-Post owned Cable One lost access to Turner cable networks including CNN, Turner Classic Movies and Headline News. Customers lost access to the channels on Tuesday after negotiations over carriage fees broke down.

A Federal Aviation Administration advisory committee "has concluded passengers can safely use hand-held electronic devices, including those connected to onboard Wi-Fi systems, during all portions of flights on nearly all US airliners," according to a paywalled report in the Wall Street Journal. Last week reports emerged that the FAA was preparing to lift in-flight restrictions starting early next year, though the panel's recommendations go further than expected. Cell phone conversations would remain off limits according to the committee's recommendations.

Apple has hired Cable industry veteran and long-time CableLabs exec Jean-François Mulé to work on "something big" over at the Cuppertino giant. MultiChannel News notes that Mulé posted to LinkedIn, stating he's going to be "challenged, inspired and part of something big." Rumors of both an Apple television and an Apple subscription TV service have long been around, though just like every other company (Google, Intel, Sony, Microsoft) Apple has found it impossible to get the cable and broadcast industry to sign off on licensing deals for technologies that could potentially disrupt the legacy TV market.

• Microsoft, Google joins TV white-space broadband road test [zdnet.com]
• Amazon’s Smartphones Detailed: ‘Project Smith’ 3D Flagship Model And A Value Handset With FireOS [techcrunch.com]
• Target Launching T-Mobile Prepaid Service Called “Brightspot” on October 6 [droid-life.com]
• Facebook's check-in based free Wi-Fi rolling out nationally with Cisco's help [theverge.com]
• NSA Tracked Mobile Phone Locations, Despite Previous Semi-Denials [techdirt.com]
• Another company interested in buying BlackBerry [huffingtonpost.com]
• Why Our Cities Need to Get Smarter Now [wired.com]
• Android benchmarks: Almost every major device maker is cheating [liliputing.com]
• Feds Take Down Online Fraud Bazaar ‘Silk Road’ [krebsonsecurity.com]

New Charter chair and cable industry mainstay John Malone has recently been telling anyone who'll listen that the cable industry should consolidate, leaking rumored acquisition talks with Cox to the press on a monthly basis (something Cox has denied). The man quite simply just can't shut up about it, whether he's urging Dish and DirecTV to merge, or urging Time Warner Cable, Charter, Cox and Cablevision to do the same.

As noted on Monday, Google is gearing up to deliver 1 Gbps service to the first customers in Provo, Utah starting this month. Given that Google Fiber's launch in Provo comes on the back of the existing iProvo and Veracity fiber to the home service there, Google says their Provo launch will obviously be somewhat different than Kansas City or Austin, with some existing Provo FTTH customers being able to sign up for Google Fiber much more quickly.

Karl Bode