A member here at BBR says that they "Just received notice from AT&T's ASI department. They will be increasing the wholesale rates of many of their DSL products by 33% on May 16th, 2008". AT&T recently increased the prices of four of their High Speed Internet services. That price increase went into effect Feb. 16th for new customers and will go into effect March 1st for existing customers. Needless to say with the telco increasing prices across its board you can probably expect this latest (possible) increase to roll downhill through those who use AT&T's wholesale service. However, since I haven't found a confirming story or info yet, this tidbit should be filed in the "rumor but something to watch for" department for now.

So, once again I'm surfing along looking for interesting broadband tidbits, and I come along this article at NewsObserver.com. You can see from the first paragraph of the article why it peaked my interest:
story continues..

While watching broadband basically fade away as an important political issue in this country, I've been following with great interest the ongoing situation in the Philippines, where a scandal involving the highest levels of the government over a broadband deal gone horribly wrong has been growing and now, for the last month or two, raging. It has all the makings of a Hollywood movie, complete with whistleblowers, kick backs, cover ups, death threats, senate hearings, abductions, the possibility of bringing down a presidency, and even Corizon Aquino getting into the act.

In a previous entries. I have argued about the lack of broadband in rural areas, and more recently touched on the fact that a national broadband policy is just not high on the priority list in this country or in this Presidential campaign.

I ran across this potentially useful bit of info for you frustrated Comcast customers tired of the the cableco's customer support shenanigans. The Consumerist, in an article titled "26 Secret Comcast Supervisor Phone Numbers", has been kind enough to leak some potentially very useful numbers when dealing with the tech support run around.

Looks like 2008 is starting off with a bang or two. First is the news that Motorola may spin off its wireless division, then we hear that Microsoft has finally made a serious move to acquire Yahoo.

"Networked Nation: Broadband In America" - thats the name of the report due out Thursday, January 30, 2008. It was prepared by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency within the Commerce Department that acts as the president's principal adviser on telecommunications and information policy issues.

There has been a recent spate of airlines installing in-flight broadband connectivity - albeit crippled/filtered in some way in most cases. VoIP or voice capabilities seem to be the one app that many people hope is not allowed, citing that they don't want to have to listen to their neighbor chatting away for the duration of the flight.

News From Around The Industry:

• In-flight broadband is a threat to the sanctuary of being on a plane?:
Airlines see airborne Internet access, which typically uses Wi-Fi technology deemed safe for flights, as producing both revenue and a competitive edge against one another and over trains, buses and automobiles. Frequent fliers said the temptation to go online would be overwhelming, though they were divided over whether they would rejoice.

News From Around The Industry:

• 'Give One Get One' Is a Hit, So OLPC Wants To Kill It:
TechDirt points out this feel-good Xmas Season gem: "When the One Laptop Per Child project announced its "Give One Get One" program in September, I praised it as an opportunity to get some laptops in the hands of real users. And apparently the program has proven a big hit, raking in as much as $2 million a day in revenues.

News From Around The Industry:

• Symbian: Mobile OS's are an unsexy rocket science, mobile Linux is like a common cold, and Google has no idea what its doing:
Google's dominance of the web will not translate to the mobile phone market, a senior executive at Symbian has said. John Forsyth, vice president of strategy at Symbian, the platform that powers many of the world's phones, said Google lacked experience.

News From Around The Industry:

• Whois may be scrapped to break deadlock:
Like a "411" for the Internet, Whois contains information such as names and phone numbers on the owners of millions of ".com" and other Internet addresses. Some privacy advocates are proposing scrapping the system entirely because they can't agree with the people who use the system on how to give domain name owners more options when they register — such as designating third-party agents.

News From Around The Industry:

• AT&T hopes to fool the youth of America into paying way too much for digital music:
AT&T announced that it will soon offer wireless access to Napster, the subscription-based digital music service. But it's ignoring the subscription bit.

News From Around The Industry:

• Sex, Nazi, burrito and marijuana:
Internet users in Egypt, India and Turkey are the world's most frequent searchers for websites using the keyword "sex" on Google search engines, according to statistics provided by Google. Germany, Mexico and Austria were world's top three searchers of the word "Hitler" while "Nazi" scored the most hits in Chile, Australia and the United Kingdom, data from 2004 to the present retrievable on the "Google Trends" Web site showed.

News From Around The Industry:

• Defusing the wi-fi backlash:
Media enthusiasm for wi-fi has given way to a backlash of late, with much speculation about its effects on health. Wireless networks have been suggested as a cause of ailments from headaches to cancer.

News From Around The Industry:

• Microsoft gives Xbox 360's to USO's so soldiers can get their Halo3 fix - and oh yeah, chat with loved ones at home:
MS revealed it is in the process of equipping USO centers around the world with Xbox 360 consoles so that armed forces personnel can play games such as Halo 3 or Madden NFL 07 during time off. The soldiers also will be able to chat with loved ones back home using headsets linked to the Xbox Live online service.

News From Around The Industry:

•Google reads your email, shocker:
Microsoft CEO Steve " All Quiet on the Western Front" Ballmer has accused Google of reading punter's emails. Talking to the throngs in Blighty, Steve told a crowd that one of the differences between the evil empire of Google and the Glorious Empire of MS was that the Vole didn't read your email.

News From Around The Industry:

•Verizon Adds iPhone Lookalike In Challenge To Apple:
Verizon Wireless unveiled four new mobile phones for the 2007 holiday season, and it hopes that one of them is cool enough to shift the spotlight away from Apple's iPhone. Attracting the most attention is LG Electronics' Voyager, which resembles the iPhone in several ways.

News From Around The Industry:

•Verizon reacts to AT&T and telco censorship:
Disclosures over the weekend that AT&T and Verizon reserve the right to suspend or terminate the service of customers who are critical of their conduct have prompted a call for congressional hearings on the censorship practices of the nation's leading carriers. According to AT&T's and Verizon's nearly identical service agreements, the companies can cancel the subscription of anyone who damages "the name or reputation" of AT&T or Verizon, "its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries." AT&T did not respond to e-mail and telephone requests for comment on the latest censorship controversy.

News From Around The Industry:

•AOL working on patch for IM vulnerability:
AOL is working on a patch for what security researchers are calling a "major vulnerability" in the company's highly popular IM app. Researchers at Core Security Technologies disclosed a bug that they say could severely impact the millions of registered AIM users.