Every so often we see a carrier get the bright idea to use modern network technology to inject their ads into website content -- and once publicized they become very short-lived affairs. You might recall that Mediacom got busted for this back in 2011, when they started using deep packet inspection and Javascript injection technology to insert ads into numerous websites -- even those traditionally without ads (like Apple or Google). The NY Marriott was busted for the practice last year. In both cases the backlash from users, web developers and advertisers was immense and immediate.

Now blogger Zachary Henkel (via Stop The Cap) directs our attention to yet another effort of this kind by a small cable operator named CMA Communications. CMA, which provides service in rural Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Nevada, apparently thought it would be nifty and profitable to inject additional ads into user traffic streams.

Henkel noticed the ads when browsing Bing, Google, Apple, so he took a quick look at CMA's code and found they were using a technology by R66T:

Last year Cablevision employees in Brooklyn voted to unionize for the first time in the company's history, a significant move given the fact that just 2-4% of cable technicians are unionized. The unionization has resulted in a heated feud ever since, with Cablevision suing the CWA for claims about sub-par service and post Sandy robocalls aimed at getting users to call in for refunds.

AT&T West employees in California and Nevada are currently reporting to work, but have threatened to strike if they can't strike a new deal with AT&T. According to Southern California Public Radio, the 18,000 workers and CWA members rejected a new contract proposal from AT&T last week over wages and benefits. As is usually the case, AT&T says they have a "contingency workforce of well-trained managers and vendors" to handle the workload disruption if a strike happens, though a strike will of course mean major delays in DSL and U-Verse installs and repairs.

West Virginia is one of the worst connected states in the nation, something that was supposed to be helped by a $126.3-million federal stimulus grant intended to improve state broadband. Instead, as a series of excellent reports in the Charleston Gazette have illustrated over the past year, state leaders doled out most of that money to Verizon, Cisco and Fairpoint, who convinced corrupt and/or incompetent state officials to spend it on ridiculously overpriced, overpowered and unused routers, and several ridiculously overpaid consultants who haven't actually accomplished anything.

A Berkeley city councilman has proposed a tax on e-mail and each bit as a possible way to help shore up the United States Postal Service's dwindling funds. "There should be something like a bit tax," insisted District 8 Berkeley Supervisor Gordon Wozniak this week. "I mean a bit tax could be a cent per-gigabit and they would still make, probably, billions of dollars a year. And there should be, also, a very tiny tax on email,” he said.

Updated. Users who have shelled out $60 (or more) for EA's new version of SimCity have found themselves unable to play even the single-player game because it requires a constantly-connected broadband line to function.

Cablevision's latest quarterly earnings were released yesterday, with the company taking a bit of a beating related to repairs from hurricane Sandy. According to Cablevision, 60% of the company's New York area customers had services disrupted, and the carrier had to repair more than 450 miles of damaged cable at more than 16,000 locations. Thanks partially to the storm and destroyed homes, Cablevision lost 50,000 TV subscribers on the quarter, on top of losing 5,000 broadband customers and 10,000 voice customers. That's the first time Cablevision has posted a quarterly net loss for broadband subscribers in the company's history.

West Virginia is one of the worst connected states in the nation, something that was supposed to be helped by a $126.3-million federal stimulus grant intended to improve state broadband. Instead, as a series of excellent reports in the Charleston Gazette have illustrated over the past year, state leaders doled out most of that money to Verizon and Cisco, who convinced the (either corrupt or totally incompetent) state officials to spend it on ridiculously overpriced, overpowered and unused routers, and ridiculously overpaid consultants who haven't actually accomplished anything.

A fiber digging crew clipped a gas line in Kansas City resulting in at least one death and fifteen injuries as the resulting explosion destroyed a restaurant and part of a shopping complex. ABC News notes that the resulting explosion created a massive fireball seen for miles, and that more than 100 firefighters spent the majority of the evening battling the blaze. According to USAToday, the gas main was clipped by Heartland Midwest, which had been subcontracted to extend a fiber-optic line for Time Warner Cable. While fiber digs can also be highly complicated due to poor buried line records, the local utility claims the line had been clearly marked. The deceased is believed to be 46-year-old restaurant employee Megan Cramer.

A small bug in a line of Facebook code temporarily rendered a huge swath of websites, including CNN, Gawker, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post -- inaccessible. Users trying to access those sites were redirected to a borked Facebook page instead of the requested content. In typical spokesperson fashion, a statement issued to the press by Facebook significantly underplayed the scope of a problem. "For a short period of time, there was a bug that redirected people logging in with Facebook from third-party sites to Facebook.com. The issue was quickly resolved, and Login with Facebook is now working as usual."

The FCC met with representatives from ISPs and carriers, city governments and power utilities to see what, if anything, could have prevented some of the outages seen during superstorm Sandy last fall. As I noted at the time, the response from fixed-line broadband providers was fairly stellar, with most ISPs providing quick refunds.

Last year Cablevision employees in Brooklyn voted to unionize for the first time in the company's history, a significant move given the fact that just 2-4% of cable technicians are unionized. The move has resulted in a contentious fight between union employees and Cablevision executives ever since, with strikes, lawsuits over union claims about sub-par Cablevision service, and battles over Sandy refund robocalls.

"U-verse service has been restored for the vast majority of our customers affected by the outage," AT&T tells Broadband Reports. As we've been tracking, numerous users in both the Southwest and Southeast have been without service since Monday after an AT&T DHCP server decided it had other aspirations. "We expect any remaining customer issues will be resolved this morning," says AT&T. "We will provide a credit to customers who were affected. We know our customers count on their U-verse service and we apologize for the inconvenience."

According to Google's latest transparency report, more than two-thirds of the requests submitted to the company for private user information aren't backed by warrants. According to the study, various parts of the United States government made over 8,400 requests for nearly 15,000 accounts -- significantly more than any other government.

A significant chunk of AT&T U-Verse customers across a number of states continue to be unable to use broadband, voice or television services. As we noted yesterday, many of these users have been completely offline since Monday, with AT&T slow to respond to complaints or give any solid explanations as to what went wrong.

Dish has announced that the company will be shuttering another 300 Blockbuster stores, resulting in the potential for 3,000 lost jobs. In 2010 Dish shelled out $320 million for the Blockbuster brand and after significant hype, launched a "new" Blockbuster streaming service that was little more than Blockbuster's existing, underwhelming services with a coat of Dish public relations paint. Heavily-hyped plans to use the Blockbuster brand as the foundation of a "Netflix killer" were dismantled, and Dish now seems happy to just slowly sell off the company for scrap.

Copyright troll Voltage Picture's attempt to extort money out of Canadian Teksavvy customers will have to wait a little longer. As we recently noted, Voltage Pictures is trying to get TekSavvy to hand over the identities of thousands of BitTorrent users in order to send them "copyright-violation-o-matic" letters scaring those users into settling for copyright infringement of Voltage films.

Security analyst Gaurang Pandya this week proclaimed that Nokia has been hijacking Internet traffic of Nokia phone users, technically providing the company with access to all user Internet browsing activity. According to the researcher, Nokia is effectively conducting a "man in the middle attack" on its users, intercepting and temporarily decrypting HTTPS connections, giving Nokia access to all manner of protected communications.

West Virginia is one of the worst connected states in the nation, something that was supposed to be helped by a $126.3-million federal stimulus grant intended to improve state broadband. Instead, as a series of excellent reports in the Charleston Gazette have illustrated over the past year, state leaders doled out most of that money to Verizon, who convinced the (either corrupt or totally incompetent) state officials to spend it on ridiculously overpriced, overpowered and unused routers, and ridiculously overpaid consultants who haven't actually accomplished anything.

Already under investigation for slowing down YouTube streams, French ISP Free is also now taking heat for blocking -- advertisements? Free recently announced that the ISP would start blocking advertisements for subscribers, requiring that users opt in if they want to view ad content. The blocking actually takes place courtesy of a firmware update to the company's DSL modems.