A telecom labor union-backed group dubbed Speed Matters has released their third annual report on the state of the broadband union. The group, with an obvious interest in increased broadband deployment, has long lamented the fact that the US is only industrialized country without a national policy to promote universal, affordable high speed Internet access. Well, at least for another 176 days, at which point the FCC will unveil our new broadband plan.

The group has logged 413,000 broadband speed tests via their website, and says we're still significantly behind other developed nations. 18% of testers have connections slower than 768 kbps, while 51% of testers have connections between 768 kbps and 6 Mbps. 17% of testers have speeds between 10 Mbps and 25 Mbps, while just 2% of users posted speeds faster than 25 Mbps.

"Between 2007 and 2009, the average download speed in the United States has increased by only 1.6 megabits per second (mbps), from 3.5 mbps in 2007 to 5.1 mbps in 2009," proclaims the report. "At this rate, it will take the United States 15 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in South Korea, the country with the fastest average Internet connections."

Speed Matters also released a complete breakdown of each state and territory's average broadband speed.

Last month we noted how skepticism was mounting about the viability of a new telecom operator by the name of Zer01, who had been getting great press for their plan to offer a VoIP-centric mobile service with unlimited voice and data for $69.95/month. As more people dig into the operator and its seemingly endless army of MLM promotional wizards, the company has started to look increasingly more shady, with IDG News running a new piece casting yet more doubt on Zer01.

According to a statement by the FTC, the agency has shut down an ISP named 3FN and/or APS Telecom because it "recruits, knowingly hosts, and actively participates in the distribution of spam, child pornography, and other harmful electronic content." The ISP was operated by another company named Pricewert LLC, and powered more than 15,000 websites. According to the FTC, this is the first time they've ever shuttered the operation of an Internet service provider. "We're very proud, because in one fell swoop we've gone after a big facilitator of some of the utterly worst conduct," new FTC boss Jonathan Leibowitz tells the Washington Post.

According to security firm MXLogic, the kind of spam drop seen with the recent shutdown of McColo wasn't seen here because scam and scumlords have subsequently built redundancy into their networks.

Users in our security forum have discovered that advertisements delivered via the FoxNews.com website have been using popup malware to force-deliver artificial anti-virus malware onto the PCs of unsuspecting visitors (of which Fox has countless millions). One of our more skilled scambusters and "malvertising" gurus has further dissected (with photos) the exact scumware delivery mechanism at work here -- and notes that users don't even need to click on an ad banner at the website in order to get infected. The vsm_free_setup.exe forced download the ads are instituting originates from Russia or the Ukraine, and appears to involve a keylogger.

• Pelosi Asks Justice To Take Broader View Of Competitive Landscape [multichannel.com]
• The risks of a national broadband network [aardvark.co.nz]
• Congress re-mulls ban on wireless tax [theregister.co.uk]
• Google, Yahoo, Skype in survey that states obvious: Consumers expect unrestricted Internet access [reuters.com]
• Is it a bad idea for IBM to buy Sun? [cnet.com]
• Survey reveals woeful service from UK broadband big boys [pcpro.co.uk]
• In-Stat: 30% of subscribers will be 3G or 4G by 2013 [fiercewireless.com]
• Skype offers Mac users free Wi-Fi [yahoo.com]
• Choruss' Music Tax Plan: Bait-And-Switch [techdirt.com]
• Further Sony Ericsson Break-Up Rumours [cellular-news.com]
• AT&T to offer unsubsidized iPhone 3G with no commitment required? [engadget.com]
• Privacy watchdog barks for federal Gmail probe [theregister.co.uk]

Spamhaus maintains a running list of the worst spammers, biggest spam producing countries, and the networks that are the most tolerant to Spam. Interesting in this latest iteration is the fact that while Microsoft has cleaned up their act and booted spammers from their domains, those spammers appear to have fled to Google's networks, placing the onus on Google to uh, not be evil.

As we had warned earlier this week, VPN4Life looked a little too good to be true, the service offering customers a one time $29 payment for a lifetime of anonymous VPN-based BitTorrent access. Torrent Freak has posted a follow up on their original piece, confirming that the outfit is in fact a scam. Apparently it's not even a good one -- some inspection of the code shows they simply ripped off Hotspot Shield, a free downloadable program designed to protect people's privacy while using public hotspots. VPN4Life since added a blurb to their website terms and conditions declaring no refunds, though some of our users say the operation is refunding money anyway.

If you recall, the network neutrality debate truly took off in the States back in 2005, when former SBC (now AT&T) CEO Ed Whitacre told Business Week in an article that Google wanted to use Ed's "pipes", for free. "I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it," insisted Ed at the time.

Security experts state that last week's shutdown of McColo will change the way that botnet operators work, forcing them to adopt a more decentralized P2P method of botnet control already being used by some scammers and spammers. Sophos tells eWeek that "because the big [old-fashioned] botnets were still working there was no need for them to change their methods," but "the closing of McColo will force changes." The massive spam reduction caused by McColo's closure was quickly back to normal within days.

Last week a Washington Post reporter managed to take down McColo, a California-based host thought to host a handful of botnets responsible for roughly 75% of the world's spam, as well as being a host for anti-malware scams, child porn websites and child porn payment data. The Post (via Techdirt) now has a follow up report that suggests McColo came online briefly last weekend so that Russian criminals could transfer data and regain some control over botnets. Swedish telco TeliaSonera quickly pulled the plug on McColo's new data pipe when notified. However, they were online long enough for spammers to regain 10,000 to 15,000 of an estimated 100,000 infected PCs.

Thanks to Brian Krebs of the Washington Post, McColo Corporation -- a Web hosting company that has emerged as a major U.S. base of operations for a host of international cyber-crime syndicates -- has been yanked offline.

• T-Mobile starts 3G in San Francisco [cnet.com]
• FCC Hopes To Review Two Wireless Mergers This Year [cio-today.com]
• Movie giants sue RealNetworks over DVD copying software [theregister.co.uk]
• Analysis: Sprint's WiMax shines on price, but not on coverage [computerworld.com]
• Comcast's cap should increase privacy, since the company won't sniff traffic... also now selling bridges in Brooklyn [pcworld.com]
• Cable vs. DSL vs. dial-up vs. cellular - which to lose?[networkworld.com]
• Operator Of The Year: One Time Warner Cable Era Ends, Another Begins [multichannel.com]
• UCSniff - VoIP eavesdropping made easy [theregister.co.uk]

• EU Aims For Broadband Access For All Europeans [webpronews.com]
• ISPs Eye Tiered Broadband Pricing [lightreading.com]
• Taking the Broadband Revolution to Rural America [ktre.com]
• Verizon: Put the brakes on broadband monitoring [cnet.com]
• Regulators ease path for BT's superfast broadband [ft.com]
• China reports 77.83 million broadband users [People's Daily Online]
• Mistrial declared in RIAA file-sharing lawsuit [theinquirer.net]
• 'You can't use Google' - EU Parliament [theregister.co.uk]

People who are afraid that they might get caught and fined for their BitTorrent use may find themselves getting sucked into a recent email scam which preys on this fear. Emails are being sent out claiming to come from anti-piracy group MediaDefender which inform the recipient that their illegal filesharing is being tracked. The person is supposed to open up an attachment for information about the violations which, of course, ends up actually being a virus. These emails are apparently being randomly sent out; their success points to the frequency of BitTorrent use and the widespread fear of being caught for illegal downloads.

According to the Athens News Courier (via Consumerist), Charter Communications ran a father's day promotion offering one lucky dad a 65" LCD HDTV. When it came time to pony up the prize, the company suddenly became difficult to get a hold of, and sent the winner a 19" HDTV set instead. Charter also recently ran a promotion offering broadband for life (the winner paid $71,500), though some fine print buried in the promotion rules allows Charter completely off the hook should the debt-riddled company be sold within three years.

Update: After the story aired, Charter sent the family both a 42" and a 19" TV, and blamed the problem on a "miscommunication at the office."

Apparently there are still some people out there who are confused about what's going to happen when the switch from analog to digital TV is made in February. Some shady businesses out there are preying on that confusion by advertising free converter boxes that don't require the use of the $40 DTV coupons being given out by the federal government.

Reports from Internet security experts indicate that there has been a recent rise in VoIP phishing (also known as vishing) scams. These scams have been taking place since at least 2006 but since VoIP use has grown steadily since last year there are a lot of new users who aren’t aware of the issue. The most common scenario is for a scammer to place a call to your VoIP phone with an automated recording warning that there’s a problem with your credit card and asking you to call back; when you do, you’re asked to input your credit card information into the system which then gives the scammer everything that’s necessary to steal your identity. Identity theft now often takes place in a three-prong attack which includes email, text message and voice phishing. If you don’t already realize it, you shouldn’t give out your personal information to just anyone who asks.

CNET's Declan McCullagh says the Senate is considering a bill that would make phishing illegal. The only problem? It already is.

The Federal Communications Commission is warning businesses that people posing as hearing-impaired consumers have been misusing the Internet-based telecommunications relay service (TRS) to commit fraudulent business transactions, reports the Baltimore Sun. Of course the abuse of this system has been going on for a long time (we mentioned it back in 2004).

The problem doesn't improve in part because major telecom companies are paid close to $1.50 per minute by the FCC (read: the taxpayer) to carry the traffic, so reducing overall traffic doesn't serve their interests. One stat suggests that nearly 90% of the traffic on the system is scammers using stolen credit cards to anonymously order mail-order electronics in bulk.

You may have heard of "Connect Kentucky," a plan developed to bring broadband services to rural areas of Kentucky that's being revamped as a national broadband cure-all under the name Connected Nation. It has the support of a number of key politicians (including President Bush and Hillary Clinton) and major incumbents like Verizon, whose policy men insist that the plan revitalized Kentucky and would do the same nationally.