• Music Publishers Lawsuit Against Yahoo, Microsoft, Real Tossed For Failing To Prove They Hold Copyrights [techdirt.com]
• Ranking House Oversight Committee Member Says FCC Lacks Transparency On Broadband Hires [multichannel.com]
• Fixed or Mobile? Price Drives Broadband Choice for Subscribers in Europe [cellular-news.com]
• Expert calls for staggered universal broadband plans [cable.co.uk]
• NBC's Words Against AOL/Time Warner Merger May Come Back To Haunt [techdirt.com]
• ATT and Verizon ads both misleading? Say it ain't so! [slate.com]
• Half of US Mobile Subscribers Interested in Femtocells [cellular-news.com]
• Google Chrome is out for Mac, Linux [theinquirer.net]
• PS3 to support data transfer [reghardware.co.uk]

Despite being one of the early pioneers of telco TV (not too long ago they shut down their VDSL-based IPTV service ChoiceTV), Qwest continues to insist that unlike other Ma Bell offshoots AT&T and Verizon, Qwest has absolutely no interest in becoming a TV provider. While Qwest is sometimes criticized for playing wait-and-see with video, the decision could ultimately come back to be the right one if "over the top" Internet video-delivery winds up trumping IPTV projects like AT&T's U-Verse.

In last year's 700 MHz Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum auction, Cox Communications won 14 Block A and 8 Block B licenses for bids totaling $304 million. Through a joint venture with Sprint and several other cable companies, Cox also spent $2.37 billion to buy 137 AWS licenses.

Verizon has agreed to pay the state of New Jersey $795,000 and about $50 to each of roughly 1,100 customers in the state. Why? According to the office of New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram, Verizon failed to deliver promotional items promised to FiOS consumers in flyers (you might recall one promotion where Verizon promised free televisions, then failed to deliver them).

IDG News Service notes that security researcher "Moxie Marlinspike" has launched a new cloud-based computing service that will test your WPA-secured Wi-Fi network for chinks in its armor. Creatively dubbed WPA Cracker, the service speeds up the process of testing a WPA-PSK protected wireless networks against dictionary attacks. Whereas such a test could take five days or more on a dual-core PC, WPA Cracker gives customers access to a 400CPU cluster and a 135 million word dictionary created specifically for WPA passwords. Those willing to pay $34 get the system's full power, while those who pay $17 get half the power -- and of course half the speed. Our friend Glenn Fleishman has more detail, and speculates that the service is powered by Amazon servers.

New FTC boss Jon Leibowitz has made privacy his top issue for some time, given the significant new trends in snoopier advertising technologies. So far this pledge to consumer privacy has consisted of yet more FTC privacy "roundtables" and news stories suggesting new privacy laws are coming -- without any new privacy laws arriving. The problem is, as we just mentioned the other day, with so many industries eager to make billions from behavioral advertising -- you've got ISPs, content operators, and the entire advertising industry lobbying Uncle Sam simultaneously to either prevent new privacy rules -- or to make sure they're immensely wimpy. This eager collective is lobbying hard for voluntary, wimpy guidelines, while privacy advocates would prefer to see laws that make all snoopvertisements opt in only. Guess who'll win?

Sprint got a nice little stock boost this week thanks to a report in Barron's weekly newspaper suggesting that the nation's third largest wireless carrier was finally turning things around. Sprint's been hemmoraging subscribers since their ill-fated acquisition of Nextel, and while customers have been telling us that things have been improving -- that didn't seem to help Sprint's earnings or subscriber totals last quarter. Some analysts still seem to be floating the rumor that Deutsche Telekom would like to buy Sprint and integrate T-Mobile and Sprint (despite the obvious network incompatibilities), though it's more likely that Deutsche Telekom will help fund the Clearwire build in exchange for T-Mobile spectrum access.

AT&T has announced a new application that will allow AT&T users to report network problems while using AT&T's wireless network. The AT&T "Mark The Spot" application was developed by AT&T earlier this year, and has been used by AT&T employees to test iPhone functionality on the AT&T network for month. It essentially skips AT&T support and lets you directly report network problems to the AT&T network folks -- be they dropped calls, flaky 3G coverage, or low quality voice signal. Even if reporting the problem doesn't actually result in it getting fixed -- the act of doing so might just make you feel better. AT&T insists they continue to work on the network, and that they've reduced 3G dropped calls by 12 percent over the past year.

• Village where BT chairman has the only broadband to get itself connected [samknows.com]
• AT&T faces class action suit over high-speed Internet [stltoday.com]
• New Jersey Settles With Verizon Over Deceptive FiOS Marketing [cellular-news.com]
• Satellites touted as solution to UK's rural broadband issue [yahoo.com]
• Sprint Reportedly Planning New WiMax Devices [unstrung.com]
• Nook e-reader will allow book lending over Wi-Fi, 3G [computerworld.com]
• Dell gets serious about smartphones with mobile unit [cbmagazine.co.uk]

• Rural Broadband Access To Grow, Slowly But Surely - But Who Will Pay? [kiplinger.com]
• New Cloud-based Service Steals Wi-Fi Passwords [pcworld.com]
• Kansas gets $2M for broadband initiative [Wichita Business Journal]
• AT&T releases free app to report network problems [networkworld.com]
• Spook firm readies Virgin Media filesharing probes [theregister.co.uk]
• Major Labels Accused Of $60 Billion Worth Of Copyright Infringement In Canada [techdirt.com]
• AT&T Targets Triple-Play Bundle Offers [multichannel.com]
• One in 200 success rate keeps phishing economy ticking over [theregister.co.uk]

Verizon has launched a new website (via GigaOM) offering a little more detail on next year's LTE wireless broadband launch. According to big red, they'll be offering speeds of between 5 Mbps and 13 Mbps downstream, and between 2 Mbps and 5 Mbps upstream. There's still no word on pricing or monthly consumption caps, but we do know that Verizon says they'll launch the speedier next-generation wireless broadband technology in thirty markets in 2010 -- with most of the national deployment completed by 2014.

A few weeks ago cable provider Mediacom was the latest to try and claim the broadband speed crown by announcing plans to offer 105/10 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 service in Waterloo, Iowa, topping a 101 Mbps service by Optimum Online unveiled last April. As with Optimum's service (which is $99, but comes with a $300 "activation fee") the pricing isn't for the faint of heart. According to comments by MediaCom to industry trade mag Multichannel News, the 105 Mbps tier will cost $150 per month for 12 months and about $200 per month after. Mediacom, which says they'll be deploying DOCSIS 3.0 to eight other unnamed markets shortly, also says they'll offer a 50/5 Mbps tier. That tier will run you $99 for twelve months, then somewhere around $130 (apparently Mediacom's still thinking about it) after that.

Last week privacy activist Chris Soghoian wrote a blog entry detailing how carriers share or sell user data to the government. While Sprint's system of sharing GPS data saw the brunt of the publicity, Soghoian's article also discussed how he filed a FOIA request for info on the sharing practices of companies like Verizon and Yahoo.

Jennifer Smith's mother sadly died last year when she was hit by a driver who was distracted while talking on their cellphone. According to the New York Times, Smith is suing both Sprint and the maker of the cellphone (Samsung) for failing to adequately warn consumers of the dangers of driving while talking (or worse texting). "They should've told people from the beginning there was a real risk, and this would’ve never happened," proclaims Smith. Unfortunately for her case, carriers have warned users -- many manuals clearly referencing the dangers to consumers in addition to a number of carrier awareness campaigns. Carriers also obviously have no control over the stupidity of their customers post warning, which is why similar suits of this kind have been dismissed in the past.

Glenn Fleishman pens an interesting look at the road to gigabit Wi-Fi in a new piece this morning over at Ars Technica. Within a few years, notes Fleishman, crossing the 1 Gbps barrier at a Wi-Fi hotspot will become "routine," and Wi-Fi will replace Ethernet as the connectivity flavor du jour for most users. Assuming backhaul issues are sorted out, a new wave of multi-stream 802.11n devices is slated to deliver raw throughput of up to 600 Mbps, with three and four stream radios improving range, robustness, and throughput (albeit not always simultaneously). "The flexibility of three-stream devices should allow networks to be optimized for raw speed, speed-over-range, or range, without giving up much in the process," notes Fleishman.

After months of bad press for a wireless network many claim isn't up to snuff, AT&T was hit with more bad news after Consumer Reports ranked AT&T last in customer satisfaction. This was only the latest in a stream of last-place showings in other such ratings by JD Power And Associates and the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

A few weeks ago we noted how a parachutist in Connecticut got "eXtreme," and potentially microwaved his innards by parachuting off of a 1,339 foot wireless tower. In York, Pennsylvania, a prankster has since climbed a 400 foot tower to tie a bedsheet to the top. "The medical community is going to have to speak to that," says local Lieutenant Scott Laird. "But I know it can't be good for you." The police say the prankster is facing summary non-traffic citations for criminal mischief and trespassing, charges akin in seriousness to traffic tickets.

• Deutsche Telekom ordered to grant rivals access to broadband network [totaltele.com]
• Ruckus Wireless Awarded Patent Essential to Running Video, Voice and Other Multimedia Applications Reliably Over Wi-Fi [prnewswire.com]
• Testing shows AT&T's 3G network outperforms Verizon's [fiercebroadbandwireless.com]
• Misleading broadband ads cost Telecom NZ almost $NZ10m [itwire.com]
• WICT's PAR Survey: Cox Top Operator For Seventh Straight Year [multichannel.com]
• France Agrees With Spain In Saying Modding Nintendo DS Is Not Illegal [techdirt.com]
• Intel Larrabee Graphics Chip Cancelled [informationweek.com]

• Is Google Banning AdSense On Sites It Thinks Have Infringing Content? [techdirt.com]
• Stop fanning the WiMAX vs. LTE flame [fiercewireless.com]
• FCC chairman wants USF to apply to broadband [fiercebroadbandwireless.com]
• Motorola Survey Reveals Shift in Media Consumption Habits Across Generations [7thspace.com]
• Mobile Broadband Consumption Is Creating Problems On All Sides Of The Equation [moconews.net]
• Apple’s Reported Lala Talks Could Lead to Cheaper, Cloud-Based iTunes [wired.com]
• Attack exploits just-patched Mac security bug [theregister.co.uk]
• Bing dies (briefly) after Microsoft hits wrong button [theregister.co.uk]

The weekend has arrived, so please -- take off your shoes, put up your feet, and share your thoughts in our comment section below.