The weekend has arrived. Let us know what you have planned in the comment section below.

"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.

You might recall how last year, police in Pennsylvania busted a large group of individuals and a Comcast employee that had been illegally offering users a lower monthly rate for a one-time fee of between $150 and $200. Comcast estimates the ring caused them more than $2.4 million in losses, with between 5,700 and 6,000 signing up for the offer between 2011 and 2012. The ring ultimately collapsed after they offered the discount to a skeptical customer that contacted Comcast. Now the man considered to be the second in command of the ring has plead guilty, according to the Montgomery News website.

When I was discussing Comcast's new 505 Mbps tier a few weeks ago, Comcast reminded me that the company has increased speeds twelve times in the last eleven years, a talking point I've seen used by the company several times since then (with charts, included below). Comcast certainly has been more aggressive with DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades than many cable companies (like Time Warner Cable).

Just before the government shut down and the FCC website went dark, the agency announced (Google cache) that it was fining five wireless carriers for abusing the Lifeline program. Lifeline, which provides subsidized phone service for the poor, was created by the Reagan administration in 1985 and expanded by Bush in 2005.

Thanks to FiOS, Verizon has taken top honors in the JD Power and Associates "2013 U.S. Residential Internet Service Provider Satisfaction Study" in the East, West and South regions, while WOW! (Wide Open West) scored the best among all ISPs in the North Central region.

Users in our Comcast forum have discovered a way to get an early sneak peak at the GUI for Comcast's new X2 set top box. Users with the company's relatively new X1 set top box (slowly making its ways to most Comcast markets) purportedly can press Exit, Exit, 9,2,9,2 on their remotes in order to load an early build of the X2's new design. Not all of the functionality is available (like the program recommendation engine) and the apps appear buggy (since it's technically not released), though users seem impressed with the speed of the GUI. The X2 is officially supposed to arrive to some Comcast customers "later this year," and will include a number of new bells and whistles including the ability for remote cloud DVR storage.

Back in August the Obama administration tried to get out in front of the NSA scandal by announcing a number of intelligence reforms, including the creation of a high-level task force of "outside intelligence and civil liberties specialists" to review NSA procedures. That committee has been created, and groups like the EFF aren't too impressed that it's being lead by the NSA's James Clapper (accused of repeatedly lying to Congress) and a number of intelligence insiders. "At the end of the day, a task force led by Gen. Clapper full of insiders – and not directed to look at the extensive abuse – will never get at the bottom of the unconstitutional spying," said Mark Jaycox, a policy analyst for the EFF.

• Why Google's Competing for Your Internet Service [fool.com]
• Comcast acting (and pricing) more and more like a monopolist [washingtonpost.com]
• UK Broadband network minister admits: I’m useless [metro.co.uk]
• US government shutdown kicks NASA and other agencies off the internet [theverge.com]
• USAF Colonel: Starbucks WiFi Is More Secure Than The Pentagon Network [techdirt.com]
• FCC comes down hard on five carriers in ongoing effort to clean the Lifeline program of waste and fraud [fiercewireless.com]
• Apple, AT&T to settle unlimited iPad data lawsuit [fiercebroadbandwireless.com]
• Sprint ushers in LTE roaming era with 3 inbound, 2 outbound agreements [fiercebroadbandwireless.com]
• Verizon FiOS spinoff speculation gains traction [fierceiptv.com]
• Google Accused of Wiretapping in Gmail Scans [nytimes.com]
• How Google's Project Loon rides the wind [cnet.com]

Cox has slowly but surely been deploying a new round of speed upgrades to select markets, and users in our Cox forum indicate the latest speed bump has arrived in Connecticut, after arriving in Louisiana earlier this month.

According to our users, the company's new tiers are: "Starter" at 1 Mbps down, 384 kbps up; "Essential" at 5 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up; "Preferred" at 25 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up; "Premier" at 50 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up; and "Ultimate" at 150 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up.

When Powerboost kicks in those last three tiers are seeing 31/6, 63/13, and 188/25, respectively.

While prices vary depending on regional competition, promotions and bundles, Cox's website states Cox's Essential tier will run customers $49 per month, the Preferred tier will cost $63 per month, the Premier tier will cost $74 per month, and the Ultimate tier will cost users $100 per month.

Sunday night's Breaking Bad series finale not only broke viewership records for AMC (10.3 million U.S. viewers), it also broke piracy records.

Verizon had been dead silent about the NSA spying revelations, and their role in it. That was until recently, when the company broke their silence to accuse companies like Google and Yahoo of "grandstanding." The problem is those companies at least tried to stand up to the government on things like PRISM and national security letter gag orders, whereas leaks suggest Verizon chose to go above and beyond what was asked of it by government, despite the program's tenuous legal footing.

Like many government agencies impacted by the government shutdown, the FCC has stated that they'll be operating with a skeleton crew moving forward, with some 1,700 full-time employees sent home until the shutdown ends. According to the FCC shutdown plan (pdf), FCC commissioners and three inspectors general will be working given they're not paid they are not paid via annual appropriations.

Another sixteen employees will be on staff to handle things like interference detection and disaster response, national security issues and IT support (though the FCC website just went down). Consumer protection will be one of the things put on hiatus (well, greater hiatus than is usually the case at the FCC).

"Consumer complaint and inquiry phone lines cannot be answered; consumer protection and local competition enforcement must cease; licensing services, including broadcast, wireless, and wireline, must cease; management of radio spectrum and the creation of new opportunities for competitive technologies and services for the American public must be suspended; and equipment authorizations, including those bringing new electronic devices to American consumers, cannot be provided," said the FCC.

While Clearwire/Sprint MVNO FreedomPop has offered a "freemium" mobile wireless service and even a residential wireless broadband option for some time now, they've yet to start selling smartphones -- until now. FreedomPop today started selling phones under the same model as their previous offerings: you can grab 200 minutes, 500 SMS and 500 MBs of data for free -- with anything above that costing you.

After Google announced their launch of Google Fiber into the Austin market, AT&T played a game of "me too," announcing a rather vague plan to deploy 1 Gbps to a small portion of the city. AT&T today issued a little more detail on their plan, stating they've begun construction on what they're calling "AT&T U-verse with GigaPower."

According to AT&T, a select group of Austinites will be able to order the faster service starting in December, though initially the company will "only" be offering symmetrical speeds of 300 Mbps.

Last week, a firm by the name of Devicescape proclaimed in a study that San Francisco puts New York City to shame when it comes to the quality and availability of Wi-Fi, with San Franciso leading in most metrics, from availability of non-password protected hotspots to the number of businesses offering public Wi-Fi.

Almost on cue, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced a new initiative aimed at providing an additional number of free Wi-Fi hotspots across the five boroughs.

Yesterday we noted that a glitch in Verizon's website was allowing Verizon Wireless customers the ability to upgrade their handset without losing grandfathered unlimited data. Verizon has traditionally waged a quiet war on grandfathered unlimited users, restricting many plans, upgrades and other features unless they choose to go to metered plans.

AT&T has announced that the company will expand their Digital Life home automation and security services in six new markets starting September 27: Charlotte, Hartford, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. According to an AT&T statement, these launches bring the total Digital Life market availability to forty five markets.

Tracfone has been taking a lot of heat this year for the fact that their MVNOs Straight Talk and Net10 have been advertising capped services as "unlimited." Users on both Net10 and Straight Talk are capped and throttled after a set amount of data, usually to around 2G speeds. Not too surprisingly this surprised many customers, and Tracfone was the subject of a class action lawsuit launched back in August.

Comcast has rather quietly killed off the company's "MyTV Choice" programming package for new customers. The $25 package was launched two years ago, excluded Sports and other regional sports networks, and had proven popular among customers looking to save a little money. Analysts have repeatedly warned that skyrocketing TV rates aren't sustainable, and while cable operators have paid a lot of lip service to lower priced and more creative bundling options, their actions quite often sing a different tune. Comcast's move came as the company's CEO proclaimed his love of innovative pricing options in an interview with PBS last week.

In the latest round of Snowden leaks, the NY Times notes the NSA has been using social networking websites and location data (from GPS hardware and cellular providers) to create a system that can graph an ocean of Americans' social connections, associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information. All without warrants, of course.

Back in 2009, you'll recall that former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio headed to prison to serve a six-year prison sentence for cooking the books and insider trading. You might also recall that Nacchio claimed he was being punished in part because Qwest (now CenturyLink) was the only US telco to refuse to participate in the government's warrantless wiretapping program.

Back in April Google announced that they'd purchased the iProvo fiber to the home network for all of $1 (ignoring build-out obligations), and while they stated the service would go live later this year in Provo, Utah they didn't offer specifics. Google has since gotten more specific in a new advertisement (hat tip to Multichannel News) that points out the first customer should go live next month. While not mentioning them by name, the ad pokes a little fun at local Provo incumbent ISPs Comcast and CenturyLink.

Despite the faster speeds now being pushed through fiber and DOCSIS 3.0, there's many users who continue to suffer from the inability to quickly and consistently stream YouTube videos. Spend a few minutes in any of our forums and you'll find this is a universal problem with many carriers, including AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS and Time Warner Cable.

Updated: This glitch has already been fixed by Verizon. User spike010101 writes in: "Verizon's website is currently allowing customers to select their unlimited plan when going through a device upgrade. I myself have taken it all the way to the checkout area where you enter your credit card details and submit the order, and have a friend who has completely gone through with an order."

The news is curious in that Verizon has been waging war on grandfathered unlimited users for several years now, using every tactic possible (most specifically device upgrades) to try and push those users on to metered plans. There's some additional discussion about this over at Howard Forums and at Droid Life.

• Verizon and AT&T’s data caps have made LTE a waste of money [bgr.com]
• Verizon's move to buy the remainder of Verizon Wireless reflects the extraordinary profit advantage of wireless over landline service [nytimes.com]
• Nokia demonstrates: White Space ploy can get more 4G handsets into same spectrum [theregister.co.uk]
• Piloting 'White Space' Broadband in South Africa [allafrica.com]
• Google Fiber Compared To Broadband By Putting A Middle Age Guy In A Bath Robe And Soaking Him With A Firehose [techcrunch.com]
• Apple Passes Coca-Cola as Most Valuable Brand [nytimes.com]
• FCC proposal would require carriers to report cell tower outages in wake of disasters [fiercewireless.com]
• Why iOS 7 is (literally) making some users sick [theguardian.com]