Independent VoIP companies such as Vonage have struggled to maintain subscribers in the last year due to a variety of different reasons including increased competition from cable VoIP operators. Subscriber growth for the one-year period ending in the first quarter of this year was less than 200,000 for independent VoIP companies; this amount equals less than one fifth of the new subscribers from the previous year. In contrast, cable VoIP subscriptions increased by over five and a half million in the same time period. This has helped cable operators to not only beat out independent VoIP companies but also to steal landline customers.

NextWave Wireless announced in April that it would be selling off a big chunk of the AWS Spectrum that it has had (but not been using) for years. That sale has been completed, netting over $150 million for NextWave. The company kept one third of its spectrum, primarily in Florida and California, but plans to focus primarily on product development (including WiMax chipsets) using the money gained from the sale. There were four different buyers for this spectrum but the majority of it (almost $100 million worth) went to T-Mobile which plans to use it to assist them in their 3G launch in areas including Pittsburgh, Sacramento and New Orleans.

The MPAA has gone to extreme lengths to obtain information on illegal filesharing in an effort to shut down popular BitTorrent sites. This included paying $15,000 to a hacker to illegally retrieve information about TorrentSpy that ultimately assisted the MPAA in a court case leading to TorrentSpy’s demise. New information indicates that the MPAA was also paying this same hacker for information about Swedish BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay.

The hacker offered to provide information about the identities of The Pirate Bay’s founders as well as to turn over evidence of email communication between The Pirate Bay and TorrentSpy. The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, who notes that information about the founder’s identities is public and easily retrievable online without this type of spying, says that the information contained in those emails is nothing shocking and finds it amusing that the MPAA would pay such a large sum of money to illegally obtain that information.

Public safety groups lobbied hard in the past to strengthen FCC regulations regarding E911 services on cell phones. Their efforts were rewarded when stricter rules were adopted by the FCC last year.

Earlier this month, FCC Chief Kevin Martin announced that he believes Comcast should be punished for the actions that they have taken to throttle P2P traffic. That punishment is pending agreement from the other FCC commissioners which won’t be official until August 1st. However, rumors indicate that a majority of the members intend to vote in favor of punishing the company.

Even if punishment is approved when the official vote is announced, the result will probably not be too damaging to Comcast – a slap on the wrist and the requirement that they make changes they’ve already agreed to make (more consumer disclosure about network management practices, for example). But the decision would set precedent and could have a more widespread impact on future violations.

It has been nearly a year and a half since the nation’s only two satellite radio operators, XM and Sirius, announced their plans for a merger. Throughout that time, the merger has been pending approval from the FCC.

• Android and Symbian Should Unite, Analyst Says [pcworld.com]
• Airtel Broadband redirecting non-working domains to self hosted ad filled page [techwhack.com]
• Europe’s next-generation broadband [physorg.com]
• AT&T plans $400 million fiber investment in Alabama [lightreading.com]
• Proof of age system moves net ID a step closer [theregister.co.uk]
• Mobile Operators with 3G Do Not Effectively Compete with Fixed Broadband--At Least for Now [yankeegroup.com]
• TorrentSpy Appeals Lawsuit Over MPAA Getting Access To Its Emails [techdirt.com]
• Apple seeks iPhone reverse engineering expert [theregister.co.uk]

It's Friday, so take off your shoes, put up your feet, and empty your head into the comment section below.

After recently getting final approval for a New York City-wide video franchise, Verizon says they'll introduce FiOS TV to the city during a webcasted press conference on Monday, July 28 -- in Grand Central Station. Users who can't wait for glossy brochures can hit this URL on Monday to watch Verizon executives discuss pricing and other deployment specifics. The telco has promised to make FiOS available to every home in all five boroughs by 2014.

After Earthlink pulled out of the muni-fi business, the company couldn't find anyone to buy their network in Philadelphia. Just as it appeared the project would be shuttered, several local investors stepped in and purchased the network. They've since been offering free access, so not surprisingly the network's daily user base has jumped from 6,000 (while it was a pay service from Earthlink) to 17,000 now that access is free. The new owners hope to actually make something called "money" by offering higher grade wired/wireless service to local businesses, hospitals and universities.

In May of last year, Broadband Reports user Robb Topolski posted in our forums that Comcast appeared to be forging TCP packets in order to throttle upstream P2P traffic for all users, regardless of consumption. That finding ultimately led to a wave of press coverage, an FCC investigation, and forced (or will by the end of 2008) Comcast to embrace a more transparent way of managing their network (most likely 250GB caps and very targeted throttling).

Canadian cable operator Videotron says they're deploying a new "fiber deep" architecture from Aurora networks that will greatly reduce the number of homes using a single node -- from between 500 to 1,000 homes per node now, to about 125 homes per node after the upgrade. The upgrade also reduces power consumption, since the new architecture eliminates the amplifiers between the node and the home. Videotron was the first North American cable operator to deploy faster pre-cert DOCSIS 3.0 speeds last February. While they offer 30Mbps and 50Mbps tiers, they come with 30 and 50GB monthly caps respectively (plus $1.50 per additional gigabyte).

Yesterday I noted that with two working exploits in the wild for a major new DNS vulnerability, a significant number of major ISPs had yet to fully patch their systems, leaving their users vulnerable to scams and identity theft. While some security analyst tests claimed that Comcast was among the companies falling behind in the patching, Comcast tells me that isn't the case.

AT&T, a company that's no stranger to mergers and unfair competitive advantages, is taking aim at the Sprint Clearwire merger. The nation's largest broadband provider is asking the FCC to deny the merger, saying that Sprint and Clearwire are under-stating their total volume of spectrum holdings in order to get reduced federal scrutiny. "The applicants themselves have positioned their company as the single largest holder of broadband mobile spectrum in the country," complains AT&T. Verizon, who'll also be forced to compete with the company's new offerings, has not submitted any objections to the merger.

Back in September of 2006, Milledgeville, Georgia received an $862,000 grant from the Georgia Technology Authority through the Wireless Communities Georgia program. The grant was to be used to highlight the use of wireless broadband to aid economic development, educational access and governmental services. According to the Union Recorder, the city has decided to use that money to partner with Clearwire and bring a municipal WiMax network to the region. Serving the public is a major part of the plan, but bringing wireless broadband to the local police force was one of the project's first priorities.

• Comcast P2P Critic Launches Class-Action Bid [multichannel.com]
• World's biggest ISPs drag feet on critical DNS patch [theregister.co.uk]
• No, Telecom Progress Hasn't Slowed [techdirt.com]
• ISP threatens to walk out of illegal file-sharing pact [pcpro.co.uk]
• Proof of age system moves net ID a step closer [theregister.co.uk]
• Mobile Vendors Debate the 'Open' Future [internetnews.com]
• AT&T to Oppose Sprint-Clearwire Merger [cellular-news.com]
• Not So Fast, 3G [pcworld.com]

• Broadband to reach 77% of U.S. households by 2012, Gartner says [networkworld.com]
• No Free Wireless Broadband for You: Wireless Carriers [eweek.com]
• Vonage Commits to Refinance [lightreading.com]
• Broadband Code of Practice [computeractive.co.uk]
• NextWave Wireless to sell $150.1M of AWS spectrum [cnbc.com]
• US cellular still emerging market [theinquirer.net]
• XM-Sirius merger OKd in fines plus booster-dump deal [theregister.co.uk]
• European Commission backs away from data roaming caps; T-Mobile says just use Wi-Fi [muniwireless.com]

Former Sling Media employee Dave Zatz is apparently well loved by the Verizon PR folks (he's often given personal tours of new FiOS TV features at HQ). Zatz was given an early look at the beta test for the telco's FiOS set top box integrated H.264 Internet video offerings. In English, Verizon will be letting FiOS customers watch YouTube, Veoh, Blip.tv and Break.com content from their set top boxes, an idea that could really excite you or bore you stupid depending on your personal technical proclivities. It's expected the functionality won't launch until late this year or early next as part of Verizon's top-tier DVR offerings.

Security researcher Dan Kaminsky recently discovered a serious design flaw in DNS. That flaw, according to US-CERT, involves a new implementation of DNS poisoning, a trick that allows a hacker to redirect unwitting surfers to alternate addresses (that's not good news for the technically daft and easily swindled).

The latest global rankings in fiber to the home (FTTH) deployment penetration show that the United States has dropped from eighth to tenth place. While a lot of this obviously has to do with geography, it doesn't really help the U.S.