• US Appeals Court Wary Of Co's Suit Vs FCC Over Free Internet [Nasdaq.com]
• VzW ‘Asked’ to Pull Push-to-Talk Ad [xchangemag.com]
• Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-verse lead latest Consumer Reports survey [consumeraffairs.com]
• Clearwire Simplifies Mobile Broadband Usability [xchangemag.com]
• Atlantic Metro Communications, Rainbow Broadband partner in NYC [lighwave.com]
• Half of all Brits think their Broadband is too Expensive [ispreview.co.uk]
• NTT Talks IPv6 TV at CES [lightreading.com]
• Year of opportunity for O2 and Sky? [samknows.com]
• Microsoft made $1.5 billion from Vista incapable PCs [theinquirer.net]
• FiOS Offers HD Six-Month Freebies [multichannel.com]

Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, who has recently shown he's no fan of network upgrades in general and Verizon FiOS specifically, single-handedly sent AT&T and Verizon stocks tumbling today by proclaiming that Wall Street was overestimating the ability of AT&T and Verizon to weather a steep recession. "AT&T and Verizon may indeed be somewhat more recession-resistant than most businesses," Moffett wrote in a sixty page note to clients. "But we believe they are nevertheless much more cyclically exposed than consensus estimates (and valuations) would suggest."

Rumors of AT&T finally allowing the iPhone to be tethered and used as an HSDPA modem have been bubbling for a while, and now it appears the rumor is at full boil. The Unofficial Apple Weblog is reporting that the functionality may be announced at this week's MacWorld event. Earlier rumors suggested that tethering would cost customers $30 a month on top of your existing voice and data plan, in addition to the 5GB per month consumption cap and overage charges.

In line with their traffic management website Comcast has confirmed to us they've installed their new broadband throttling system across all markets. The system, which we first profiled back in September, throttles a user's connection if a particular CMTS port is congested, and if that user has been identified as a primary reason why.

After the previous owner had cable TV service for ten years, a user in our Charter forum complains he was told that his new home was no longer serviceable, and the drop to his home was terminated. While that sounds stupid, the customer is slightly too far for digital services to work without extending the network plant, and that costs Charter money with no guarantee the customer will remain with Charter.

Netflix has been making waves in the broadband video space by integrating their service into everything, from the Roku set top and the Xbox 360, to TiVO units and DVD players. Now Netflix says they'll be integrating the service into HDTVs from LG Electronics. This is the first time the Netflix service will be embedded directly into a television. Tim Alessi, director of product development for LG Electronics USA, says the Netflix-enhanced TVs will sell for roughly $200 to $300 more than a regular HDTV set.

The RIAA recently announced they'd hashed out closed door deals with a number of ISPs to terminate the connections of customers who receive too many warning letters from the industry. Their existing system of DMCA letter generation relies on data collected by largely unaccountable and secretive organizations like BayTSP and Media Sentry. Picking up on an earlier P2PNet report by Jon Newton, the Wall Street Journal reports the RIAA has fired the controversial Media Sentry, instead hiring DtecNet out of Copenhagen to monitor your BitTorrent bad habits.

According to Verizon filings with the SEC, their acquisition of Alltel will close on January 9. Verizon will pay $5.9 billion and acquire $22.2 billion in Alltel debt, but will be acquiring about 13 million customers -- creating the largest wireless phone company in the country, with 83 million customers (AT&T has 74.9 million, Sprint has 50.5 million, and T-Mobile has 32.1 million). Verizon has stated they will retain some call center positions after the acquisition, but many redundant positions at Alltel will be eliminated.

User pghviewer submits this Torrent Freak report, which profiles a new startup named Spotify, a product from the developer of uTorrent. According to TorrentFreak, Spotify was created by some of the money made when uTorrent was sold to BitTorrent -- the idea being to create a competitor to piracy.

The Chicago Tribune is eagerly awaiting the arrival of Sprint and Clearwire's Mobile WiMax offering, citing a mid-to-late 2009 launch date for "Clear" in the windy city. That's a shift from repeated reports that both Chicago and Washington DC would go live shortly after the launch of XOHM in Baltimore. "Clear" and "XOHM" will ultimately become one product as part of Sprint and Clearwire's joint venture, which aims to reach 140 million people within thirty months. The completion of the network will be greatly aided by a $3.2 billion cash infusion from Comcast ($1.05 billion), Intel ($1 billion), Time Warner Cable ($550 million), Google ($500 million), and Bright House Networks ($100 million.)

Timothy Butler of Open For Business e-mails us to note he's done a little digging, and found that AT&T has been downgrading its EDGE/2G service to the weaker 1900 MHz band. While 3G/HSDPA customers won't care, EDGE/2G was previously using the 850 MHz band, which provided better coverage, particularly indoors.

Back in 2007, the government announced it would be giving each household in the United States two coupons to help pay for digital adapters, made necessary by the February 17, 2009 transition from analog to digital television. According to the Associated Press, there's still millions of households unprepared for the shift, yet the program funding these subsidies is almost out of cash. The NTIA had a $1.34 billion funding ceiling for the program, and is now saying that unless they get more cash, they'll have to start putting consumers on a waiting list.Anybody willing to bail out the government's digital conversion program?

We had a long conversation with Convergence Consulting earlier this year, who made it very clear that while Internet video is growing, traditional TV operators really don't have that much to worry about just yet (just 2% of TV ad revenue came from online in '07). A big reason for that is that many consumers haven't found a simple solution to get video from the PC to the living room, though that's changing thanks to game consoles and Netflix.

There's no scientific evidence that Wi-Fi is a health hazard, but that hasn't stopped those who believe otherwise from trying to stop Wi-Fi deployment, usually citing non-existent evidence. Teachers have sued schools to derail installs, while angel guidance consultants have launched campaigns against Wi-Fi in their free time. The Wi-Fi health weirdness has been just as pronounced in the UK, where the town of Glastonbury, renown for its new age proclivities, has decided to remove Wi-Fi entirely, because they believe Wi-Fi is responsible "for upsetting positive energy fields of the body, which are known as chakras, and positive energy fields of the earth, which are known as ley lines."

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

• Broadband: Why Government Investment Is Justified Now [seekingalpha.com]
• US Tops Broadband Revenues Chart [lightreading.com]
• Verizon Wireless to complete Alltel acquisition this month [techwhack.com]
• What's Lighting the Fire Under Mobile Broadband? [ecommercetimes.com]
• Android netbook is a possibility [theinquirer.net]
• ISSCC papers look toward high-definition in your handset [edn.com]
• Why unlocking the iPhone is a waste of time [cnet.com]
• VeriSign Drops Vulnerable Certificate Algorithm [mobile-tech-today.com]

Last May, we broke the news that Comcast would be implementing a 250GB monthly bandwidth cap. In October, that cap went live without an official usage monitor.

The promise of Internet anonymity has always been a refuge for snake oil salesmen looking to profit from the RIAA's scorched earth legal campaign. There have been countless operations over the years that have offered everything from specialized VPN software and supposedly anonymous DSL to proxy servers or encryption in order to supposedly protect users from the ever watchful eye of the entertainment industry.

The VoIP sector suffered an existential crisis this week, with many in the industry debating whether the technology was alive, dead, or on life support. Former Microsoft manager Alec Saunders declared that VoIP was dead.

As promised last month, the Dev Team has released their "user-friendly" unlocking tool for the 3G iPhone, allowing use of the phone on any GSM carrier. Code named "yellowsn0w," the tool works exclusively with baseband 02.28.00. Use is limited here in the States, where the only GSM alternative to AT&T would be T-Mobile, whose 3G GSM/HSDPA network is operating on a non-standard frequency band. We suppose you could unlock your iPhone for use on T-Mobile's 3G network, but you'd be relegated to the slower 200kbps speeds of EDGE connectivity.