remove the labels – Gadgets and Life

The folks at Verizon have offered up a status report on FiOS deployment in a post over at their policy blog. According to the company, FiOS now passes (not serves) 8.5 million homes and businesses — and they hope to pass 18 million homes, or half the homes Verizon serves, by 2010. The company says [...]

Consumer advocate groups, including the Consumer Federation of America, the World Privacy Forum and the Center for Democracy and Technology, today collectively called for a “do not track list” intended to protect consumers from having their online activities unknowingly tracked, stored and used by marketers and advertising networks. From their press release:
Across an ever-growing array [...]

Though Charter wouldn’t comment to us that new tiers are coming (as PR people without authorization are wont to do), Charter phone support keeps informing our users when that the company will be rolling out a suite of new tiers from November through February. Obviously the more competitive markets (usually that means FiOS is deployed) [...]

Wired News reports that the University of Alabama is accusing the Ron Paul campaign of using botnets to send political spam. The University’s Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement Applications project processes 2.5 million spam messages a day, and the researchers noticed that a flood of spam promoting the candidate was being laundered through systems [...]

As expected (see previous report), the FCC today ruled to ban cable operators from striking exclusive deals with MDU (multiple dwelling unit) landlords. According to the FCC press release (pdf), 30% of Americans live in MDUs, and cable providers are locking many of them into exclusive deals that prevent consumer choice. In a statement, FCC [...]

Yesterday the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved legislation authored by Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA) aimed at providing better broadband penetration data. The bill (H.R. 3919) will create a national, searchable map that’s easily accessible to consumers (in contrast to current FCC data). It will also authorize the issuing of grants to help bring [...]

That mystery folding VoIP provider referenced by Packet8 in a press release last month appears to be NetZero Voice. The company is sending an e-mail to customers stating that the dial-up VoIP service will be discontinued as of December 15 and that they’ve struck a deal with Packet8 that allows customers to migrate their number [...]

They may not be the best of pals when it comes to 700Mhz broadband spectrum, but Google and Verizon recently joined forces to oppose broadband access taxes. Reuters now reports that Google and Verizon Wireless are also in talks to put Google applications on Verizon Wireless mobile phones. Google is expected to announce new mobile [...]

Local men pursue Vt. broadband solution Reformer.com Hundreds for chop as Tiscali launches Pipex jobs purge The Register Aussie telcos ‘looking into powerline broadband’ ZDNet Australia Google in Talks with Verizon, Sprint on Phone Software SeekingAlpha.com FTC demands bigger spyware penalties [...]