The weekend has finally arrived. Empty your head into the comment section below.

• Is mobile broadband pricing finally starting to decline? [fiercewireless.com]
• Broadband stimulus grants delayed [networkworld.com]
• UK Digital Economy Bill As Bad As Expected; Digital Britain Minister Flat Out Lies About ISP Support [techdirt.com]
• Analysts: Nokia unlikely to snap up Palm [fiercewireless.com]
• NPR reporter blames - wait for it... the Internet for Ft. Hood rampage [npr.org]
• Air Canada Will Offer In-Flight Wi-Fi, Too [gigaom.com]
• Verizon Referral Program Offers Up To $600 In 'Reward Cards' [multichannel.com]
• Ebay closes Skype sale [theinquirer.net]

While Comcast lobbyists tried their best to slow the encroachment of Verizon FiOS into their hometown of Philadelphia, the Philly city council authorized a citywide franchise back in February (you can read the agreement here (pdf) if you're into that kind of thing). As per the deal, Verizon has around seven years to wire the whole city, though these agreements (as with NYC and DC) often have loopholes that let Verizon extend deadlines or wiggle out of obligations should certain adoption numbers not be met. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, service this week went live in Chestnut Hill, South Philadelphia and North Philadelphia, near Girard College. Additional neighborhoods should come online this year, but Verizon isn't saying which ones. Verizon does keep a PA construction notice (pdf) on their website, but it's quite often outdated.

There's been a flurry of rumors lately surrounding T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, and their desire to improve T-Mobile's fourth-place fortunes in the U.S. wireless market.

Apparently taking a page out of this month's advertising debate between AT&T and Verizon, Canadian carrier Telus has sued Rogers Communications for ads claiming that the Rogers wireless network is "the fastest and most reliable in the country." Telus and Bell Canada have of course just launched their new, $1 billion HSPA network, which offers speeds up to 21 Mbps to Canadian customers. As such, Telus demanded earlier this month that Rogers stop making advertising claims that they held the 3G speed edge -- a request Rogers ignored, since they too offer 21 Mbps HSPA+ service. "Telus has not submitted any data on their network performance and we look forward to vigorously defending our position in court," says Rogers.

AOL continues an interesting trip that took them from one of the largest and most powerful ISPs on the Internet, to a fractured and financially-troubled company with dreams of becoming an advertising giant. Of course most of their problems were caused by their inability to adapt to (or really in some cases even recognize) the broadband market -- something that was at least in part caused by former executive Lisa Hook, who went on to do amazing things with VoIP carrier SunRocket as well. With its spin off from Time Warner, the company this fall has undergone its latest in an endless line of evolution efforts, but has announced those changes will come with pink slips for about one third of AOL's employees, or about 2,300 workers.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the FCC is seriously considering re-establishing some kind of open access rules, which would give new entrants access to incumbent infrastructure at reduced price. Open access was the central idea behind the 1996 telecom act, which required incumbent operators to share network access with smaller competitors in order to bolster competition as those upstarts grew into legitimate carriers.

For years the rumor has floated out there that either Verizon or AT&T would buy DirecTV in order to have direct control of the company's satellite TV operations. Sometimes these rumors are based in conjecture, but more often than not they're based on nothing whatsoever. With DirecTV prepared to get a new CEO (their last CEO just departed to be Rupert Murdoch's right-hand man at News Corp.), the rumors are apparently bubbling up once again. According to Reuters, representatives from both AT&T and Verizon have approached Liberty Media over the last few years about a sale, and the outlet cites sources who believe new CEO Michael White is little more than a "babysitter" until this endlessly-rumored deal can be accomplished.

• Broadband penetration continues to rise in EU [iptv-news.com]
• Continued Network And Service Optimization The Key To Continued IPTV Growth [IT Backbones]
• Maximum fine set at £50,000 for illegal file-sharing [broadbandgenie.co.uk]
• Law Firm Contemplates Class Action Suit To Recompense Xbox Live Modders [itproportal.com]
• MS denies Win 7 backdoor rumors [theregister.co.uk]
• AOL will shed a third of its staff [theinquirer.net]
• PS3 to go 3D in 2010, says Sony [reghardware.co.uk]

• Bigger U.S. Role in Broadband Is Likely [wsj.com]
• DTV Coupon Redemption Ends With Over $1 Billion Worth Unused [multichannel.com]
• Is Open Access Feasible in the U.S. Broadband Market? [4g-wirelessevolution.tmcnet.com]
• Kicking People Off The Internet Not Enough In South Korea, Copyright Lobbyists Demand More [techdirt.com]
• Telcos will be the new channel [theinquirer.net]
• T-Mobile offering prepaid BlackBerry [fiercewireless.com]
• American Airlines Launches WiFi Widget [examiner.com]
• Chrome OS Unveiled, Focused on Netbooks, the Cloud [gigaom.com]

If you recall, back in May of 2008 we told you how the Comcast web portal was hacked by a group calling itself "Kryogenics," posting the usually gramatically incoherent shout out to their own supposed awesomeness and fellow nerd homies. The hack disrupted user access to the portal and the official Comcast forums for several hours, before Comcast tracked down the problem and the fix was propagated across DNS servers. According to the Philadelphia Business Journal, the three young men responsible for the hack have been indicted for "conspiring to disrupt service." The indictment claims the hack cost Comcast "a little less than $129,000," though each defendant could receive a maximum sentence of five years in jail, three years of supervised release, a $250,000 fine and a $100 special assessment, on top of potential forced restitution to Comcast -- who certainly could use the money.

The country of Finland recently declared they were making broadband a legal right, requiring that all 5.3 million of the country's residents be served by 1 Mbps service by next summer, and 100 Mbps service by 2015. That's a little easier to do in a country like Finland, which has just 5.3 million residents to our 300+ million, and doesn't have to deal with things like, well, Montana.

Manassas, Virginia was the first US city to see a real, non-trial launch of broadband over powerline (BPL) technology. However, BPL has floundered the last few years because of its inherent potential for interference with amateur and emergency radio, its irrelevance in the face of next-generation speeds, and the unavoidable fact that many utilities simply didn't want to be broadband providers.

Yesterday we issued a report exploring how Verizon was again hinting at how they believed metered billing is inevitable. We also discussed how yet again, you had an ISP suggesting that a shift to metered billing was financially necessary (not true) and that the ISP desire to shift to metered billing was dictated by some kind of altruism (also not true). Apparently, this position upset Todd Spangler over at Multichannel News, who somewhere in between taking pot shots at "edgy bloggers" and "clueless" flat-rate pricing proponents arrives at his central thesis: that consumption-based billing is inevitable: story continues..

After his company won approval of its bankruptcy plan this week, Charter Communications CEO Neil Smit tells Bloomberg that upon exiting from bankruptcy, the company will raise prices and consider consumption-based billing. Charter Communications hasn't been profitable since the company went public in 1999, posted a $2.45 billion loss last year, constantly ranks at the bottom of most customer satisfaction surveys, is swimming in debt, and was just forced into bankruptcy and reorganization.

The FCC has long been an agency that has played fast and loose when it comes to using science and data to fuel its policy decisions. The agency for most of broadband's life cycle has been using outdated data, or inadequate data provided by industry lobbyists designed to make things look pretty and keep government out of their hair. With a new FCC and new boss Julius Genachowski, the agency has promised to be data driven. Yet Bruce Kushnick over at Harvard's Neiman Watchdog claims that in policy discussions, the agency's still using inadequate or old data -- sometimes more than a decade old -- to shape broadband and wireless policy.

After spending the last week or so taking pot shots at each other, AT&T and Verizon met in court yesterday to do legal battle over Verizon's latest wireless ads, which criticize AT&T's 3G network coverage and performance. AT&T had complained to the courts that the 3G coverage maps (clearly labeled as such) in the ads could confuse customers into thinking customers didn't get voice and EDGE coverage in non-3G markets. The Judge overseeing the case has not surprisingly denied AT&T's request to have the ads pulled, but has set a December 16 date to hear further arguments in the case.

Of course by the time this is settled, the "damage" to AT&T will already have been done -- made worse in this case by all the extra attention AT&T's suit brought to Verizon's ads, and in turn AT&T's network coverage. To try and make up some ground, AT&T has launched a new series of ads featuring Luke Wilson, proclaiming rather vaguely that AT&T offers "the best 3G experience." Surely there's some AT&T customers who'd like to take AT&T to task on that claim after the last year's worth of iPhone connectivity issues, belated MMS functionality and other problems?

At this point, AT&T's probably better off just giving those advertising and legal fees to their network engineers, who are in the field busily trying to upgrade the network and migrating markets to 850MHz.

• Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband Overtakes Contract Deals In UK [cellular-news.com]
• Broadband economics: Competition lowers prices [cnet.com]
• Industry Predicts 21 Mbps to Be Next Mobile Broadband Baseline [cellular-news.com]
• Ofcom talks to spook firm on filesharing snoop plan [theregister.co.uk]
• Ericsson: Shortcut to mobile broadband [newspress.com]
• Microsoft claims IE 9 will be super speedy [theinquirer.net]
• Still vaporware: Apple's Tablet gets postponed [theinquirer.ne]

• FCC: Critical gaps undermine drive toward universal broadband [lightwaveonline.com]
• Charter's Reorg Confirmed by Court [cable360.net]
• AT&T Loses Bid to Stop Verizon Ads, May Lose Case [bloomberg.com]
• Cable Industry Joins MPAA In Asking FCC To Allow Them To Stop Your DVR From Recording Movies [techdirt.com]
• UK debate on “white space” spectrum heats up [digitaltveurope.net]
• Telus Sues Rogers, Says ‘Fastest’ Claim Is False [bloomberg.com]
• Gartner reveals top ten future mobile apps [theinquirer.net]
• NTIA, RUS Report: Government Agencies Have Worked 'Expeditiously' On Distributing Broadband Stimulus Fund [multichannel.com]

As promised, the FCC today voted to impose a shot clock aimed at speeding up municipal approval for the placing of wireless towers. According to an FCC news release (pdf), the new agency rules impose a 90 day limit to states and municipalities to approve or deny collocation (tower sharing) requests, and 150 day limit to act on new tower placement requests. It's something the wireless industry has been lobbying for for a while. According to wireless industry lobbyists, (pdf) there's currently 760 new tower placement applications nationally that have been waiting for approval for at least a year, and 180 applications that have been waiting at least three years (though the industry has been known to play up government dysfunction for effect). Municipalities are expected to challenge the ruling in the courts over fears that they'd be ceding too much state zoning control to Uncle Sam.