At this point, file sharing warnings via snail mail and e-mail are pretty commonplace. But this is the first time I've heard of an ISP taking the matter straight to the browser. At first I was worried, and then I was a bit annoyed, but I have to say, I give them credit for giving me the benefit of the doubt here.

The purpose of this email

and by email they mean the electronic message they forced onto my screen

is to remind you that the distribution of copyrighted material in this fashion may violate both copyright laws and Road Runner's terms of service, and to tell you a bit about peer-to-peer programs, the dangers they can pose to your computer and our network, and the steps you can take to protect yourself.

Considering all of the horror stories you hear, this was a pretty reasonable intervention. All I had to do was click, "I am aware of this issue and will take steps to resolve it," and I was on my merry way. Whether those steps should be deleting all the copyrighted material off my computer, removing my P2P software, getting my shit together and using a private tracker, or just trying a little bit harder to resist the urge to download Nic Cage's entire filmography on Mininova, they don't say. But as Road Runner didn't treat me like a criminal, I'll respect them by not being one. Or at least being a sneakier one.

For some people, one copyright violation notice from their ISP is enough to scare them straight forever. Others wear their warnings like badges of honor. What are your experiences with ISPs and copyright infringement? Weigh in in the comments.

Microsoft, Google, Motorola and Intel have all shown interest, with devices needing to be GPS compatible—much like your average smartphone. [eWeek via Engadget]

Number one is, predictably, Japan, where the average broadband speed is 60mbps and they pay $0.27 per 1mbps. We, in comparison, average 4.8mbps and pay $3.33 per 1mbps, putting us at #15. Be sure to click the above image to see it in its full glory. [Zach Klein]

The policy will be active in July 2010, when every Finn will get a one-megabit connection. But that's just an intermediate step towards their final goal: By 2015, everyone will have a 100Mbps—yes, a hundred megabits per second—available.

Now, before the political debate starts in the comments, please watch this.

Thank you. [YLE News via Into Mobile]

A quick refresher: Net neutrality is, simply, the principle that all data gets treated the same by an ISP or service, whether it's incoming email or HD videos of dudes getting socked in the nuts by a 4-year-old on YouTube. A real-world example of very non-neutral behavior would be what got Comcast slapped by the FCC: specifically sabotaging torrents.

Theoretically, this could go beyond policing piracy, for instance if, say, Time Warner competitively blocked or slowed down Hulu, or if Verizon struck a deal with Google to give its data priority over traffic from Bing, so people using Google would get a way better experience than people using Bing. Streaming video is a not-so-coincidental theoretical example, since the explosion of video traffic is what the ISPs say is swallowing up all of the internet.

The end result of the threat of government-mandated net neutrality regulations for ISPs was a mixed "win" for consumers: AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner all responded with monthly data caps on their internet service in at least some of their markets. (Comcast limited it in all markets.)

As for the FCC telling ISPs to be more explicit about network management practices, Comcast started straight-up telling people heavy internet users would have their entire connections slowed down. While they suck for consumers, these are all "net neutral" practices, since no particular kind of data is discriminated against. The net neutrality debate fizzled down, though in some ways people were worse off than before.

With a new president, comes a new FCC chair, Julian Genachowski. Unlike his predecessor, who regularly reamed the cable industry but was a little too snuggly with the telecoms and against "hard and fast" net-neutrality rules, Genachowski is all about rules for everybody. Including the wireless carriers.

As you're probably well aware, mobile broadband is treated way differently than the internet that's piped into your house. It's considered fragile. There's far less of it to go around, with a less developed infrastructure and limited wireless spectrum to use. The rules for using it are tighter, like dating a nun. Restrictions abound, like no p2p. You don't want the network to break, after all. That's why, for instance, AT&T previously blocked Skype and SlingPlayer from running on 3G on the iPhone—and continues to block Sling—and why Apple rejects every torrent app that even tries to cross into the App Store.

In the past weeks, Genachowski has made it clear that he thinks that should change, that openness should "apply to the Internet however accessed." He's not saying they shouldn't be able to manage the network to make sure it runs smoothly, to be clear. But if you were scratching your head about why AT&T conceded and opened their network up to VoIP on the iPhone, look no further than this nugget from Genachowski, from a speech he gave three weeks ago:

We've already seen some clear examples of deviations from the Internet's historic openness. We have witnessed certain broadband providers unilaterally block access to VoIP applications (phone calls delivered over data networks)..."

AT&T very much does not want the government to tell it how to run its networks, particularly the mobile one. AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega this week responded pretty clearly to the FCC's plans:

"Before we begin ‘fixing' what isn't broken, we need to be thoughtful about the consequences. We believe the marketplace today is vibrant, and there is no need to burden the mobile Internet with onerous new regulations."

So what's going to happen?

Well, the FCC is clear about what it thinks. This week, at a wireless telecom conference, Genachowski reiterated that net neutrality should apply to mobile broadband too. If those regulations pass, we'll likely see the same thing we saw with the landline providers: Caps (not just on 3G cards like there are now) and "transparent" network management. Goodbye unlimited mobile broadband like the iPhone has. You will pay for every ounce of data that you use. And if you're "crowding" the network by downloading a bunch of stuff, you're gonna get slowed down because that's the easy "net neutral" way to keep users in check. How much better is that, really?

So iPhone users, enjoy your "unlimited" wireless connections now. Pay-per-byte data—for both wired and wireless broadband networks—may well be the road we're going down. Verizon is the last major landline broadband provider who has held back from capping or throttling its services (looove my FiOS), but even its CTO says that eventually, "we are going to reach a point where we will sell packages of bytes."

Hopefully those packages will come cheap.

That has got to hurt for Telkom, one of South Africa's main ADSL providers, but damn is Winston the pigeon feeling like the man today. He is telling all the other pigeons, how it took him two hours to carry the strapped-to-his-back flash drive 60 miles to the company's second office in Durban. In the same time the broadband service had only sent 4 percent of the data. You do the math but that is pretty damn slow upload speeds. No wonder the guys at Unlimited IT first joked that a bird could send files faster.

This is just the kind of story I want to read to children at night (I'm thinking the picture book is called "Winston and the Broadband"). Let's hope South Africa gets those fiber optic lines installed soon or else a crap load of bird seed. [BBC]

Yes, now you too can download HD video as fast as someone in Roppongi, provided you live in urban Minnesota and have $370 a month to pony up for the privilege. But really, this isn't meant for normal customers who just check email and hit up MSN News, It's meant for businesses and people who download stuff ALL DAY and it's meant as ammunition for anti-FiOS marketing.

Hell, Optimum Online has been offering up its 101Mbps Ultra package in the Northeast since earlier this year, but it isn't sweeping the area by storm. On the one hand, I certainly appreciate that these ISPs are pushing the limits of broadband. On the other hand, until it's available to more people and for a price somewhat approaching affordable, what's the point? If you're trying to show that you can beat FiOS speeds for more than three times the price, well, nice work. But until the prices are lowered and the tech is proven to work when more than 25 people are using it, I'm not sure what it does for us.

Comcast, for example, argued for the definition of "basic" broadband to be a paltry 0.256 Mbps downstream and upstream. Verizon aimed for 0.768 Mbps downstream and 0.200 Mbps upstream. Japan's rate? 92.8 Mbps. Korea has 80.8 Mbps and France offers 51 Mbps.

So what it all boils down to is this: these companies want stimulus funds, but they don't want to, you know, improve their services with these funds. Instead, they want money for continuing to rank near the bottom of internet speeds offered by major industrialized nations. Here's hoping the FCC sees through their BS and forces them to raise the bar if they're getting any taxpayer money.

Update: Verizon writes in to tell us that they aren't going after any stimulus funds and don't foresee accepting any. Why exactly they're pushing to define broadband by such slow speeds, however, isn't clear. [MSNBC]

This is painful for the vast majority of the world's online population, who live out their lives in a sub-10Mbps ghetto, but doubly so for South Korea, who seemed to have the claim to the first 1Gbps connection all locked up. If it's any consolation, nobody's even claiming they'll be able to hit 1Gbps here.

Of course, there will be disadvantages. 1Gbps connections surely won't come cheap, and seriously, beyond extremely well-seeded torrents, you're going to have trouble finding too many places that are willing to serve you content at over 128 megabytes per second. But still, this hurts. UPDATE: Apparently Japan might already have this? Well, screw you guys too. [Broadband TV News]

This router is essentially a twenty-four hour clock divided into half hourly segments. As a reaction to the broadband signal, a different traffic light color indicates bandwidth strength at each interval.

It is, in design, an object of reflection – helping the user to manage their time online more efficiently, understanding and making the most of bandwidth strength in the local area throughout the day.

It appears to be a concept at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up becoming an actual product. [Future Routers via The Awesomer]

Ars Technica says the constituents in Massa's district have been subject to data caps from both of the available broadband providers, and Massa thinks that the lack of competition in the broadband market makes volume usage fees unnecessary and unfair to consumers.

Instead, he wants broadband to be treated more like a utility, with the Federal Trade Commission deciding whether or not data caps are fair. And with the current phone/cable duopoly structure in the broadband landscape, Massa thinks companies can do without usage fees.

That said, this bill still has to make its way through House, then Senate and then onto the President's desk. And there have already been a fair number of detractors both inside and outside of congress. Basically, it has a long way to go. [House of Reps via Ars Technica]

To move a metric crapload of data, you load it on a supported storage device—preferably with an eSATA interface—ship it to Amazon, and they upload it directly to Amazon Web Services. It might seem crazy, but consider that moving one terabyte of data over a 10Mbps broadband connection, which is sadly fairly speedy in the US, would take over 13 days. Even a 100Mbps connection would take a couple of days to ram at through in good conditions. So when it comes to large amounts of data, Fedex is faster than fiber.

It's not a new idea—sneakernets have been around forever to move large files—but it's interesting coming from Amazon, whose S3 cloud service powers a ton of websites. And kind of sobering. [Amazon, Amazon via Gigaom]

Essentially, Verizon argues that Cablevision is trying to pump all this bandwidth through their crappy cable infrastructure, and it won't hold up, with bandwidth hogs lowering everybody else's speeds. Furthermore, the true speeds will be slower once users have to deal with the speeds of the servers they're trying to access. Oh, and also, nobody wants such high speeds.

But then they start bragging about how fast their service is. But wait, I thought no one wanted fast speeds and, in any case, fast speeds were impossible to actually get thanks to slow servers? Which is it?

The fact of the matter is this: Cablevision is offering higher speeds at lower prices than you, Verizon. You can make your BS contradictory arguments all you want, but no one is going to pay you much mind. Offer up higher speeds at lower prices. That is what people will notice.

Bring on the battle of the high-speed providers, I say. [Verizon Policy Blog via Boy Genius]

In other words, if they are not going to get the blood money they planned from CBB, they might not feel the need to roll out wideband (even though they are not implicitly tied). Alex Dudley, VP of public relations for Time Warner explains via his twitter feed:

@gigastacey it was scheduled as part of cbb trial, but we all know how you feel about that.

@netpro2k It doesn't...just that the rollout was scheduled with the trial and now all of it is on hold.

@Stryph Biggest cost is actually bandwidth allocation.

Obviously, if they are concerned about another major public backlash, they had damn well better come through with this. As a TWC customer, I will definitely be one of those people shaking my fist. [PCMag]

"What happened as we're continuing to listen was we worked in some of the comments and ideas that got sent to us," Ramos said. "We came to the realization, let's do this in October."

Meanwhile, the AP has a story detailing customer pushback in Rochester, NY, another potential test zone. Although no delay has been announced for Rochester, angry customers are getting their legislators involved. Showdown!

[San Antonio Express-News, AP via Register]

The old cap scheme was pretty limited, only going up to a max of 40GB. Now they've got a whole Skittles bag of caps. Here's how Time Warner Cable's COO Landel Hobbs breaks it down, all while breaking out the familiar warning that the internet is about to die if you don't limit your porn consumption to two times a day—MAX:

Internet demand is rising at a rate that could outpace capacity within a few years. According to industry analysts, the infrastructure may not be able to accommodate the explosion of online content by 2012. This could result in Internet brownouts.

• 1GB with 768kbps downstream for $15/month with $2/GB overcharges
• 10, 20, 40 and 60GB will go with Roadrunner Lite, Basic, Standard and Turbo packages, respectively, and maintain the same pricing. Overage is $1/GB.
• 100GB will be the new Road Runner...Turbo (I'm not sure why there are two Turbo packages) which is 10Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream for $75/month. This is still an order of magnitude more restrictive than AT&T and Comcast, who have caps of 150GB and 250GB, respectively.
• A 50Mbps/5Mbps down/up speed tier is coming for $100/month when they launch DOCSIS 3.0. I'd expect this in FiOS-competitive markets first.

Overages are capped at $75 a month, meaning $150 a month gets you unlimited internet with the Turbo package—or really, you could just get a lower package and use as much as you want and pay less. The only real consideration is speed. GigaOM astutely notes that $150/month for unlimited internet is the exact amount Time Warner would need to pull in to make the same amount of money if you killed the cable box and switched to watching all of your video online—as we've long crowed that much of this is about their fear of internet video.

It's notable that Time Warner's not rolling this out anywhere Verizon has FiOS deployed—where in certain markets, for under $150 a month, you can get 50Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream (yes, that's more upstream than downstream in any of Time Warner's packages) and it's totally unlimited. Oh, competition, why can't you be everywhere and save the internet? I'd like to hope we don't have to rely on legislators like Eric Massa in NY to do it, since more bad than good would probably come out of the government getting involved. [Long Reply via Business Insider]

Wired's Ryan Singel says the FCC is taking input from average Joes (but probably not plumbers), public interest groups and telecommunication corporations. So far, Obama has dished out 7.2 billion in grants, bogged down in vague stipulations like only being used for "under-served" areas.

But fingers are crossed that the FCC will hammer out this net neutrality plan and roll out a network as powerful as our foreign counterparts, much like Australia did today. Singel mentioned they rolled out a $31 billion plan to provide 100mbps broadband internet that can reach to all citizens. C'mon, FCC! [Wired]

The plan, which costs $30.5 billion of our U.S. dollars, will rely on a massive infusion of government funds to get the ball rolling on the project, of which the taxpayers will own 51%. It will then be transitioned into a reliance on public sector investment, and the government plans to sell of its stake in the project within five years. It is expected to bring 37,000 jobs to unemployment-hindered Australia,

The one detail not yet decided obviously is pricing—set the price too low, and private telecom companies are pissed; too high, and no one will adopt it. But 90% fiber coverage for a country like Australia is an ambitious play (the other 10% will be served through an upgraded 10mbps satellite service). [NYTimes]