Rocky Gaudrault, the CEO of Canadian DSL provider TekSavvy, tells me that their planned network neutrality protest is officially scheduled for May 27. Canadians plan to protest on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, assuming they aren't detained, tasered, and subsequently liquidated by Bell Canada shock troops. Obviously I'm kidding. Everyone knows it's the automated Bell Canada hunter seeker drones you have to watch out for.

A few weeks ago, Bell Canada thought it would be a really good idea to degrade the quality of the bandwidth they sold wholesalers by throttling it before it reached competitor networks. They also thought it would be a good idea initially not to tell any of those competitors and customers they'd be doing this.

Their decision, aimed primarily at ensuring that competing ISPs couldn't offer better service than Bell Canada's throttled Sympatico service, resulted in Canadians getting a crash course in network neutrality. Gaudrault tells me indie ISPs are expecting a decision by Canadian regulators on whether they plan to do anything about it by May 15.

The official protest website should have additional information in short order.

CableLabs today announced that they've officially certified the first round of DOCSIS 3.0 complaint modems. DOCSIS 3.0 theoretically allows cable operators to provide downstream data rates of 160 Mbps and upstream data rates of 120 Mbps.

I recently mentioned how NYC is getting close to approving Verizon's FiOS TV deployment plans for NYC. I've also discussed how new, bendeable fiber should make installations in apartment buildings easier (this Corning demo video explains).

A struggling VoIP company everyone thought would be dead by now partners with a CLEC everyone thought would be dead by now to resell broadband. Sound like a good idea to you? Vonage, still trying to dig out of their financial hole, has announced they've partnered with Covad to resell DSL service.

Last summer, NBC issued a statement to the FCC demanding that broadband ISPs be forced employ copyright filters on their networks. Among the arguments NBC tried to put forth was that broadband P2P use hurts the American farmer because less popcorn is sold.

Last week, AT&T briefly gave all iPhone users access to free Wi-Fi for a short period. The free Wi-Fi party ended quickly after the company realized that by simply switching the browser user agent to mobile Safari, anyone could get free access.

• Hollywood Wants $15 Million From Pirate Bay [PCWorld.com]
• Intel Predicts Nationwide WiMAX Broadband Cover by 2010 [ISPreview.co.uk]
• $4.7 billion high-speed national broadband network key element in Australia budget [SBS.com.au]
• AT&T Yanks IPhone Free Wi-Fi Info From Site [PCWorld.com]
• Market greedy for 'fat' Wi-Fi access points [Vnunet.com]
• Gadgets kill the Internet [The Inquirer]
• TorrentSpy to appeal 110-mln-dollar ruling in film piracy suit [SMH.com.au]
• Google Cuts Price 40%, Rebrands Postini Security Service [Yahoo News]

• Vonage to offer DSL services powered by Covad [TechWack.com]
• House panel chair offers network neutrality bill [Reuters.com]
• Best Buy Buys Half of Carphone Warehouse for $2.1B [Yahoo News]
• Commentary: Economic Value and Collaboration - The True Allure of Wireless [MuniWireless.com]
• Shure Calls On FCC To Reject Motorola, Google White Spaces Plans [LiveDesignOnline.com]
• Virgin Media under broadband pressure [FT.com]
• EA To Use Controversial Internet-Required DRM On New Games [TechDirt.com]

What seemed like a vague industry possibility just a few months ago now seems like an inevitable certainty. Multiple carriers in North America are now either employing or considering monthly caps where users pay per gigabyte should they "over eat." But the move begs a number of questions.

Cablevision added a new wrinkle in their competitive fight against FiOS today. While discussing their first quarter earnings in a conference call this morning, the company announced they intend to offer free Wi-Fi to all of their customers within two years.

According to a post by a Mediacom employee in our forums, the company will begin upgrading their 15Mbps "MAX" tier to 20Mbps downstream, 2Mbps upstream, for free, by the end of June. Rumors of 20Mbps first popped up last December, but the company wouldn't officially comment. They officially announced the tier this morning during the earnings conference call, saying the tier would be in place to 98% of subscribers by 6/30. I'm not sure how to console you two-percenters, other than to remind you that you could be satellite broadband customers (did that help?).

User hottboiinnc drops me a line this afternoon to note that Buckeye Cable in Ohio has started offering a new 12Mbps/1Mbps tier for $70 a month if you bundle. Apparently the upgrades hit user modems in late April, but the new speed wasn't official until May 1. You might recall I wrote about them back in 2002 for their efforts to prosecute modem uncappers. The 12Mbps speed is likely a competitive response to AT&T's U-Verse VDSL service, launched in Ohio last June.

It looks like the public Wi-Fi network in Philadelphia may be shut down if the city can't negotiate some kind of transfer deal with Earthlink. Earthlink stopped accepting new customers last week, and gave the city until today to negotiate an offer, but the city's mayor doesn't seem keen on the idea of spending city money.

Cynthia Brumfield at IP Democracy e-mailed me this morning to note that Insight Communications CEO Michael Willner has started blogging, and one of his first posts discusses how he scouts Broadband Reports before he reads the NY Times. Willner has long been very active in our forums, particularly during the company's recent unwinding of a partnership with Comcast, which resulted in the transfer of thousands of customers.

If you've studied music, film and game piracy for any length of time, it's pretty clear that piracy will never be eliminated. The fight against piracy is always a game of percentages, and one market that's losing that fight is PC Gaming.

I mentioned the other day that broadband over powerlines (BPL) had suffered a serious death blow after a court slapped the FCC's wrist for acting as a cheerleader for the BPL industry -- while ignoring serious problems inherent in the technology. The industry was also hit hard by the sale of a large BPL deployment in Dallas, on which the Associated Press has more.

• UK gets first Fibrecity [LightReading]
• FBI withdraws secret Internet Archive probe [The Register]
• Studios win $111 million judgment against TorrentSpy.com [Yahoo News]
• Pew Survey Offers Snapshot of Evolving Internet Use [GovTech.com]
• Apple abandons iPhone exclusivity in Europe [MuniWireless]
• Google, Viacom to duke it out over YouTube; both say no settlement [WebProNews.com]
• Fake MP3 Trojan Detected On 27% Of PCs [InformationWeek.com]
• After Yahoo rejection, MS reportedly eyeing Facebook [Globe & Mail]

Ben Wolff, CEO of the new MEGA-ULTRA-Clearwire (well, that's what I'd name it), tells Unstrung that while the companies wait for regulatory approval, they'll continue their previously planned launches. Sprint will launch their WiMax service in Baltimore, DC and Chicago under the soon to be killed Xohm brand, while Clearwire will launch their first mobile WiMax deployment in Portland "in either the late third quarter or early fourth quarter." Wolff says he has the service in his home now, and sees 3-4Mbps. Price? "I don't think you'll see plans north of $60, lets put it that way," he says.

Tired of users being offered half their promised speed, half-truths about traffic shaping, and constant whining by UK ISPs when customers actually use their connection, UK industry-watcher Sam Crawford developed a plan. He wants to send out 200 free open source firmware updated Linksys routers and create a reliable dataset of user disappointment.

I already mentioned Sprint & Clearwire's new WiMax joint venture yesterday, but the official Sprint press release has a little more detail for those of you who haven't been bombarded with news on this front. Google also waxes poetic over the deal at their blog, lauding Clearwire for their dedication to open networks (kind of ironic for those of you that remember the Clearwire/VoIP scuff up of a few years back). But Clearwire promises the new network will be truly open, though Google apps/ads will clearly get some preference thanks to their $500 million infusion.