Earlier this week we reported that Verizon appears cooking up a few changes to their FiOS broadband lineup, but the company wasn't ready to comment officially. No, there's no 100Mbps tier (yet), but Verizon does appear prepped to nudge the speeds of select, existing tiers upward.

In an announcement sent to the press this afternoon, Verizon says they'll be holding a webcast and conference call on Monday to unveil some new FiOSTV content, and "details on new incentives and enhancements for Verizon FiOS and high speed Internet services." The media alert also makes reference to "several new promotions and compelling broadband developments."

At least one of the announcements appears to be a free Compaq netbook for signing up for FiOS TV, judging from advertisements that have leaked out a little early. Leaked promo materials also confirm our previous report, and highlight 15/5Mbps (down/up), 25/15Mbps and 35/20Mbps tiers should be dropping on Monday. We'll of course have more on Monday when Verizon unleashes all of the juicy details officially.

Update: The upgrades are now official, and we have a follow up report here.

The past few weeks have seen a flood of rumors that Qwest is about to migrate from ADSL2+ to VDSL2, which should allow the carrier to offer faster speeds to select customers with shorter loop lengths. While Qwest's current fastest ADSL2+ speed tops out at 20Mbps/896kbps, the new VDSL2 services will top out at around 40Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream.

Two different sources within Comcast have confirmed the company's tentative and upcoming DOCSIS 3.0 deployment schedule, which has not been officially announced by Comcast. According to the sources, Jacksonville is scheduled to go live before the end of the week.

Broadband Reports has learned that Charter will be updating their acceptable use policy (AUP) next week, setting the stage for clear usage caps and potential overage fees. A source familiar with the plans tells us Charter will be imposing a 100GB cap upon any Charter connection of 15Mbps or less, and a 250GB usage cap for broadband tiers "over 15 Mbps up to 25 Mbps." Documents shared with Broadband Reports make no mention of Charter's new 60Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 tier, which was launched last week in one market.

Comcast insiders have informed Broadband Reports that the cable giant will soon be launching an online backup and storage service called Comcast Secure Backup and Share, for which customers can pay a monthly or yearly fee. The plan is to offer several storage options: 10GB worth of storage for $4.99/mo or $49.99 per year; 50GB for $9.99/mo or $99.99 year; or 200GB for $19.99 a month.

Comcast will be shaking up their speed tiers as they deploy DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, not only increasing speeds on standard tiers, but delivering new, 22Mbps/5Mbps and 50Mbps/10Mbps speed tiers. Comcast is now prepping employees for several market launches expected over the next few weeks, and it's becoming harder to keep the lid on the pot.

Representatives from Time Warner Cable have informed me that the cable company will be deploying Powerboost technology in their New York City market for Standard, Turbo and Extreme customers. Powerboost, first deployed by Comcast, delivers more than double the speed to consumers for the first few minutes of a large download or upload.

I've learned that Comcast will begin testing their new, "protocol agnostic" network management solution starting on Thursday in two markets. Comcast originally came under fire after one of our users discovered the company was forging TCP packets to disrupt BitTorrent communications.

A Comcast insider tells me the company is considering implementing very clear monthly caps, and may begin charging overage fees for customers who cross them. While still in the early stages of development, the plan -- as it stands now -- would work like this: all users get a 250GB per month cap.

Sources within Comcast tell us that the company has decided to stop offering Sprint Pivot wireless service to new and existing customers starting this week, though an official announcement has yet to be made. According to an internal Comcast announcement, Pivot customers should begin receiving an e-mail by the end of April or May offering them the option to transition to traditional Sprint phone service without an early termination fee.

Qwest's delayed next-gen broadband plan (leaked to us first last Summer) is to spend $300 million to deliver 20Mbps ADSL2+ to about 1.5 million customers over the next two years. The company is also testing line-bonded VDSL at speeds of 38Mbps, but they've repeatedly stated they aren't interested in being a video provider.

This week a company by the name of Oerklikon announced they'd simulated a 1.5 million mile laser broadband link, which should provide NASA and others with a much wider pipe to transmit mission data. Former Boeing engineer and DSLReports.com user Mike Nolan writes in to tell me he's not sold on the Oerklikon findings, while providing an interesting primer on the state of broadband...in space! (cue music).

Like Verizon and AT&T, Qwest's third quarter results indicate that there's a broadband growth slowdown. Unlike AT&T and Verizon, Qwest doesn't own a wireless division, so the slow growth is worrying investors.

We asked you last Friday to give us your most nagging questions, and we'd try our best to get you an answer. One of the top questions was whether AT&T has any plans to deploy U-Verse service into former BellSouth territory within a year or two, so we sat down with AT&T's U-Verse spokesman Wes Warnock to pick his brain.

DSL provider Speakeasy is gearing up to unveil ADSL2+ service starting this week, Broadband Reports is the first to reveal. We spoke with Speakeasy CEO Bruce Chatterley concerning the new service, the company's evolution and their relationship with new owner Best Buy (covered below the break).

The details: 8Mbps/1Mbps for $149.95, 10Mbps/1Mbps for $179.95 and 15Mbps/1Mbps for $189.95. Installation will run you $149 (modem and install). Prequal loop distances are 10,000, 7,000, and 5,000 feet respectively. It's available in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC. Several of our regular users alerted us that they've already been able to pre-order the service.

Arkansas-based DSL provider Windstream Communications appears to be offshoring a chunk of their domestic tech support operations and consolidating the rest, according to employee chatter in our forums. Windstream, originally part of Alltel Wireless, was spun off last year as a separate company and lauded itself for having all U.S. support.

One anonymous Windstream employee says the company is eliminating at least two support desk locations while expanding a third. He also notes that Windstream is helping terminated employees find new work, either inside the organization or elsewhere: story continues..

Qwest appears to be training employees in preparation for a broader deployment of fiber to the node and VDSL or ADSL2+ technology, according to documents obtained by Broadband Reports. The documents refer to a new service internally dubbed "IP Broadband," which will be deployed first on August 19 in Denver, Phoenix and Colorado Springs.

FiOS is deservedly seeing good reviews from our users because of the speed and reliability of the connections. Verizon is deservedly seeing praise for being the only telco with the foresight to see that fiber is the future.

The past few years have seen an increase in eBay and phishing scams out of Romania. Our resident scambusters have privately been tracking one operation in particular -- a group of young Romanians that have been scamming people around the world for thousands of dollars over the past year.

Anonymous insiders claim SunRocket had a meeting at noon today where the majority of the company's remaining staff were told they no longer have a job. Owners are rumored to be trimming the staff to a core 25 employees who'll oversee the sale of the VoIP provider to several potential candidates.