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:Again, the inference that the flat-rate pricing model mysteriously doesn't offer the money needed to fund investment is simply not true, should you care to look at any major ISP balance sheet or 10-K. Internet usage data (at least the data not coming from DC lobbyists pushing the "Exaflood") indicates that future capacity demand can be met with only modest capacity upgrades. New data from the University of Minnesota this week indicates that growth continues to slow. So if by "shooting through the roof," Spangler means "completely manageable with only modest investment and smart engineering," he's right. Otherwise, not so much.

Spangler's second major point is that consumption-based billing is inevitable because bandwidth caps won't work.

Back in September we noted how it seems like only a matter of time before Verizon engaged in metered broadband billing. After Time Warner Cable's PR implosion, most ISPs are in a holding pattern on the idea until they can sell consumers on it, something they haven't done a good job of so far.

It has been interesting watching Blockbuster video adapt to the broadband age, with the company seemingly not trying very hard out of fear of cannibalizing their brick and mortar revenue and losing control. Early efforts to mirror Netflix's success at broadband video delivery have seemed relatively lackluster, and the company's CEO, when announcing such broadband initiatives, seems to almost expect them to fail.

Consumer Group Free Press takes a few shots at Verizon's inconsistent positions on rural broadband, noting that while the baby bell continually claims to support getting broadband into the nation's rural nooks and crannies, their actions of late say the complete opposite. Forget FiOS -- the new Verizon is uninterested in delivering even DSL or phone service to most rural markets, which is why they're continually selling off these markets in tricky tax loophole leaping deals that usually wind up badly for the consumer and the sold markets:Verizon's justification of course is that rural America is costly to wire.

We've certainly levied more than our fair share of criticism at Comcast over the years, but late yesterday the cable giant took one hell of a beating for doing, well, absolutely nothing. It began when Slashdot posted a story saying that Comcast had imposed a new throttling system.

As cable companies have been trying to compete with FiOS and municipal fiber builds, one of their favorite tactics has been advertisements that intentionally distort the difference between core and last-mile fiber. Marketing folk assume that since the public is probably too stupid to understand the difference, they can take some of the shine off of fiber to the home by pretending all fiber is created equal.

Andrew Harries, CEO of network hardware maker Zeugma, not too surprisingly has penned a missive in the Financial Times suggesting he's had a change of heart, and that he now likes the idea of metered billing. Harries, who at least admits he has a vested interest in selling hardware that tracks and meters usage, unfortunately goes on to fill his piece with a laundry list of pro-metered billing talking points that ignore countless broadband industry realities.

Yesterday, as you might have heard, Fairpoint Communications filed bankruptcy, but promised customers that things would remain the same -- something not comforting to Fairpoint customers who've grown used to flaky service and even flakier support. The Nashua Telegraph breaks down what Fairpoint owes, noting that the $619 million worth of unpaid bills listed in FairPoint’s US Bankruptcy Court filing is owed to 50 creditors.

Comcast and Verizon have spent much of the last two years bickering over who offers the most HD channels or video on demand "options." Despite being just as guilty as every other carrier in regards to artificially inflating HD numbers (and in reality having a lower HD count than most carriers), Comcast doesn't like Verizon's tendency to count cutesy instructional VOD videos (like how to fold a towel) as "choices" in advertisements for their VOD catalog. Verizon in turn doesn't like Comcast ads that point this out.

The Wall Street Journal this week took a look at the push toward metered broadband, and while the story contains nothing we haven't covered here in exhausting (perhaps sometimes even annoying) detail, the Journal did interview Phillip Dampier. Dampier's a Broadband Reports user ( Dampier ) from Rochester, New York, for whom the metered billing debate was so important -- he went off and created the completely consumer funded Stop The Cap website.

We've long criticized the broadband industry's biggest companies for their unethical practices when it comes to DC lobbying, from the creation of artificial consumer groups, to the "co-opting" of legitimate groups who parrot anti-consumer phone or cable company lobbying positions for donations. While with one hand AT&T and Verizon are busy publicly throwing their support behind the FCC's new neutrality rules, with the other hand they're doing things like scaring their employees into flooding the FCC comment system from their home e-mail addresses, or using fake and/or hijacked organizations to bombard the FCC with complaints.

One of the talking points repeated over and over and over by carriers who oppose network neutrality is that network neutrality rules will "stifle investment" in the sector. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said as much yesterday, and AT&T urged their employees (via private e-mail accounts) to bombard the FCC with the talking point earlier this week.

Sure, heavy wireless broadband users might call it pure madness, but there are some smartphone users out there who like to ditch the 3G data plan and simply use free Wi-Fi when it's available. To stop this utter insanity (well ok, to further bloat already plump revenues), Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and AT&T have decided to make $30 data plans for smart phones mandatory. AT&T only recently joined this party. The Consumerist noting how AT&T's deadline for ditching your 3G plan has been extended to October 31, but you'll need the following: story continues..

With the FCC poised to extend network neutrality principles to wireless services, and carriers like AT&T now allowing Skype over 3G, mobile VoIP is finally gaining traction. It will be a slow climb, suggests Gartner Research. According to Gartner, 50% of mobile voice will be VoIP end to end by 2019, and 30% of mobile voice traffic will originate via content websites that have embedded the functionality into their services.

In the UK, the government is still working toward the entertainment industry's goal of booting heavy P2P users off of the Internet, should they be caught transferring pirated material three times. As we've covered at length, this is a bad idea for a number of reasons.

Gosh, it seems like only yesterday the FCC was telling us that broadband competition in the United States was incredibly robust based on completely inaccurate data. But not only has the FCC seen a change in leadership, they've made a promise to actually base policy decisions on science, not just AT&T or Comcast lobbyist flow charts.

If you needed any further evidence as to why AT&T and Verizon are so worried about Google Voice, Lifehacker highlights how users have been using Google Voice to make unlimited wireless calls, something many of our users have been doing for a while now. You of course know that most carriers have plans that allow you to call certain favorite numbers without eroding your minutes (Friends & Family, MyFaves, A-List).

As we've been exploring, both AT&T and Verizon absolutely despise Google. Why? Because the company represents an Internet future where phone companies are relegated to "dumb pipe" network operators, and more innovative and adaptable companies wind up making a killing in the content and service business.

Here in the States we only just decided, nearly a decade after the industry took off, that it might be smart to have some kind of national broadband plan. We have also decided, after a decade of using bad science to inform any telecom policy we did make, that using real science instead of lobbyist spreadsheets might be a good way to proceed. We've also concluded that instead of guessing who has broadband, actually mapping availability might be a good idea. Of course in terms of how to improve broadband, we're still hashing out the details.

Earlier this month we discussed how "research firm" Nemertes Research had returned once again with their Chicken-Little prognostications that the Internet would soon start facing an Exaflood, or Internet capacity collapse. As we argued then, the entire Exaflood idea is a myth cooked up by carriers to help scare lawmakers and the public into believing that bandwidth is a dangerously limited and precious resource, and if you don't give carriers what they want (the right to metered billing, fewer consumer protection laws, no neutrality laws, removed price controls) the Internet will explode and you'll all be sorry.