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.

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.

You might remember Ohio-based Buckeye Cablesystems for when they came down hard on the heads of cable modem upcappers back in 2002, going so far as to bring in the FBI to investigate users who were trying to squeeze extra bandwidth out of the cable system. It's now 2009, and Buckeye has found a much better solution for bandwidth-hungry customers -- they've started a fiber to the home trial in Toledo, but they're installing it without having to dig up any existing infrastructure thanks to a new technology by Kabel-X.

With the cable company he founded currently struggling through bankruptcy, Charter Communications founder and Chairman now finds himself facing a much more serious and difficult task: beating back cancer a second time. Allen, who already fought and beat cancer some twenty five years ago, is now facing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, according to The Seattle Times. "For those who know Paul's story, you know he beat Hodgkin's a little more than 25 years ago and he is optimistic he can beat this, too," says Allen's sister Jody Allen. Allen spent much of the summer battling with creditors, who didn't like Allen's efforts to retain control of the company after restructuring. The restructuring is supposed to eliminate about $8 billion of the company's $21.7 billion in debt.

So what's behind Comcast's usual last place showing when it comes to consumer satisfaction scores? Why is the company seemingly engaged in an endless showdown with Charter for the worst customer support in the industry? One Chicago Tribune writer decided to find out, and wound up getting an invitation to attend "Comcast University," the eleven week training program Comcast support reps have to go through before they're put on front line call center support. Tribune writer Jon Yates touches on an important tip for consumers to remember when trying to get good support: story continues..

When last we checked in with Comcast's Internet video "TV Everywhere" initiative, it was looking more like "TV in some places, some of the time," given there were hints the service wouldn't be available to customers who weren't using a Comcast cable modem for broadband access. The idea of course is to provide existing TV customers access to free Internet video so they won't cut the cord -- but as we've explored, if the industry screw things up it could have the exact opposite effect.

Bankrupt Charter Communications Is joining the seasonal cable rate hike festivities, the Oregonian reporting that the company is raising rates in Oregon for some of the customers who can least afford it. Meanwhile, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune (California) reports how Charter is eliminating discounts for senior citizens in the region, raising bills as high as 26%.

Comcast's acquisition of and/or merger with NBC Universal appears to be all but a done deal, but the regulatory approval of such a giant merger appears to be anything but certain. If approved, Reuters proudly proclaims that "FCC conditions on Comcast-NBC could hurt synergy" (apparently the possibility that conditions could help consumers didn't make it past editors.) Consumer advocates are asking a lot of questions about a company as large as Comcast controlling both the delivery pipe for broadband, voice and TV -- as well as a giant slice of the content being delivered over those pipes. They're questions you can be sure it will take Congress and the FCC a long time to ask -- meaning that once closed, the deal could take another year or more for approval.

Comcast is reportedly in the midst of testing femtocells, devices which essentially act as an indoor tower for wireless voice and data services -- allowing you to place calls over your home broadband connection. Comcast's investment deal with Clearwire included a provision that set aside 5 MHz of spectrum solely for WiMAX femtocells, but an anonymous source tells Fierce Wireless that deployment of the service won't happen until next year -- if it happens at all. Comcast of course offers re-branded Clearwire wireless broadband service as part of a new suite of bundles being offered in three markets so far. Ultimately, Clearwire and Comcast will likely deploy voice services over the Mobile WiMax network. Given the initial problems users are seeing with Clearwire signal, femtocells will likely be a necessary evolution.

Mediacom just got done bumping their standard speeds for most users pushing their 8 Mbps tier to 12 Mbps, and their 10 Mbps tier to 15 Mbps. Things should get faster shortly: the company told those who tuned in to their third quarter earnings conference call that they'd be launching DOCSIS 3.0 service in eleven new markets starting in December. Mediacom isn't saying which markets those will be, but they did say that nine of the markets would see 50 Mbps speeds, while two of them would be seeing 100 Mbps speeds (no word on prices or upstream speeds). Mediacom hopes to have about 25% of their network upgraded to the faster speeds by the end of the year, and has an additional 25% of their network "DOCSIS 3.0 headend-capable" for expanded launches in 2010.

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.

Back in January, bankrupt Charter Communications launched faster DOCSIS 60Mbps/5Mbps service, but only in St. Louis. Given Charter's bankruptcy (which they should be emerging from in a few weeks), it's not too surprising that the year was devoid of any additional launches -- until now. According to Charter, they're now launching the faster service in Victorville, California for $139.99 standalone, or $129.99 when bundled with an additional service. Not too surprisingly -- Charter sees competition from Verizon FiOS in Victorville, and is trying (albeit feebly with the cash on hand) to upgrade FiOS markets first.

In discussing yesterday's earnings on a conference call with reporters, Comcast hinted that -- despite being profitable and in hot pursuit an NBC Universal acquisition -- employees should prepare for layoffs. There's no word on where exactly these layoffs will be happening or how many, but early indications are that many of the cuts will be in advertising. According to the Boston Globe, at least 64 positions have already been trimmed at Comcast's Spotlight advertising division, though those cut were informed of the decision back in September.

Update: One user sends in an additional Boston Globe report ranking Comcast as the top place to work. Great news -- assuming you still work there.

Right on the heels of last week's Clearwire Philadelphia launch, Comcast says they too have now launched their re-branded Mobile WiMax "High Speed 2 Go" service in the company's hometown of Philadelphia. Philly is Comcast's third launch market for the services, which have previously been launched in Atlanta and Portland.

Speaking to reporters and analysts during the company's 3rd quarter earnings conference call, cable overbuilder RCN has announced that they're taking their DOCSIS 3.0 plans out of neutral very, very soon. According to the company, residential customers in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, Boston and New York should see faster speeds before the end of the year. The company says the "majority" of their remaining footprint will see the faster speeds in 2010. There's no word on residential pricing yet. As their press release attests, RCN is going to make small business customers their primary marketing focus at first.

Comcast issued their third quarter earnings this morning, which indicate that while growth has slowed slightly at the cable giant, the money continues to roll in thanks to a combination of rate hikes and customers adding additional services. The company recorded a quarterly profit of $944 million, up from $771 million one year earlier.

If you've been around the broadband industry as a user or employee for any length of time, you might be familiar with Ryan Harris -- pen name DerEngel. Harris has published a book (which we sort of reviewed) on hacking cable modems, and is the head of a cable mod organization known as the TCNiSO modding community.

According to the New York Times, Comcast's rumored deal to acquire NBC Universal could be finalized and officially announced sometime this week. A finalized deal would involve Comcast owning 51% of NBC Universal, with General Electric maintaining control of the other 49%. The one sticking point for the deal is convincing Vivendi, which owns 20% of NBC, to sell their share -- according to the Times.

Last year around this time, Comcast implemented a 250 GB cap for all of their users, which was a welcome change -- given they'd been expecting customers to guess what constituted "excessive use" for much of the decade. Last year, the company said they'd be providing users with a bandwidth monitoring tool in January of 2009. We're now approaching December, and Houston Chronicle blogger Dwight Silverman notes the tool is still nowhere to be found. According to Comcast, they're still testing the tool among employees, "and making some refinements to the meter." "As you can imagine, we want the tool to be simple to use and accurate before we launch it," says the company, whose consumption FAQ still directs users to get the bandwidth meter offered free by Comcast as part of the McAffee security suite.