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Weekend Open Thread - Welcome Back Edition - Fri, 18 May 2012

The weekend has arrived, so empty your head into the comment section below.
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Friday Evening Links - - Fri, 18 May 2012

Facebook Suit Over Subscriber Tracking Seeks $15 Billion bloomberg.com
Dish won't launch its LTE Advanced network until 2016 - or later fiercewireless.com
150 communities are doing broadband on their own terms smartplanet.com
North America Set To Lose LTE Sub Leadership By 2014 cable360.net
4G Report Card: Which Carriers Make the Grade? lightreading.com
LTE Will Suck as Long as Backhaul Does lightreading.com
Verizon, MetroPCS Spar on LTE Roaming Claims wirelessweek.com
Airline Wi-Fi provider GoGo to partner with AeroSat to bring satellite services to commercial flights beyond US dailyherald.com
Is white space the next frontier for mobile operators? fiercewireless.com
T-Mobile isn't jumping on the shared-data plan bandwagon fiercewireless.com
Why Verizon Phasing Out Unlimited Data Is a Step Backwards mashable.com
T-Mobile, MetroPCS Lobby FCC to Limit Dish to 20 MHz wirelessweek.com
ITC orders import ban against Motorola Android devices that infringe a Microsoft patent fosspatents.com
ZTE confirms security hole in U.S. phone reuters.com
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Verizon Clarifies Death of Grandfathered Unlimited Plans - Grandrathered Users Won't Get Subsidized Devices - Fri, 18 May 2012

Verizon Wireless CFO Fran Shammo earlier this week stated that the company would be killing off unlimited data plans for users who were grandfathered after the company stopped selling unlimited data back in 2010. According to Shammo, the company is going to force many of those users on 3G to move to upcoming shared data plans if they want to migrate to LTE. After the negative press Shammo's comments generated, Verizon circulated a statement to the press promising that the phase out of these grandfathered unlimited plans will be a slow affair, and largely dependent on when and if these users wan't to upgrade to new subsidized LTE devices. According to Verizon Wireless:

•Customers will not be automatically moved to new shared data plans. If a 3G or 4G smartphone customer is on an unlimited plan now and they do not want to change their plan, they will not have to do so.
•When we introduce our new shared data plans, Unlimited Data will no longer be available to customers when purchasing handsets at discounted pricing.
•Customers who purchase phones at full retail price and are on an unlimited smartphone data plan will be able to keep that plan.
•The same pricing and policies will be applied to all 3G and 4GLTE smartphones.
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Exclusive: FiOS Speed Hikes Coming Soon - 25/25 to Become 50/25, 35/35 to Become 75/35 - Fri, 18 May 2012

We've been nudged by a reliable source with supporting evidence who tells us Verizon will be raising the speed of several of their FiOS broadband tiers very soon. According to the source, Verizon's symmetrical 25 Mbps tier will soon be changed to 50 Mbps downstream and 25 Mbps upstream. The company's current symmetrical 35 Mbps tier will soon see a dramatic bump to 75 Mbps downstream and 35 Mbps upstream. "As far as I know, it will be like old upgrades where everyone will remain on the same plan and I'm assuming pay more for the increase," says the source. These changes should be arriving somewhere around June 18.

Verizon's pricing for these options vary slightly by market and bundle, and can be found at the Verizon website once you've plugged in your address details.

Despite market differences, the source notes that these new 50/25 and 75/35 tiers should be available in all markets, regardless of whether or not the market is on GPON or BPON. One interesting extra the source noted is that there has been talk of a 300 Mbps tier for GPON markets -- but it's not yet clear if that speed is going to be directed at residential accounts or enterprise users, and our source wasn't sure what the upload would be.

Needless to say, 300 Mbps would be a new high watermark for residential service and quite a marketing boon for a company that once called 100 Mbps service marketing gimmick. Verizon's fastest current offering is their 150/35 Mbps Ultimate tier. One of our more speed-hungry users recently bonded two Ultimate lines together in order to attain 300 Mbps connectivity. Again though, 75/35 will be the new highest tier for users still in BPON markets.
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Critics Speak Out on Comcast's Plan to Charge Overages - While Level 3 Says They've Proven Unfair Prioritization - Fri, 18 May 2012

As we noted yesterday, Comcast has announced the company is raising their universal 250GB usage cap to 300 GB -- while announcing that they'll be experimenting with a variety of usage-based surcharges over the coming months. Not too surprisingly, competitors and consumer advocates aren't too impressed with the changes -- Free Press arguing that the company's usage caps are not necessary and should be eliminated entirely. From a statement posted to the organization's website:

Netflix, who for obvious reasons has been highly critical of usage limits, also had plenty to say about the changes:Adding fuel to the fire, Level3 has posted analysis claiming they've looked at the data and that Comcast does appear to be giving their own streaming video traffic preferential treatment. You'll recall that Level3 and Comcast have had several years of disputes over network neutrality and additional connectivity surcharges. Meanwhile, Canadians, who deal with some of the most draconian caps and usage caps anywhere, say they'd love it if their ISPs raised their caps to 300 GB.
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AAISP Reveals First Real World 330Mbps UK FTTP Broadband Trial Speeds - Fri, 18 May 2012
Business focused ISP Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) has today provided some of the first real customer feedback from its closed technical trial of BT’s latest ‘up to’ 330Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband technology, which saw one user receive actual internet download speeds of 192.39Mbps (Megabits per second) with 28.53Mbps upload and just 6ms latency. Unlike [...]

10.8 Million UK Superfast Fibre Broadband Lines Predicted for Q4 2016 - Fri, 18 May 2012
The latest market forecast from telecoms analyst firm Point Topic has predicted that the UK will be home to a total of 25.9 million broadband ISP lines by the end of 2016 (currently 20,736,500), with 10.8 million coming from superfast “FTTx” (fibre optic) connections (“28 times the total FTTx lines recorded for Q4 2011“). The [...]

ORG Hit by Mass of New Reports for Wrongly Blocked Sites on Mobile Networks - Fri, 18 May 2012
The recent Mobile Internet Censorship Report from the Open Rights Group (ORG), which revealed some of the legitimate websites that often get incorrectly blocked by adult content filters (over-blocking) on UK mobile networks, has triggered a rush of 19 new reports including a major technology news site (GigaOM), a style and fashion magazine, the BNP [...]

Facebook stock closes nearly flat in debut - 2012-05-18T23:38

It was barely a "like" and definitely not a "love" from Facebook investors as the online social network's stock failed to live up to the hype in its trading debut Friday.

Sudden wealth part of Silicon Valley's everyday - 2012-05-18T22:11

In Silicon Valley, where sudden wealth is hardly something new and CEOs favor hoodies over bespoke blazers, Facebook's IPO on Friday didn't bring everyday life to a halt.

The next digital image revolution? - 2012-05-09T05:57

Despite the explosive innovation around digital picture-taking, the end result has actually changed very little. A photo is still a photo. And a poorly focused photo is still as bad as ever. Ren Ng aims to fix that.