Focus On: Broadband

We owe it all to HDTV. Home and small office wiring options just got a boost with this week's announcement by the Multimedia over Coax Alliance of its new coax spec of 270 megabits per second. But that spec may already be on its way to the dustbin of history as the HomePNA Alliance led by Cisco's Scientific Atlanta polishes up a 320Mbs standard for both phone lines and coax. Email Battles compares the major standards, and tells you what you can do with them.

Wresting US$90 million from Google's steely grip took Dallas attorney Joel Fineberg little more than twelve months. The Texas lawyer obviously chose the right target, as Google's AdWords has been broadly reported as easy prey for pay-per-click fraud. After reading the terms of the settlement, some are left wondering if it accomplished anything at all, beyond enriching a few and limiting Google's future liabilities.

Facing a public relations disaster for its $5 Per Spam charge, Qwest has apparently decided to fight PR with PR. Their response? "It is not Qwest policy to terminate..." Unfortunately for Qwest subscribers, that's not what the contract says. And unfortunately for Qwest, competitors with smarter legal departments now have a huge advantage.

Broadband users large and small have been threatening to leave Qwest over the company's new rules. The fresh edicts seemed to bar using Qwest lines by many servers that had already signed up. In addition, those whose accounts were connected with spam in any way risked charges with no upper limits. After a weak verbal defense, Qwest capitulated... at least on its server policies. Email Battles compares the "before" with the "after."

Is Qwest taking advantage of a recent FCC ruling to ripoff innocent broadband subscribers whose computers do bad things? Email Battles says yes. Charging five bucks for every spam sent by your possibly-hijacked computer is gouging. Once you see how other broadband competitors treat spam, you'll probably agree.