According to the latest report by broadband stat farm Point Topic, the total number of global broadband users just passed 400 million, and is expected to reach 680 million by 2013. The report notes that in five years, China will be well ahead of the U.S. in terms of total lines (they'll pass us this year), with 153 million broadband lines against 117 million in the USA. Point Topic predicts that the U.S. will begin closing the gap in terms of broadband penetration (the U.S. is currently 15th among OECD countries).

Outfits like Wired Magazine spent much of the nineties predicting intelligent refrigerators that would know when they were empty; washing machines that would call you when something was wrong; remote wireless sensors that would start the oven, open your garage door, and turn on the lights when they detected you arriving home after a busy day at the office. But the bursting of the dot-com bubble resulted in talk of smart homes being put on the shelf for a while.

As expected, Microsoft today unveiled their new revamped GUI for their Xbox 360 gaming console. Dubbed the "new Xbox experience, (NXE)" the most notable update for broadband users is the ability to stream Netflix films. You'll need to be an Xbox Live Gold member and Netflix subscriber to take advantage of the 10000 SD and 300HD programs Netflix is offering via the gaming console. Some content is missing -- MTV noting that films from Columbia Pictures, which is owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, are locked down in a licensing dispute. Meanwhile, the Netflix Blog discusses the technical specifics of their streaming service.

After months of contentious debate, it looks like Canadian regulators are poised to finally rule on the dispute between Bell Canada and independent ISPs tomorrow. According to the CBC, the CRTC will issue their ruling tomorrow morning, after delaying their decision twice. Earlier this year, Bell Canada began throttling the traffic of wholesale competitors before delivering it to them, and without telling them. While Bell claimed the move was to handle congestion, follow up inquiries showed little to no congestion -- leading to the assumption that Bell simply didn't want any competitors offering DSL service that was superior to their own, throttled Sympatico service.

AT&T and the State of Connecticut haven't exactly been getting along. The State has angered the powerful telco by requiring AT&T U-Verse adhere to cable franchise law (a fight AT&T won), requiring AT&T grant homeowner consent before plunking bulky U-Verse VRADs down in front of customer homes, and via CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's ongoing investigation into poor AT&T customer service in the state.

The FCC recently began investigating the TV pricing of several large cable operators and Verizon (but not AT&T), though we've discussed how the inquiry might be a little hollow, and ignores the FCC's own failed policies. While most carriers responded in detail regarding concerns that carriers were bumping channels into costlier digital tiers, Comcast apparently phoned in their response, according to MultiChannel News.Of course Comcast is already appealing the FCC's toothless sanction for throttling P2P traffic, and is eagerly anticipating Martin's exit under an Obama administration. However, it's unlikely that they're going to like the new FCC boss (whoever it is) any more, given that those in charge of selecting him (or her) are very pro-consumer.

Microsoft announced that they'd be discontinuing their OneCare security suite, a subscription service that includes anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall functionality. Replacing OneCare will be a free service code-named "Morro" that will include protection from viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans. According to a Microsoft press release, the new product will drop in the second half of 2009. While the release claims Microsoft is interested in increasing the protection rates in non-developed countries with less broadband, McAfee tells CNET that two years after its release, Microsoft's paid offering only managed to net a 2% market share. The OneCare blog has a FAQ for impacted subscribers.

Harvard Law Professor Charles R. Nesson, the founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is suing the RIAA for their scorched earth legal tactics against file traders.

• Martin Hints At Fining Comcast [multichannel.com]
• BlackBerry Storm's lack of Wi-Fi frustrates customers [mobiletoday.co.uk]
• Akamai Releases Third Quarterly “State of the Internet” Report [msn.com]
• BT silences customers over Phorm [theregister.co.uk]
• Virgin Media touts 16Mb/sec for ADSL customers [pcpro.co.uk]
• Mobile broadband: Mobile market is a moving target [ft.com]
• Firms charge employees for Vista boot-up times [theinquirer.net]
• Lame Mac Trojan limps into view [theregister.co.uk]

• ZTE, Qualcomm and Aircell Collaborate on In-flight Mobile Broadband System [cellular-news.com]
• FCC Publishes 'White Spaces' Rules [lightreading.com]
• Sprint mulls managing Indian WiMax networks [business-standard.com]
• FCC's Martin: Safe TV Bill Not Good Enough [multichannel.com]
• AT&T's Wayport Acquisition Defines Wi-Fi's Role in a 4G World [yankeegroup.com]
• Forrester Research: Economy will slow broadband growth [cedmagazine.com]
• Qualcomm Found in Contempt [unstrung.com]
• Dead network provider arms Rustock botnet from the hereafter [theregister.co.uk]
• Spain watchdog hopes for broadband deal with Brussels [reuters.com]

For a few years, Autonet Mobile has been promoting their in-car Wi-Fi hotspot, which uses a Sprint wireless broadband connection (kind of a 3G EVDO Wi-Fi MVNO 4x4, you dig?) to provide connectivity on the go. Their Wi-Fi router has shown up via a few scattered rental agencies at the rock bottom price of $10.95 per day, but the device seemed to be in a perpetual state of "coming soon" when it comes to direct purchase via the product website.

Sprint's battle with a midwest CDMA affiliate named iPCS probably isn't what the struggling carrier needs right now. Just last week iPCS managed to force Sprint to shutter their Nextel network in eighty one markets where iPCS operates. Earlier this year iPCS also filed suit to stop Sprint's plan to create a national mobile WiMax business, aka New-Super-Mega-Ultra Clearwire. This week an Illinois court blocked iPCS's effort, though Telephony Online reports the fight is far from over, and iPCS could block deployment in any of their markets such as Grand Rapids, Michigan.

If you had any doubts that cable has been beating up the telcos a bit the last few quarters, the latest data from Leichtman Research should eliminate them. According to Leichtman, the twenty largest cable and telephone providers in the US – representing about 94% of the market – acquired approximately 1.3 million net additional high-speed Internet subscribers in the third quarter of 2008. Of those 1.3 million new customers, cable operators added 870,000, or 67% of them in the third quarter. "Over the past two quarters the top cable providers accounted for 71% of the net broadband additions, adding over 900,000 more broadband subscribers than the top telcos," says Bruce Leichtman.

User Kayrac writes in to note that to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Checkpoint Software, the company is offering, just for today, a free copy of their normally $20 ZoneAlarm Pro software package (download link here). Checkpoint Software purchased the popular Zone Alarm firewall back in 2003 for a cool $205 million, causing some consternation around these parts as to whether the product quality would decline. Whether that happened depends on who you ask (strange glitches do seem more common), but hey -- free is free. Perhaps it's time for our obligatory bi-yearly discussion about the best software firewalls in the comment section below.

The Obama camp has pegged two long-time net neutrality advocates to head up their Federal Communications Commission Review team, according to Wired. One is Wharton professor Kevin Werbach (see his CircleID articles), who was a former FCC staffer, and is organizer of the annual tech conference Supernova.

Last December, UK telco British Telecom called running fiber to the home "premature," instead opting to milk copper for a little longer (like a few baby bells we know here in the States). Then last July, the telco stated that barring "regulatory certainty" (industry code for government doing exactly what the phone company tells them to) they'd be spending $3 billion to offer a combination of both fiber to the node (FTTN) and fiber to the home (FTTH) technology at speeds up to 100Mbps.

Shortly after Time Warner Cable and Roadrunner announced they'd be testing caps ranging from 5-40GB (with $1/GB overages), Roadrunner launched their own video store. As part of Roadrunner's continuing relationship with Bright House Networks, the latter says they'll start directing customers to the new service. According to the press release, Road Runner Video Store pricing for a download-to-own new release movie is $17.99, with library titles ranging from $9.99 to $13.99 for download to own. Movie rentals are $3.99. TV series are $1.99 per episode, with full-season ordering available.

Comcast will be buying a financially strapped municipal cable operation run by Alameda Power & Telecom in the San Francisco Bay Area. According to Multichannel News, Comcast will pay $15 million for the system, which has 9,500 video customers and 6,600 data customers just outside of San Francisco. The municipal utility started as an electrical company, then got into video and broadband services in 2001. The outfit funded their plan with revenue bond anticipation notes, and now faces a balloon payment of $35 million on those notes in June.

• 1.3 Million Add Broadband in Q3 [multichannel.com]
• Carphone confirms TalkTalk demerger plans [ldpbusiness.co.uk]
• The High Cost Of 'Free' Broadband [forbes.com]
• Second wind for muni WiFi? Mesh-networking startup hopes so [arstechnica.com]
• Bright House Networks will steer customers to Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner Video Store [multichannel.com/]
• Since 2008's Almost Over, Now Looking To 2009 As The Year Of Mobile TV [techdirt.com]
• Will USB 3.0 kill short-range wireless development? [thestandard.com]
• Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to step down [theinquirer.net]

• The New top 10 net neutrality influencers [muniwireless.com]
• French music industry wants P2P ban [theinquirer.net]
• IPCS Drops Request to Stop Sprint Wireless Network [bloomberg.com]
• Ministers want to name and shame ISPs [theinquirer.net]
• Qualcomm To Use Skyhook For Hybrid Wi-Fi Positioning [informationweek.com]
• You Only Get One Chance To Screw The Industry [electronicsweekly.com]
• Technology Deathmatch - Apple iPhone 3G vs BlackBerry Storm [Yahoo News UK]
• Nintendo Making Peripherals Impossible To Buy Used [techdirt.com]