Are usage based billing and data caps going to become the standard for cable and broadband operators in the United States as a way to combat services such as Netflix, Hulu and Roku? One analyst familiar with the sector says that it is inevitable, though who is going to jump in first remains a mystery. Craig Moffett, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York predicts that at least one service provider will make a move towards this in 2012.

GamePolitics is going dark today in observance of Thanksgiving and boy howdy do gamers like us have oodles to be thankful for this year.  Fall 2011 is jam-packed with more awesome video games than most will ever have the time (or money) to play.  See the bottom of Leland Yee’s recent “Don’t buy these video games” press release to parents for a few good suggestions.

The Federal Communication Commission’s Net Neutrality rules are officially in effect. The new rules for ISP's in the United States became official on Sunday - nearly 11 months after the Federal Communications Commission voted to adopt them in December of last year. The Open Internet Order requires wireless and landline broadband providers to make certain disclosures to consumers about the way they manage traffic on the Internet from customers and comply with a number of other rules that are intended to preserve the openness of the Internet.

According to a new report on Net Neutrality from Sweden users of mobile broadband services will be sad to hear that not all of their traffic is being treated fairly. While most internet traffic is left unhindered, a report from the organization responsible for Sweden’s .SE national domain reveals that some operators have been systematically slowing down BitTorrent transfers, while others are blocking them altogether.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's (R-Texas) effort in the Senate to kill the FCC's net neutrality rules has failed. The Senate voted, 46-52, against moving forward with a resolution that would have overturned federal regulations enacted in 2010 that govern anti-competitive behavior online.

"It's time to push back" against federal agencies that are overreaching their authority and enacting burdensome regulations, she argued before the Senate voted on a motion to proceed.

While he seems to be all alone in Washington, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says that he will fight to the bitter end against the PROTECT IP Act, a controversial online copyright bill backed by Hollywood movie studios, the Chamber of Commerce, pharmaceutical makers and a group of 40 senators. Wyden feels so strongly that the bill is bad news for Americans that he has promised to filibuster the PROTECT IP Act if it reaches the Senate floor without serious changes by the end of the year.

Minnesota Senator Al Franken is leading the charge in defending the FCC's Net Neutrality rules against a Republican-led attempt to repeal the law passed by in late 2010. In the video lashing out against the repeal attempt, Franken called it a "partisan resolution" that needs to be stopped in its tracks.

The Federal Communications Commission revealed that - as part of its Connect to Compete initiative - it will bring low-cost broadband Internet and computers to any family that has at least one child in school that qualifies for the national school lunch program. The federal agency has teamed up with cable operators around the country as well as Redemtech Inc. and Microsoft for low-cost laptops. The broadband side of the program aims to serve around 25 million Americans at a cost of around $4 billion annually. Families can enjoy the discounted rate of $9.95 per month for two years.

Comcast and CenturyLink have failed to create a repeat of their 2009 victory in the city of Longmont, Colorado. The city wanted to use its own broadband infrastructure instead of relying on ISP's like Comcast and CenturyLink, but state law required that a referendum be passed by the town's citizens in order to use it. In 2009 broadband providers Comcast and CenturyLink spent an obscene amount of money to convince residents of the town that it was a bad idea. The plan worked and citizens rejected it by 56 percent of the vote.

The Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO), a group dedicated to fighting for Internet openness in Canada, announced today that it has submitted its final response to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission's (CRTC) request for information. The CGO has waged war against ISP Rogers for "discriminating against online applications—namely World of Warcraft and Call of Duty Black Ops—using illegitimate Internet traffic management practices."

The Federal Communications Commission and the nation's wireless carriers have hammered out an agreement that will have wireless operators notifying customers when they are nearing their monthly limits on usage for voice, text, or data services. The FCC estimates that tens of millions of wireless phone subscribers are hit with overage charges each year; their data is based on their own studies on the issue, as well as data from the Government Accountability Office and private research firms.

This week Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced Connect to Compete, a new initiative that aims to increase broadband adoption and digital literacy training in disadvantaged communities throughout the United States. The initiative taps into existing FCC programs, and partnerships with nonprofits and the private sector. A complete overview, as detailed by the FCC, can be found here.

The Federal Communications Commission has been eyeballing a fund traditionally earmarked for rural phone service as a way to fund rural broadband. Most Americans that have a phone pay to fund this rural telephone program through the Universal Service Fund, or USF. When you pay your bill you pay a small stipend into this fund, which the government then uses (or is at least supposed to) towards building phone systems in wildly rural areas.

The third largest wireless carrier in the United States is betting on the iPhone 5 in a big way. Sprint Nextel Corp. will pay Apple a whopping $20 billion dollars to give its customers access to iPhone 5, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company's top executive told Sprint's board that he expects to lose money on the deal until sometime in 2014.

Last week advocacy group Free Press filed a lawsuit in federal court to block the recently ratified Net Neutrality rules approved by the FCC late last year. On Friday afternoon Verizon joined the fray. While both groups are on opposite ends of the spectrum (Verizon doesn't want any rules, while Free Press and groups like them think the rules aren't tough enough) when it comes to their reason for going to court, they share an interest in seeing the law struck down by the courts.

Cable operator Cablevision is the latest company to add a mandatory arbitration clause to the fine print of their terms of service. Broadband Reports confirmed with Cablevision that the new TOS includes arbitration language, which the publication describes as "cookie cutter" because it prohibits users from having a jury trial or participating in a class action lawsuit against the company.

Last week OnLive launched in the United Kingdom, and though it may have had a hiccup here and there when it launched, the service mostly went off without a hitch. But customers of ISP TalkTalk noticed that they were having a lot of trouble connecting with the service during peak evening hours - according to a TorrentFreak report. At first customers thought this was on OnLive's end, but a little bit of digging found that TalkTalk had been throttling connections because the OnLive data traffic was being misread as P2P file-sharing traffic.

Here's a news story we saw coming. It seems that some of the biggest net neutrality advocates in the country have decided to file a lawsuit against the rules ratified by the Federal Communications Commission. When the FCC finally issued the finished version of it network neutrality rules and announced they would go into effect at the end of November, lawsuits against the policy where waiting in the wings such as those that were thrown out earlier in the year by Verizon and Metro PCS.

A new law being introduced by Italian politicians wants to crack down on citizens who are even accused of copyright infringement. The draft of the law would require ISPs to "blacklist" any citizens suspected of copyright, patent or trademark infringement. If ISPs are not compliant with the law, they could be held liable under civil law. Everybody gets a spanking equally under the law apparently.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller is taking aim at critics of the Federal Communications Commission's net-neutrality rules that were published on Friday afternoon in the Federal Register.

"Americans want the Internet to stay free and open," Rockefeller said. "After a long, deliberative process, the FCC came up with balanced rules that promote transparency and prohibit discrimination. I am disappointed that my colleagues want to use a legislative short cut to unravel these rules."

Service provider Verizon has asked the U.S. courts to toss out Apple's patent lawsuit against Samsung, saying that it would not be in the best interest of the public to continue the case. Apple is suing Samsung for four phone models that it claims infringe on its patents: the Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G, and Droid Charge smartphones, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet.

Verizon has filed an amicus curiae brief (or "friend of the court"), which allows third parties to weigh in on cases. It's commonly used is Supreme Court cases - see Brown v. EMA.

The Federal Communications Commission has filed its finalized the open Internet (net neutrality) rules it voted on late last year. The rules now go to the Federal Register, who will publish them tomorrow and make them official. The rules go into effect on November 20, but chances are they will be put on hold as two lawsuits by prominent service providers will be relaunched. Both Verizon and MetroPCS had taken their lawsuits to the federal courts earlier this year but both were tossed out because the rules hadn't been finalized.

The Canadian government’s telecommunications regulator has had enough of Internet service provider Rogers Communications throttling online game connections. The ISP tried to provide a reason but the government seems unsatisfied with the answer. The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission has given the company until September 27 to put together a plan to deal with the problem of game throttling.

According to The Hill U.S. House Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) is urging the FCC to cool its jets. The congressman wrote to Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski, asking his agency to hold off on completing their review of AT&T's proposed T-Mobile acquisition until a federal court rules on the Justice Department's lawsuit to block the deal.

Consumer Advocacy group Public Knowledge wants to show internet users what happens when internet service providers cap data with a new web site that it plans to launch soon, according to the National Journal. Launching later this month, this new campaign hopes to bring more awareness to consumers about the serious issue of data capping with a new website that serves up examples of the impact in an interactive and visually pleasing way.

According to a Bloomberg report, Sprint will offer the iPhone next month with unlimited data service plans, according to people "familiar with the matter." The country's third-largest carrier (behind AT&T and Verizon) will begin selling the next version of the iPhone, iPhone 5 in mid-October. If the sources cited are correct, Sprint would be the only company in the country to offer iPhone with an unlimited data service for a flat fee. Naturally this would certainly help them draw customers from AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Bloomberg reports that the U.S. Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to block AT&T Inc.’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of rival T-Mobile USA Inc. In its filing today in Federal Court the government said that the deal would "substantially lessen competition" in the wireless market. The government is seeking a declaration that AT&T’s takeover of T-Mobile (owned by Deutsche Telekom AG, or DTE), would violate U.S. antitrust law.

Today the Federal Communications Commission restarted its "shot clock" for the AT&T–T-Mobile merger review. The announcement follows AT&T’s fourth and allegedly final revision of the economic models it is using to make its case for the T-Mobile acquisition.

Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner issued a short statement today with its thoughts on the latest move by the FCC:

Clearwire, the conglomerate behind WiMax - broadband wifi technology - which has a majority ownership from Sprint Nextel, added 1.5 million new customers last quarter. This, following a well-received advertising campaign featuring their CEO, Dan Hesse, in which the brand points out that they alone offer consumers unlimited plans and no caps, unlike rivals Verizon, AT&T/T-Mobile, through their Simply Everything plan.

A T-Mobile employee is calling the proposed merger between AT&T and his company "like a car-jacking," referring to a statement on the company's private network that attempts to clarify to employees that a sale to AT&T should be thought of as an "acquisition" as opposed to a "merger." The employee shared his thoughts with SeattlePI.com.