Internet service

A lawmaker is bringing the issue of net neutrality back into the spotlight. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) plans to introduce a bill in January that would stop Internet service providers from blocking and managing certain Internet content.

IBM has been tapped by International Broadband Electric Communications to bring broadband access to rural areas. In a deal worth nearly $10 million, Big Blue will team up with IBEC to install Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) networks at electric cooperatives throughout the Eastern United States, the companies said Wednesday. Electric co-ops are private, independent electric utilities owned by the members they serve.

AT&T has become the latest Internet service provider to test limits on bandwidth usage, with a trial this month of caps for subscribers in Reno, Nevada.

The company -- the largest Internet service provider in the United States -- said about five percent of subscribers use about 50 percent of capacity.

$1 Per Gigabyte

Apple has gotten to the core of the problems plaguing the company's MobileMe Internet service since its July launch, and has resolved several technical glitches.

Subscribers to MobileMe have been dealing with problems since the service launched and, in an e-mail to employees just weeks after the launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs admitted the company prematurely released the service. What MobileMe is supposed to do is keep e-mail, contacts and calendars up to date across several devices, including an iPhone, iPod touch, Mac and PC. Instead, it has been a mobile mess.

Internet users in the Northeast who have a need for speed will soon be able to get their fix from Comcast. The cable and Internet service provider said it will soon roll out its Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification, or DOCSIS 3.0, making customers' Internet speeds faster.

Comcast's service will be up and running in the next few weeks, according to the company, and will be available to millions of residential homes and businesses in parts of New England, including Boston and southern New Hampshire, plus Philadelphia and New Jersey.

'Just the Beginning'

I've never made a secret of my lack of interest in Google's Gmail service, even though I've made extensive use of the Internet giant's Docs, Groups and search services.

But now that an e-mail account I have with my Internet service provider, DSL Extreme, has been moved from the company's own servers onto Google's Gmail system, I've seen the light.

Along with my home broadband service, DSL Extreme (https: www.dslextreme.com) gives me a whole bunch of e-mail accounts -- 10, I think.

When Richard Tallent moved to a new home in Beaumont, Texas, he had one worry on his mind: signing up for Internet service as soon as possible. Time Warner Cable, the local provider, had imposed a 5-gigabyte usage limit for its new customers.

Tallent, a programmer and photographer who frequently uploads large photographs, slipped in under the deadline with two days to spare. If he had not, he would have had to pay $1 for every extra gigabyte he used each month.

Adobe Systems chief executive Shantanu Narayen wants to make it easier for people to watch online videos, play games and use other sophisticated Internet applications on a variety of cell phones and other mobile devices.

And he'd be extremely happy if they were doing that with the help of Adobe's software. Narayen stressed the need for industry collaboration to create a better mobile Web experience in a keynote speech Thursday at the Wireless IT and Entertainment trade show in San Francisco, sponsored by the wireless industry association known as CTIA.

Comcast Corp. said Tuesday that its investment in a joint venture to offer mobile Internet access to subscribers could be finalized by the end of the year.

Steve Burke, president of Philadelphia-based Comcast, said the new service would let cable companies offer "wireless data speeds that Verizon and AT&T can't match."

Comcast, the nation's largest cable TV operator, in May joined Time Warner Cable Inc., Intel Corp., Google Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp., Clearwire Corp. and other partners to form a $14.55 billion communications company that will offer high-speed mobile Internet access.

Comcast fired back at the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday in its long-running duel with the agency. The cable-TV and Internet service provider filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

The filing is the result of a FCC hearing last month in which Comcast was sanctioned for throttling back the broadband speed of customers using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing application. The FCC ordered Comcast to provide plans for equitably managing its bandwidth and to make its network-management policies public.

Comcast's View