According to Google’s latest transparency report, more than two-thirds of the requests submitted to the company for private user information aren’t backed by warrants. According to the study, various parts of the United States government made over 8,400 requests for nearly 15,000 accounts — significantly more than any other government. The customer data collected ranges from names and IP’s used to create accounts, to time stamps for when Gmail accounts were logged in and out [...]

Mirroring what I’d been hearing in my own recent conversations with ISPs, it appears that the entertainment industry and ISPs have again delayed the launch of their “six strikes” anti-piracy initiative until sometime early next year. In a post at their website the group responsible for overseeing the controversial program (the Center for Copyright Information) blames the delay on Hurricane Sandy, which they insist delayed the testing schedule for numerous ISPs. Leaked AT&T documents had [...]

The wireless market is finally starting to reach its saturation point, with last quarter’s subscriber growth being the slowest in over a decade. According to a new report by Chetan Sharma consulting, last quarter saw the industry add 2.4 million subscribers, the lowest total since wireless telecommunications starting to soar in the nineties. The growth was primarily thanks to the strong postpaid subscriber growth by Verizon, while both T-Mobile and Sprint saw postpaid user declines. [...]

NEW YORK – AT&T announced plans to invest $14 billion over the next three years to significantly expand and enhance its wireless and wireline IP broadband networks, including U-verse and Fiber to Multi-Tenant Business Buildings, to support growing customer demand for high-speed Internet access and new mobile, app and cloud services. The investment plan – Project Velocity IP (VIP) – expands AT&T’s high-potential growth platforms, helping drive continued increases in revenues from existing and new [...]

LAS VEGAS, NV – Allied Telesis Inc., a global provider of secure IP/Ethernet switching solutions and deployer of IP triple-play networks, has launched new outdoor and indoor home networking Layer 2/Layer 3 gateways. With the adoption of multiscreen television and whole-home DVR, the access network infrastructure needs to support active nonblocking GigE to the home. The new Allied Telesis line of whole-home networking 1 Gbps gateways offers fully integrated, advanced multimedia L2/L3 networking for VoIP, [...]

AT&T has laid bare their plan with the FCC to hang up on the carrier’s landline networks so they can focus on more profitable wireless services. In a recent filing with the FCC (pdf), AT&T outlines their plans to “clear away the regulatory underbrush” governing the company’s older landline and DSL networks. Companies like Verizon and AT&T are hanging up on DSL and landline customers, happily letting them leave for cable so that the incumbents [...]

Several of the mass copyright lawsuit outfits (like the U.S. Copyright Group) have been claiming for some time now that simply having an open Wi-Fi hotspot is “negligence” and a crime. In short, companies often simply have an IP address to go by when hunting copyright violators, and when they try to sue an individual who points out they had an open Wi-Fi network, the companies rather lazily have tried to argue that simply leaving [...]

Stacey Higginbotham over at GigaOM directs our attention to a new study from Telegeography showing that IP transit prices continue to plummet. For example, the median monthly lease price for a full GigE port in London dropped 57% over the last year to $3.13 per Mbps, while in New York, the comparable service saw a 50% price decline to $3.50 per Mbps during the last year. While the firm notes that there remain some disparity [...]

While companies like Comcast have been aggressive in getting IPv6 deployed, AT&T has been somewhat quiet on the matter. That was until recently, when the company hinted that their IPv6 plans involve deploying carrier grad NAT as an IPv6 migration attempt. U-Verse users were recently told that as AT&T deploys carrier grade NAT, they’ll need to change their subnet and pony up $15 a month for a public IP address to keep everything working correctly. [...]

AT&T is handling the migration toward IPv6 by — shuffling U-Verse users around their IPv4 addresses? Users in our AT&T forum note that the telco has contacted many of them requesting that they make changes to their subnet. According to AT&T, the company is requesting that users who have configured their U-Verse gateway to use the 10.0.0.1 – 10.255.255.255 IP range need to change to an alternative IP range by July 6. Those who don’t, [...]