Verizon Communications said Tuesday it has asked the Federal Communications Commission to step into an ongoing battle with Cablevision Systems over the cable operator's refusal to negotiate with Verizon for carriage of three Cablevision-owned regional sports channels on Verizon's new video service.

Link By: Jay Sherman, TV Week via Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- CBS Corp. said on Monday it has landed a new distribution agreement with Verizon Communications Inc., in what is seen as a milestone deal for the TV broadcaster to charge fees for retransmitting local channels.

CBS declined to disclose any financial terms, but a source familiar with discussions said the deal fulfills the company's controversial promise to charge television service providers for retransmitting its broadcast signal in markets where CBS owns a TV station.

Link by Reuters via Yahoo! News

The American Association of Retired Persons, better known as the AARP, may be more famous for its lobbying muscle on pension plans and Medicare, but now it's taking up a new platform: keeping the Internet free and open for the age 50-plus set.

The 35 million member group is among a growing list of companies and organizations that signed a new letter Thursday urging senators to require Net neutrality principles by law. Also called network neutrality, it's the idea that the companies that own the broadband pipes should not be able to configure their networks in a way that plays favorites--allowing them, for example, to transmit their own services at faster speeds, or to charge Net content and application companies a fee for similar fast delivery.

Link By: Anne Broache, CNET News.com

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Richard Notebaert, CEO of Qwest Communications, says it's only fair to offer some companies a "competitive edge" in Internet service, for the right price.

Addressing attendees at the Voice on the Net conference at the San Jose Convention Center on Wednesday, Notebaert also said that he opposes blocking traffic on his company's network. But for the first time publicly he said he believes that network operators should have the option to charge content providers, such as Google or Amazon, higher rates for providing premium service over the Qwest network.

"I don't think we ought to block anything on our network, and we won't," he said. "Net neutrality really means that there should be no impediment to traffic. Never has it been intended to mean that companies can't reach commercial agreements with each other to enhance services." Notebaert at VON

Link By: Marguerite Reardon, CNET News.com

(Revised Tuesday, March 14) While House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, and key committee Democrats have agreed in principle on telecommunications overhaul legislation, committee action on the measure -- originally slated for later this week -- is now not expected until the end of March, according to congressional and industry sources.

Link By: Drew Clark, National Journal Telecom Update

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Speculation that the two biggest phone companies in the country, AT&T and Verizon Communications, are planning to create a tiered Internet system that would require big bandwidth hogs like Google or Yahoo to pay more for their access has become a hot-button issue in the tech industry.

Increasingly, it's also an issue on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers are developing rules to maintain so-called Net neutrality--also called network neutrality--and prevent the emergence of a tiered system.

Link By: Marguerite Reardon, CNET News.com

For now, the Internet is a superhighway open to all. Information is delivered quickly via phone lines and cable to homes and businesses worldwide. But for online businesses, the express-lane ride may be over. As the Internet matures, new bandwidth-gobbling online television channels and phone services may soon be charged to access the superhighway. That could turn the Internet of tomorrow into a toll road, with those who can't pay a premium shunted into the slow lane.

Grass-roots consumer groups and big corporations like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google, whose businesses are based on a "free" Internet, say that ideas being floated to make producers of online content pay a premium for fast delivery could ruin the Web.

Link By: Gregory M. Lamb, Christian Science Monitor

TOKYO -- Sony will put off the release of its much awaited PlayStation 3 console until November from its planned spring debut because of delays in finalizing its next-generation optical disc technology, the company said Wednesda

Ken Kutaragi, the head Sony's video games division, made the announcement at a hastily called news conference after reports of the delay surfaced in the business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun and other papers.

Kutaragi said Sony is still trying to finalize the copyright protection technology and other standards for the Blu-ray DVD disc, the format for PlayStation 3, and next-generation video for the company's electronics gadgets in the works.

Link By: Yuri Kageyama, AP via Yahoo! News

... unless Congress turns the principles behind Internet neutrality into law -- as Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has proposed -- a large swath of the Internet phone industry could be squeezed out of existence. Other promising technologies could suffer the same fate, and the power of the Internet to foster innovation, economic growth and job creation could be forever damaged.

Internet neutrality is the notion that Internet users should have unrestricted access to all content and services available on the Internet. Conversely, any application provider should have access to the Net and all of its users. Specifically, Net neutrality rules would prevent the cable and telephone companies, which largely control Internet access in America, from acting as gatekeepers and deciding what content and services their customers get to use.

Link San Jose Mercury News

It's official: Citywide Wi-Fi in the United States just got boring.

Well, mainstream then.

Late last month, Earthlink teamed up with Google in a plan to blanket San Francisco with Wi-Fi. Then came word--from internal documents, since confirmed, from cable trade group CableLabs--that the cable industry is planning its own wide-area wireless network. Dubbed CableRoam, the scheme will feature citywide Wi-Fi among other technologies.

Link Red Herring