Philadelphia - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), the nation's largest cable TV operator and provider of high-speed Internet to 14.1 million subscribers, is considering placing a 250GB monthly cap on the amount of bandwidth that subscribers may use for downloading content, a source from the company tells BroadbandReports.com. For those who exceed the limit, Comcast would reportedly charge $15 for each 10GB they use over their allotment; 250GB is roughly equivalent to 6,000 songs, or 250 movies.

Philadelphia - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), the nation's largest cable TV company and a provider of high-speed Internet to 13.2 million subscribers, on Tuesday announced that it will lead an industry-wide effort to create a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities," which would "clarify what choices and controls consumers should have when using P2P applications as well as what processes and practices ISPs should use to manage P2P applications running on their networks." The company said it partnered with Pando Networks, a provider of peer-to-peer based content delivery network services, on the initiative, and will work with the company to help migrate to a protocol-agnostic network management technique by the end of the year.

Minneapolis, Minn. - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), the nation's largest cable TV provider, which also counts 13.2 million broadband customers, on Thursday launched a new high-speed Internet service that offers up to 50 Mbps downloads and 5 Mbps uploads -- fast enough to download an HD movie in about ten minutes.

Philadelphia - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), currently the subject of an FCC probe and target of a lawsuit related to its practice of throttling peer-to-peer traffic, announced on Thursday a collaboration with peer-to-peer software firm BitTorrent, to address issues with network traffic management. One result of the talks is that Comcast has agreed to migrate to a "protocol agnostic" network management system -- which would not single out BitTorrent, as its current system does -- by the end of 2008.

Reston, Va. - Needing at least $3 billion to roll out its nationwide high speed WiMax network, Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) and partner Clearwire are now in talks with cable giant Comcast (NASD: CMCSA) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Philadelphia - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), the nation's largest cable TV provider, said on Wednesday that its On Demand service has now served up more than 7 billion video-on-demand views, and 1 billion viewing hours since 2003. The service offers a library of over 10,000 titles per month. "The numbers speak for themselves...each month our customers watch roughly 40 million movies On Demand," said Derek Harrar, SVP and general manager of video services for Comcast.

New York - The New York attorney general's office has subpoenaed broadband provider Comcast (NASD: CMCSA) for information on its practice of interfering with the file-sharing traffic of some subscribers, according to published reports. Comcast, which has admitted to the practice but says it is necessary to ensure all Internet traffic flows smoothly, told the Associated Press that it is cooperating with the office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Los Angeles - Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC has announced plans to make its primetime TV series available for free viewing on cable, satellite and telco TV video-on-demand services, with the stipulation that viewers will not be able to fast-forward through commercials.

Cambridge, Mass. - The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) signaled at a public hearing yesterday at Harvard Law School that the agency is prepared to act, if it finds that Internet service providers are discriminating against certain network traffic, such as file-sharing. FCC chairman Kevin Martin said in a prepared statement that "network operators can take reasonable steps to manage traffic, but they cannot arbitrarily block access," adding that "the commission is ready, willing and able to step in if necessary to correct any practices that are ongoing today."

DMW’s CEO & Publisher provides a wrap-up of the top stories of the week. Who’s hot, who’s not and what’s the industry buzz?

The week started with a bang on news that Yahoo Inc’s (NSDQ: YHOO) board rejected Microsoft Corp.’s (NSDQ: MSFT) unsolicited $44.6 billion offer for the company.

Washington - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it will hold a public hearing later this month on broadband network management practices, in the wake of an admission from Comcast (NASD: CMCSA) that it actively interferes with the peer-to-peer application usage of some of its customers. Responding to an FCC inquiry, which came after investigations by independent researchers and the Associated Press found that Comcast was throttling the BitTorrent uploads of some users, the company conceded in a filing with the FCC that it "manages the use of certain P2P protocols in a minimally intrusive way, and only when necessary, based on purely objective criteria."

DMW’s CEO & Publisher provides a wrap-up of the top stories of the week. Who’s hot, who’s not and what’s the industry buzz?

There was no shortage of news for the week of Jan. 21-25. The biggest story: The Federal Reserve lowered the benchmark federal funds rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 3.5%, its lowest level since September 2005, but the Fed’s actions couldn’t stop an already shaky stock market from continuing its downward spiral. After a sharp mid-week increase on news of the rate cut, the DMW100 ended slightly lower on the week.

New York - The Nielsen Company this announced the launch of a new video-on-demand audience measurement service, with Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), the nation's largest cable TV provider, signing on as the first data provider and customer of the service. Nielsen On Demand Reporting & Analytics (NORA) will aggregate and anonymously report on video-on-demand usage, based on real-time transactions collected at the set-top box level.

New York - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), the nation's largest cable TV provider, will this week finally begin offering TiVo's (NASD: TIVO) digital video recorder interface to subscribers, initially in the Boston area, USA Today reports. The deployment is the first to utilize new Tru2way technology, which allows greater interoperability between consumer electronics and cable systems, and will feature TiVo's interface on Motorola-made set-top boxes. The offering will not include TiVo features like access to media on home computers, or transfer of recorded shows to laptops or mobile devices. Comcast told USA Today that it plans to roll out to additional markets later this year; its partnership with TiVo runs through 2014.

Las Vegas - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will investigate charges that broadband and cable TV provider Comcast (NASD: CMCSA) is actively interfering with the accounts of certain subscribers who engage in file-sharing, the Associated Press reports. FCC chairman Kevin J. Martin confirmed the investigation during a speaking appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), the nation's largest cable TV provider, on Tuesday announced plans to launch Wideband, a high-speed download service that promises to deliver full HD movie downloads in just four minutes. "Wideband takes four channels and bonds them together and will enable speeds to go up from 12-16 megabits a second to over 100 megabits a second," Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told Reuters. "If it's as successful as we plan we'll roll it out to tens of millions of home shortly thereafter."

Las Vegas - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), the nation's largest cable TV provider, announced on Monday that it has partnered with electronics maker Panasonic, part of Japan's Matsushita (NYSE: MC), to develop a portable digital video recorder (DVR) and DVD player that can record programming from both Comcast and other cable TV providers. The AnyPlay device sports an 8.5-inch display, features 60 hours of recording capacity, and is currently slated for release in early 2009.

After worldwide box office sales of almost $3 billion for the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, it’s unthinkable that anyone other than Peter Jackson, director of the films, could be involved in a project for The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien's original adventures in Middle Earth. But after a spat between Jackson and New Line Cinema threatened to derail the film, AP reports the Kiwi filmmaker has agreed to executive produce The Hobbit, with a director yet to be named.

Los Angeles - Apple (NASD: AAPL), AT&T (NYSE: T), Skype (NASD: EBAY) and cable TV operators including Comcast (NASD: CMCSA) and Cablevision have been sued for patent infringement by Klausner Technologies, over patents that cover certain attributes of voicemail that give users visual notification of incoming messages, and allow selective retrieval of messages.

San Francisco - Following reports that broadband providers Comcast (NASD: CMCSA) and Cox have been interfering with their subscribers' peer-to-peer traffic, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Wednesday released tools for Internet users that can be used to test for "packet forgery" or other ISP interference on their connections. "Comcast is discriminating among different kinds of Internet traffic based on the protocols being used by its customers," said EFF senior intellectual property attorney Fred von Lohmann. "When confronted, Comcast has been evasive and misleading in its responses, so we decided to start gathering the facts ourselves."