comcast

Wikileaks uncovers a treasure trove of diplomatic dish that could disrupt not only the political but social fabric of the world. Online spending finally takes off (again), and Homeland Security confirms it's planning to systematically dismantle the structure of the Internet at the behest of private companies. So, that's awesome. Also, the zombie apocalypse is nigh, led by a phalanx of terrifyingly young mice. --Molly

Comcast subscribers from Boston to Washington, D.C., found themselves without Internet access Sunday night after a major outage affected parts of the East Coast.

Reports first seemed to surface on Twitter last night from Comcast customers tweeting that their Internet service had gone down. Comcast's own customer service Twitter feed, known as Comcastcares, confirmed the outage, initially pointing to an issue in Boston but soon revealing that the problem was more widespread.

Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas told CNET through e-mail that last night Comcast engineers identified a server issue that affected Internet service for customers primarily in the … Read more

Canadian wireless company WiLAN is firing up another round of lawsuits, this time against leading cable companies.

Alleging patent infringement over technology in cable modems, WiLAN said today that it has has launched suits against Comcast, Time Warner, and Charter Communications in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Ottawa-based WiLAN, which patents wireless products, asserts that the cable trio has been violating U.S. patent No. 5,761,602 by marketing and selling cable systems and modems. Issued in 1998, the patent in question covers "hybrid multichannel data transmission system utilizing a broadcast medium," … Read more

Comcast has launched its Xfinity TV iPad and iPhone app in Apple's app store.

The application, which is available for free, allows Comcast customers to browse or search for TV listings from Apple's tablet or smartphone. Once the user finds what they want to watch, they can tap on the show in the app and immediately change the channel of their DVR to that station. If a show isn't on yet, they can also program their DVRs to record the episode or series.

Next month, Comcast plans to make television shows and movies viewable from its application. … Read more

There's been a lot of talk about people canceling their cable TV subscription to stream video on their TVs over the Net, but consumer research firm Nielsen says the number of people actually doing it is still very small.

Cheryl Idell, an executive vice president at Nielsen, told the blog PaidContent earlier this week that many people may be talking about cutting the proverbial cable cord, but few are actually doing it. According to Nielsen data, only 6 percent of broadband households have already stopped using cable in lieu of cheaper Internet-based TV. Idell admitted that consumers may one … Read more

Americans, little by little, are cutting the proverbial cord on cable television. But that doesn't mean they're breaking up with their cable companies.

In addition to controlling most of the paid TV market in the U.S., cable companies are also poised to dominate the broadband market. This means that even when people drop their pricey cable TV packages, they're still likely to pay the cable company for access to the Internet, which is used to deliver the video streams to their TVs. For cable operators, it's a "heads we win; tails we win" … Read more

It's time to start a TV revolution: over-the-air and over-the-top. Join us, won't you? And maybe someone can build the blog for us? In other news, Apple may be trying for a home run where Google struck out, with carrier-independent phone sales. And watch Oompa Loompas build the next Mars lander, live! --Molly

Costs from its pending acquisition of NBC Universal and lower subscriber growth took a bite out of Comcast's third-quarter earnings.

For the quarter ended September 30, the cable company reported net income of $867 million, an 8.2 percent decline from $944 million in the year-ago quarter. Net income per share was 31 cents for the quarter just ended, compared with 33 cents a year ago. Earnings were impacted by the $66 million in total expenses that Comcast was forced to take in relation to its NBCU transaction. But the third-quarter profits were also hit by a 3.5 … Read more

Few film companies are assailing piracy with the vigor of Third World Media.

Third World Media (TMW), a porn studio headquartered north of Los Angeles, filed a lawsuit two weeks ago against 1,568 unnamed individuals, accusing them of using peer-to-peer networks to unlawfully share copies of "Miss Big Ass Brazil #4," records show.

"Each of the defendant's acts of infringement have been willful, intentional, and in disregard of...the rights of plaintiff," TWM's attorneys wrote in their filing of October 4.

The suit came just two weeks after TWM filed a similar complaint against an additional 1,243 … Read more