It's July 4th weekend, so light your fireworks in the comment section below. Everyone here at Broadband Reports wishes you a fantastic holiday.

• BT’s pilot of high-speed broadband in two locations in the UK starts on Monday. [itpro.co.uk]
• The carrier coup must be stopped [cio.de]
• Bell Canada Acquires Virgin Mobile [teleclick.ca]
• iPhone hacker reveals SMS vulnerability [scmagazineus.com]
• FCC.gov: What a WASTE [heritage.org]
• Rumoured T-Mobile sale could turn into bidding war [broadbandgenie.co.uk]
• Psystar emerges from Chapter 11; New Mac clone out [theinquirer.net]
• Firefox 3.5 patch coming soon as Mozilla cranks up downloads [theregister.co.uk]

The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is "proceeding with a Bush-era plan" that would use the NSA to more closely inspect the traffic traveling between government networks and the private-sector. According to the report, the aim of the classified "Einstein 3" project is to better protect the government from external cyber-threats, particularly those originating at private-sector contracted firms. AT&T was chosen by the Bush Administration to help participate in the project, and the trial has seen delays as AT&T "is seeking legal assurance that it will not be sued for participating in the pilot program." Meanwhile, the Salt Lake Tribune reports on a new $2 billion NSA data center in Utah.

Canadian cable operator Cogeco was supposed to start billing customers in June after they implemented a new metered billing model. However, as we noted last week, many users found Cogeco's meters didn't accurately reflect usage. Customers have complained that Cogeco's daily usage portal seems broken, and that automatic warning e-mail alerts don't match the portal. Cogeco reached out to us to note that they're working on the problems, while at the same time downplaying the breadth of the issues.

Illustrating the continued fragility of the modern Internet, threads in both the Zen Cart and Web Hosting Talk forums indicate that one of the country's largest credit card authorization networks has gone completely offline. From what we can gather, a "perfect storm" was created by the combination of a fire in their primary Seattle data center and the July 4 weekend holiday -- resulting the company going completely dark for more than five hours and counting.

Stop The Cap directs our attention to a story in the New Zealand Herald about the discontinuation of an online video service in New Zealand called Sky Online. The $5 a month "all you can eat" video service was suspended after users kept going over their monthly download quotas, and were being kicked back to dial-up speeds by their ISP. Amusingly, one of Sky's online video competitors, TVNZ doesn't complain -- since TVNZ's relationship with state-owned ISP Orcon allows Orcon users to download video without impacting their data caps. Sky's now in the position of begging local ISPs to exclude them from their data caps -- putting Orcon in the position of determining who gets to be competitive -- and who doesn't.

Clearwire needs to maximize the limited deployment funds they have -- so they've focused their deployments on major cities. But does the broadband upstart plan to explore government stimulus to reach less-serviced areas? Unclear, says the magic telecom eight ball. "We remain focused on completing our national rollout of 80 markets over the next 18 months, and our existing build plan isn't predicated on our ability to secure this funding," the carrier tells Unstrung. With only nine markets planned for 2009 (only three of which are currently live), that means Clearwire needs to seriously pick up the pace in 2010.

Before there was the ugly Verizon Fairpoint kerfuffle, there was Hawaii Telcom, who, like Fairpoint, bit off more they could chew when they acquired DSL and landline networks Verizon didn't feel were worth upgrading. Like Fairpoint, when Verizon divested those networks in Hawaii, Hawaii Telcom struggled under the load and their executives repeatedly issued bubbly statements insisting that everything was fine. Unlike Fairpoint (for now), Hawaii Telcom filed for bankruptcy last December. If you're interested in owning the carrier, bidding for the operator opened this week.

• Sprint says it will be first to launch 3G femtocell technology [mobileburn.com]
• Clearwire 'Undecided' on Stimulus Bid [unstrung.com]
• Disruptive technologies are giving fixed telcos a headache [ovum.com]
• BT: Broadband tax will not cover fiber rollout [itpro.co.uk]
• FCC Meeting Stresses Urgency of Broadband Rollout [multichannel.com]
• New Jersey Could Ban Those Distracting Manual GPS Devices in Cars [gpsworld.com]
• US Music Trade Association Wants More Money from Ringtone Sales [cellular-news.com]
• iPod touch 3G with camera revealed by new case? [slashgear.com]

• Broadband industry group say U.S. rules go too far [yahoo.com]
• Mobile operators question net snoop plan [theregister.co.uk]
• Space Data maps broadband signals from altitude [Phoenix Business Journal]
• The Death of Exclusivity? [xchangemag.com]
• FCC To Seek More Public Input on Broadband Plan [multichannel.com]
• Novarum tests 3G in 13 US cities [muniwireless.com]
• Dish Wins Stay From Appeals Court On DVR Order [multichannel.com]
• Apple Admits iPhone Overheating Issues -- Sort of [networkworld.com]

Just like AT&T did a few weeks ago, the folks at the Verizon policy blog say they've refined and clarified the company's privacy policy, creating one "easy to read" privacy policy that applies across all Verizon services. "We've tried to make our policy more customer friendly," says Verizon's Chief Privacy Officer, Kathy Zanowic, who adds the carrier believes consumer trust is an "essential" to their business and an "important responsibility." Why all this touchy-feely privacy love by Verizon and AT&T? The carriers are worried that new Democratic leadership at the FTC and FCC may craft new privacy laws, so they're trying to pre-empt them by illustrating how they're model citizens when it comes to consumer privacy.

As we recently noted, Minnesota mom Jammie Thomas was recently found guilty of copyright infringement for sharing songs via P2P, and was fined $1.9 million dollars ($80,000 per song). Quickly after the verdict, the Electronic Frontier Foundation questioned whether the extremely high damages were constitutional, citing past instances where the Supreme Court ruled against disproportionate damage awards intended to "send a message." Not too surprisingly, Thomas, who obviously can't pay the award, says she's going to appeal the ruling on constitutional grounds.

Mac Daily News has posted a leaked memo from AT&T proclaiming that the iPhone 3GS generated the best ever sales day for the company. More interesting perhaps is this little nugget: on the day Michael Jackson died, AT&T set a high SMS messaging record with 65,000 text messages sent per second.

For years the baby bells have been trying to slow (or ignore) the death of the landline by forcing DSL customers to bundle one, whether they wanted it or not. That's why it's kind of refreshing to see this Verizon ad (pdf), forwarded to us by a reader, that actually encourages customers to drop their landline.

In an article discussing the wireless handset market, CNET trots out this interesting stat: Unlocked phones comprise 80% of the market in Asia, and 70% in Europe. In the United States? Just 5% of handsets are unlocked.

While yesterday's news that the Pirate Bay is being sold has angered the site's fan base, more interesting perhaps is the insider trading allegations that plague the transaction. "Equity marketplace Aktietorget shut down the trading of GGF stock after it spotted unusually large trading volumes leading to a rapidly increasing stock price, notably in the absence of any new information to explain the sudden interest in the company," notes Torrent Freak. Also of note is that the company buying the website wants to monetize P2P by paying people to seed pirated files. Does anyone think that's a realistic goal?

New FTC boss Jon Leibowitz has promised that one thing he'll be tough on is consumer privacy. To prevent government from passing tough consumer protection laws (particularly ones that force marketing to be "opt in"), the marketing, advertising and telecom industries recently joined forces to come up with a "self-regulation" plan that has them adhering to a set of privacy best practices created by the industry. Companies like Verizon, who's interested in behavioral advertising, have stated that "public shame" will keep them honest about privacy. The new guidelines, pushed by organizations representing more than 5,000 companies, will be reviewed by Congress today, but as you might expect, consumer advocates think the guidelines are rather flimsy.

• US agencies require net neutrality with broadband grants [networkworld.com]
• RIAA Wins Layup Against Usenet.com [techdirt.com]
• Sprint Text Messaging Tax Suit Dropped [cellular-news.com]
• Zer01 goes nationwide with unlimited voice, data service [fiercewireless.com]
• The Pirate Bay's New Owners: Service Providers Will Pay Us, We'll Pay Users [techdirt.com]
• China's web filtering mandate is delayed [theinquirer.net]
• Torrentreactor breach serves potent exploit cocktail [theregister.co.uk]
• iPhone 3.1 code goes beta [theregister.co.uk]

Before there was the Internet there was Compuserve, which was founded in 1969 and by 1979 was among the first commercially successful online & e-mail services (see 1991 advertisement), before being acquired by AOL in 1998 and ultimately eclipsed by the modern broadband-fueled Internet. Yesterday Compuserve Classic officially ended its life as an ISP service, an important footnote for those who've had Compuserve e-mail addresses for nearly a generation. While the Compuserve Classic forums and service died yesterday -- the largely irrelevant Compuserve 2000 AOL sub-brand lives on if you'd like to retain your e-mail address for geek cred or just pine wistfully for online's yesteryear.

Uncle Sam today announced the rules governing the first of three rounds in the government's $7.2 billion broadband economic stimulus package, all 121 pages of which are now available if you're a non-profit or municipal entity planning on applying, or if you just like wordy government documents. The NTIA will dole out $4.5 billion in government funds to help deliver broadband (feebly defined as 768kbps downstream and 200kbps upstream) into under or unserved areas.