Broadband plan, Palm dreams, more Facebook woes

By Nancy Weil, IDG News Service |  Networking Add a new comment

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission's national broadband plan captured our attention this week and will undoubtedly continue to do that in the weeks (and months and years) ahead. In other news, Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein says that his company could have given the Droid a run for it's money, only if. And the week ends with reports that Google will announce its intentions regarding business in China on Monday.

1. FCC's broadband plan: $15.5 billion for deployment, Broadband plan: What's in it for businesses and FCC wants 120MHz of spectrum from TV stations: The FCC released its entire 400-page national broadband plan, parts of which the agency has been revealing and trumpeting for weeks to drum up support. As part of the plan, the FCC wants TV stations to give up 120MHz of unused spectrum that would be reallocated to wireless broadband providers. Good luck with that.

2. Palm CEO: We could have been bigger than Droid and Palm prime for acquisition: Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein delivered a handy "what could have been" tale to explain why his company isn't doing so well, even though its most recent earnings report was not as bad as expected.

3. Facebook users targeted in massive spam run: Another entry in the Facebook users beware news category.

4. Malware infected memory cards of 3,000 Vodafone mobiles: The mystery lingers over how malware came to infect the memory cards of HTC Magic smartphones from Vodafone, which is investigating. After the first infected phone was discovered by a Panda Security employee earlier this month, Vodafone said that appeared to be an isolated incident, but that turns out to not be the case.

5. Weak states leave EU open to cyberattack and Estonia defense minister: Cyberattacks will grow: E.U. nations need to work together more closely if they want to defend against future cyberattacks akin to what Estonia faced in 2007, according to a U.K. House of Lords report. Coincidentally, the defense minister of Estonia in an interview this week warned about the likelihood of such future attacks.

6. Fake MacBook Air, big iPhone tablet on show in China: Here's something we'll never see at CES -- a small Chinese gadget design company proudly -- and brazenly -- displayed its fake Apple products at a trade show in China this week.

7. Google, Viacom snarl at each other over YouTube case: Google and Viacom sniped at each other after previously sealed court documents were released in Viacom's 3-year-old lawsuit alleging that Google-owned YouTube violates copyrights with its videos.

8. A quarter of teens have tried hacking: And that's just the percentage that will admit it.

9. New 4G tech may heat up mobile Net neutrality debate: Next generation mobile technology may bring with it network neutrality issues.

10. Google may soon leave China, reports say and Google eyes departure from China on April 10, report says: Exactly what is meant by reports that Google will "leave" China has yet to be explained, but the company is reportedly going to do some explaining about that come Monday.

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