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The typical real-time Internet connection speed in the United States is a mortifying 2.35 megabits per second, so it’s particularly galling to hear that Korea, which already offers its citizens broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps, is planning to introduce 1Gbps service by 2012.

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Tenacious guy, that Kevin Martin. The December meeting at which the Federal Communications Commission was to vote on his free wireless broadband plan has been canceled. And the plan itself is, by his own admission, dead in the water; yet the FCC chairman continues to push it forward.

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Ironic, isn’t it, that Google, one of Net neutrality’s staunchest advocates, has been approaching major cable and phone companies with a proposal that appears to violate the very tenets of that principle? How could a company that has argued tirelessly that all Internet traffic should be treated equally, suddenly reverse course and seek preferential treatment for its own traffic?
Short answer: it didn’t.

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Over the objections of television broadcasters, theater producers and Dolly Parton, the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday approved a plan to open up unused frequencies between television channels–known as “white spaces”–for a national broadband network. This 300MHz to 400MHz range of unused spectrum lies between channels 2 to 51 on analog television sets and is perfect for offering wireless broadband services because it’s able to carry signals long distances and easily penetrate trees and walls. And while critics argue that using them in this way might interfere with TV signals or, heaven forbid, the wireless microphones in Dolly Parton’s Broadway production of “9 to 5,” the FCC felt such concerns to be overblown and ruled the country would be better served if the spectrum were opened up for free public use.

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The Federal Communications Commission has concluded that a free national broadband network established in the so-called “white spaces” of the AWS-3 band would not cause major interference with other services, paving the way for a sale of those airwaves at a federal auction. An unfortunate turn of events for T-Mobile, which has been aggressively lobbying against the idea.

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As predictable as day following night, litigation has followed the Federal Communications Commission’s sanctions against Comcast. In a long-expected action, Comcast sued the commission today claiming the FCC had no legal grounds on which to punish it for throttling file-sharing traffic on its network.

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In the future, “heavy users” of Comcast’s broadband service speeds may face not just a periodic slowing–sorry, deprioritizing–of their service, but a capping of that service as well. Broadband Reports brings word today that Comcast plans to implement a 250GB broadband cap come October.

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An estimated 15 percent of Americans still use dial-up to connect to the Internet. And they might as well. Because according to a new study by the Communication Workers of America, the typical real-time Internet connection speed in the United States isn’t that much faster.

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Dial-up users don’t like broadband? Obviously, that’s why they’re dial-up users. An estimated 10 percent of Americans are surfing the net via dial-up connections, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (PDF), most of them by choice.

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If Bono is U2’s geopolitical pragmatist, the band’s manager, Paul McGuinness, is its neo-Luddite. At the Music Matters confab in Hong Kong, McGuinness slagged broadband Internet service providers, accusing them of aiding and abetting music piracy while CD sales and royalty payments to musicians plunge.

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