The reasons for the decline? Seasonality, the econalypse and the maturation of the market. “The second quarter has proven to be traditionally weak for broadband growth, but with the market becoming more mature, broadband adds further waned,” Bruce Leichtman, LRG’s president and principal analyst, said in a statement.

Poor broadband infrastructure and limited access to it in rural areas clearly also played a role. In rural America, just 31 percent of residents have a broadband connection, as opposed to more than two-thirds in the rest of the country, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. No wonder America now ranks 15th in the world on broadband access, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

So that $7.2 billion in broadband investments the Obama administration recently pledged stands to do a lot of good–assuming it’s put to use by the right folks. It’s not yet clear that will happen, however, because the large network operators best positioned to roll out access to underserved areas are afraid of taking stimulus money for fear of net-neutrality conditions that might be attached to it, as well as of unwanted government scrutiny.

And as Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, notes, that’s really too bad. “If you want to get broadband out, you have to do it with [those] who brought you to the dance in the first place, and in this case it is the incumbent cable and telephone carriers who have 85 percent of lines in the country,” he told the Washington Post. “This is not basket weaving. This is really complex and intensive technical stuff that takes a fair amount of sophistication and scale to be able to do right and to continue to upgrade.”

[Image Credit: Flickr/alan i am]

That said, even at this reduced price, the Amazon Kindle still costs $299 more than Kindle for Apple’s iPhone, which I’ve found to be a compelling way to read books. After six or so novels, I have no complaints about eye strain, screen size or glare. And honestly, I think I’m reading more now than I ever did before simply because I always have the book I’m currently reading in my pocket.

Anyway…

Today’s price cut makes you wonder if this presages a similar reduction for the Kindle DX, which at $489 could really use one. A bit too early, I suppose, since Amazon (AMZN) hasn’t yet announced pricing for subscriptions to the Washington Post (WPO) and New York Times (NYT). We’ll see, I guess.

Denied Internet access by Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric, bot-hosting network McColo is clearly having trouble spewing out spam and malware. There has been a 41 percent drop in spam volume since the Washington Post story broke.

Sadly, it’s certain to rise again, once McColo finds some new upstream providers.
(Thanks to reader Dave Barnes for the tip.)

There is damning evidence that this activity has been going on there for way too long, and plenty of people in the security community have gone out of their way to raise awareness about this network, but nobody seems to care.”

– Paul Ferguson, a threat researcher with computer security firm Trend Micro

According to security experts, Web-hosting outfit McColo is responsible for enabling the broadcast of more than 75 percent of all spam globally. Its client list is a rogues gallery of bad-guy syndicates involved in everything from botnets to counterfeit pharmaceuticals and kiddie porn. So how is it that MoColo’s ISPs, Hurricane Electric and Global Crossing, were unaware of that until notified by a Washington Post reporter?

I’m not sure there’s a good answer to that question, though it would certainly be interesting to hear one. Almost as interesting as hearing the two ISPs explain away their network traffic from known criminal botnets Mega-D, Srizbi, Pushdo, Rustock and Warezov, all of which have their master servers hosted at McColo.

“We shut them down,” Benny Ng, director of marketing for Hurricane Electric, told the Post. “We looked into it a bit, saw the size and scope of the problem you were reporting and said ‘Holy cow!’ Within the hour we had terminated all of our connections to them.”

“Holy cow?” More like, “Holy cow, someone finally noticed we’re the preferred ISP of a massive criminal syndicate! What do we do?!?”

“ISPs can’t take the ‘I see nothing, I hear nothing’ approach to this content,” said Mark Rasch, a former cyber crime prosecutor for the Justice Department. “It’s a little bit like a landlord who owns a building and sees people coming in and out of the apartment complex constantly at all hours and not suspecting their may be drug activity going on. There are certain things that raise red flags, such as the nature, volume, source and destination of the Internet traffic, that can and should raise red flags. And to have so many third parties looking at the volume and content from this Internet provider saying ‘This is outrageous,’ clearly the people doing the hosting should know that as well.”