The cable providers lined Canoe's pockets with $150 million to make it happen. Tough task, says the Wall Street Journal, which reports that TV programmers fear targeted advertising because it might create such value for advertising clients that they end up spending less to reach only exactly those who might buy their products. If it's a fear that sounds arcane and self-damaging, well, welcome to the contrived world of television advertising, Mr. Verklin. Oh, and here's your paddle.

Bidding up the cost that AT&T and Verizon eventually paid for their own wireless spectrum in the FCC's 700-Mhz auction. Far from simply trying to implement "open access" via their bid, it appears now that Google was trying to increase the cost of networks that might compete with Clearwire's WiMax one. Which would now explain why AT&T spent $200,000 to get three Congressmen to profess their hatred for Google.

There is precedent for yanking AT&T's chain in such a grand manner. When AT&T first bid on wireless spectrum back in the '90s, after its acquisition of McCaw Cellular Communications, it found that during the auction all their key markets had been bid up by a mysterious third party. Though they finally won the licenses they so coveted, they paid far more than anyone had expected. Who was the mysterious bidder that cost them so much money? The same person that is expected to be named chairman of the Clearwire consortium: Craig McCaw.

(WagCurious, a Valleywag commenter, submitted this item.)

Join this group if you want to send a message to TimeWarner cable that you do NOT support the usage-based bandwidth charges they are testing and rolling out.

Up north, they're already charging by the bit. According to Bits, under Bell Canada's bandwidth pricing plan — one which Time Warner it is looking to as a potential model for its own — customers would pay $30 each time they rented an HD movie from Apple TV, on top of Apple's $3.99 rental fee. Even with gas prices where they are, driving to Blockbuster suddenly looks much more appealing.

And DSL Prime editor Dave Burstein told Bits the effect such a surcharge would have on Apple's new movie rental business is every bit intentional. "The smart people at Time Warner are scared of people watching TV directly over the Internet," he told the Times. "'Lost' and 'Desperate Housewives' look better over the Internet than they do on digital cable."

A Time Warner spokesperson denied the charge. "This is not targeted at people who download movies from Apple," Time Warner PR flack Alexander Dudley told the Times. "This is aimed at people who use peer-to-peer networks and download terabytes."