Apparently taking a page out of this month's advertising debate between AT&T and Verizon, Canadian carrier Telus has sued Rogers Communications for ads claiming that the Rogers wireless network is "the fastest and most reliable in the country." Telus and Bell Canada have of course just launched their new, $1 billion HSPA network, which offers speeds up to 21 Mbps to Canadian customers. As such, Telus demanded earlier this month that Rogers stop making advertising claims that they held the 3G speed edge -- a request Rogers ignored, since they too offer 21 Mbps HSPA+ service. "Telus has not submitted any data on their network performance and we look forward to vigorously defending our position in court," says Rogers.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the FCC is seriously considering re-establishing some kind of open access rules, which would give new entrants access to incumbent infrastructure at reduced price. Open access was the central idea behind the 1996 telecom act, which required incumbent operators to share network access with smaller competitors in order to bolster competition as those upstarts grew into legitimate carriers. A combination of inconsistent regulation and incumbent lobbying ultimately resulted in the U.S. scrapping the idea, though other countries (like France) were able to make the idea work.

The FCC has long been an agency that has played fast and loose when it comes to using science and data to fuel its policy decisions. The agency for most of broadband's life cycle has been using outdated data, or inadequate data provided by industry lobbyists designed to make things look pretty and keep government out of their hair. With a new FCC and new boss Julius Genachowski, the agency has promised to be data driven. Yet Bruce Kushnick over at Harvard's Neiman Watchdog claims that in policy discussions, the agency's still using inadequate or old data -- sometimes more than a decade old -- to shape broadband and wireless policy.

As promised, the FCC today voted to impose a shot clock aimed at speeding up municipal approval for the placing of wireless towers. According to an FCC news release (pdf), the new agency rules impose a 90 day limit to states and municipalities to approve or deny collocation (tower sharing) requests, and 150 day limit to act on new tower placement requests. It's something the wireless industry has been lobbying for for a while. According to wireless industry lobbyists, (pdf) there's currently 760 new tower placement applications nationally that have been waiting for approval for at least a year, and 180 applications that have been waiting at least three years (though the industry has been known to play up government dysfunction for effect). Municipalities are expected to challenge the ruling in the courts over fears that they'd be ceding too much state zoning control to Uncle Sam.

For many years now companies (including some of the biggest broadband ISPs) have been issuing gift cards instead of cash as rebates. Why? Companies can impose a number of restrictions on the cards that statistically reduce the amount of actual cash companies have to pay out. Many companies make it so the cards aren't redeemable for cash, can't be used for cash withdrawals, or expire several months after issue -- yet don't really make these restrictions clear in promotions. AT&T for one got in trouble with NY's Attorney General earlier this year for advertising that these cards were "the same as cash."

Retail store gift cards often rely on the same stable of tricks, and this has apparently gotten the attention of the Federal Reserve. The Reserve this week issued a missive saying they'd be cracking down on misleading gift card practices.

According to the notice, they'll be crafting new rules that would "protect consumers from certain unexpected costs and would require that gift card terms and conditions be clearly stated." Judging from the initial draft, promotional rebate cards will be covered:Under the new rules, both rebate and gift cards will now be required to have an expiration date no less than five years after the date of issue, and all marketing practices involving these cards will need to be made transparent to the end user. Those interested can file a comment with the Federal Reserve on the proposed rules.