Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

The United States Olympic Committee and Comcast announced yesterday they would partner to launch in 2010 The U.S. Olympic Network, broadcasting the trials and training and everything else that goes into the international event.

Comcast’s corporate blog takes on the rosy dream of giving you superhuman mega athletes and their schmaltzy stories 24/7/365. Of course, the N.Y. Times and the Debbie Downers that they are focus more on the fact that, well, the International Olympic Committee has made clear they have not given name or TV rights for the project.

The Times reports that this is just the latest development in the tense relationship between the U.S.O.C. and the I.O.C.

Richard Carrion, an I.O.C. executive board member, told the Times that they were concerned about the viability of the network and its affect on longtime U.S. broadcaster NBC.

“We’ve given the rights to NBC to be the Olympic network,” he said. “I don’t think something else called the Olympic network will fly.”

After the jump, Verizon crashes Steel Town, what Pirate Bay wants to sell Comcast and five other stories for the faithful.

In order of importance for your ease:

• Reuters reports that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether large telecommunications companies are abusing their market power. Anyone hear footsteps coming?
• The Silicon Alley Insider reports that torrent site Pirate Bay plans to raise capital by selling the spare bandwidth of their users to ISPs like our boys over at Comcast. The announcement first reported by Business Week comes in the wake of their $7.9 million purchase by Global Gaming Factory X.
• Pittsburgh’s ABC affiliate reports that that city just made a tentative 10-year agreement with Verizon to bring that cable provider in direct competition with Comcast. The crowd at Primanti Brothers was divided, I’m sure. [H/T Philly Tech News]
• Business Week reports that Comcast annnounced that more than $1.73 billion of its debt has been tendered so far in response to its two-week-old cash offer to purchase $1.3 billion in notes. Their debt has been in the news before.
• The Consumerist shares a post with this rather self-evident title: What, You Expect Comcast To Stop Billing You Just Because You Canceled Your Account? Apparently, some chap in Connecticut continued to get billed after returning all of Comcast’s equipment — until he contacted the state’s attorney general.
• 4G Wireless Evolution reports that Comcast’s WiMax bundle of fixed line internet, phone and television products puts pressure on AT&T and Verizon. The report notes that the point is to win customer share from the two competitors before they hit back with something better. Mobile Tech Today says the whole bundle isn’t competitive and won’t fly. This 4G network, which we noted earlier, might not even be an improvement over 3G MTT suggests.

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When there is just too much Comcast news to follow, the Comcast Roundup will be there to fill your every Comcast desire or fantasy.

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

We’re not quite done with this topic yet.

For two consecutive weeks, the biggest Comcast story has remained the same — it’s partnership with Time Warner to launch an online TV video streaming service that requires cable subscription authentication.

Major challenges remain in designing that authentication system, reports the Los Angeles Times. While broadcast networks like NBC have been quick to put their content online for free, cable providers, like Comcast, are eager to create a source of revenue online.

The L.A. Times also reports that the initiative, dubbed TV Everywhere, is proposed to include regular commercials, like broadcast TV, despite the trend online for fewer, shorter video advertisements. (Watch the CEOs of Comcast and Time Warner speak on the proposal after the jump.)

If you’re thinking of the online TV limit, think 500 hours, as Multichannel News reports. Web video watched through TV Everywhere will count toward the overall 250-gigabyte per month usage limit, which Comcast instituted last fall.

“According to my calculations, 250 Gbytes is enough for some 496 hours of high-quality video streaming, or the equivalent of 20 days of around-the-clock online-video watching,” wrote Todd Spangler.

While some executives have brushed the concern aside, the question of antitrust implications for the Comcast and Time Warner Internet-video collusion is real, Gigaom reports.

After the jump, keeping baseball from a 94-year-old fan, Comcast and Time Warner heads speak, and four other Comcast stories for the faithful.

In order of importance for your ease:

• Inquirer columnist Danny Rubin finds and reports on 94-year-old Jessie Foyle, a Phillies fan to the extreme who struggles to listen to the baseball team’s games on a transistor radio because her retirement home has DirecTV. Comcast owns rights to most of the Phillies games and, Rubin suggests, they ain’t sharing.
• Comcast became the first major cable TV company to release wireless broadband beyond of Wi-Fi hotspots when it launched the service in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday. Services in Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia and others are planned to follow by the end of 2009. This follows the company’s November 2008 investment in Clearwire.
• The Inqy’s Bob Fernandez profiles the work of Comcast Interactive Media, the company’s 800-employee Internet division. It includes ping pong and the department’s relationship to its cable TV operations.
• TV Squad suggests that a Comcast advertisement attacking Verizon’s FiOS TV has been changed.
• A press release announcing that Comcast is now the third largest residential phone services provider.
• Comcast Voices has a video interview with Brian Roberts and Jeff Bewkes, CEOs of Comcast and Time Warner respectively, about their company’s partnership on TV Everywhere, as announced last week.

When there is just too much Comcast news to follow, the Comcast Roundup will be there to fill your every Comcast desire or fantasy.

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

In Comcast news big enough to get Philebrity’s Joey Sweeney to bite, Comcast has reached a partnership with Time Warner to put content from their Turner Broadcasting online, where Comcast-subscribers can watch, as the Business Journal reported yesterday.

The agreement also included a set of principles for future online distribution of TV shows on a platform they call TV Everywhere, which require viewer authentication. Read those guiding principles here.

In the announcement, Comcast said it will begin testing next month this On Demand Online with 5,000 subscribers. The initial Turner programmaing will include content from TBS and TNT. No word on if you’ll be able to get those old reruns of Walker Texas Ranger.

This model is seen as a direct threat to advertising-supported Web TV streaming sites like Hulu, as Wired reported. Paid Content reports that Comcast got a taste for that model from ESPN360 in its partnership with Disney.

The Inquirer’s Joe Distefano, who offered the news a brief, recently reported on timid speculation about a Comcast merger with Time Warner.

After the jump, someone else has an interview with Brian Roberts, Verizon gets faster, video of Comcast Idol participants, and four other Comcast stories for the faithful.

In order of importance for your ease:

• The Boston Globe has a Q&A with Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts, in which he says, “Do I hear of some mistakes? Yes.” Feel free to finish that with a punchline in the comments.
• Bobbie Fernandez over at the Inquirer reports that DirecTV has relatively quietly grown its list of subscribers to 18 million, nearing the Comcast behemoth. Add them to Verizon and apparently Hulu as combatants.
• Multichannel News reports that in at least 10 markets, including Philadelphia, Baltimore and D.C., Comcast will host commercials advertising FiOS TV, the golden product of rival Verizon.
• In other Verizon news, the Business Journal’s Peter Key says Verizon has announced opening its fastest digital subscriber service to nearly a quarter million more Pennsylvanians.
• And because Scott McNulty at the Comcast Voices corporate blog never fails to post something I feel compelled to share, the telecommunications giant hosted a Comcast Idol competition for its employees and, yes, I swear, all five finalists actually produced creative and entertaining songs about their company. Unsurprisingly, the boys from San Fran who played it nearest to the Comcast Dream Big theme won, but, below, watch my favorite, “I Love Comcast,” a beauty from a Michigan crew that gives a nod to our friend and social media whore Asher Roth.

When there is just too much Comcast news to follow, the Comcast Roundup will be there to fill your every Comcast desire or fantasy.

Hold on to your clunky digital cable boxes Philadelphia, because a good old-fashioned capitalist throwdown is brewing between local cable giant Comcast and its feisty competitor Verizon.

You may remember that Verizon received approval from City Council earlier this year to build a $1 billion FiOS network in the city. According to the company’s franchise agreement with the city, it will fully cover the city in FiOS within seven years with initial service offerings beginning by the end of 2009.

If recent moves by Verizon in the 67th ward are a sign of things to come, Verizon may be challenging the cable giant’s Comcast Network news channel as well.

During a conference call yesterday, Verizon announced the creation of local news-based channels in its New York and Long Island markets to compete with similar offerings by Cablevision. The new channel is slated to feature 10 hours of live news programming each day, and will cover regional high school athletics.

In Philadelphia, such a channel would likely compete directly with local news broadcast and Comcast’s newly retooled Comcast Network.

While Philly is roughly a year behind its neighbor to the north, residents can look at the roll out of FiOS there as a sign of things to come. Although, there Verizon faces two entrenched competitors in Time Warner and Cablevision, while in Philadelphia Comcast is the only major cable provider in town.

If download speeds in other cities are any indication, Verizon FiOS will likely offer faster speeds than Comcast. And to top it off, Verizon isn’t the second most hated company in country.

The company already created a similar locally focused channel in Washington D.C which is roughly on the same roll out schedule as Philadelphia.

First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman is interviewed by Sammantha Ettus and Gary Vaynerchuk of ObsessedTV

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here. When it comes to ultimate economy metaphors, it’s time for car talk. Philadelphia is only experiencing a tank of bad gasoline, not a shot transmission, Inquirer Business Reporter Mike Armstrong said Wednesday. Of course, we only kid. It’s good news for Philly, which ranked 37th strongest of 100 major U.S. metros in a quarterly economic health report issued by the Brookings Institution. Hell, times ain’t rough for Delaware-based online advertiser eZanga. Fortune Magazine ranked it as one of the 15 fastest-growing marketing and advertising companies in the U.S., despite Internet advertising taking its first downturn since 2002 in the first quarter, reports Delaware Online. But do you know the problem with too much good news? Not enough drama. After the jump, how First Round Capital is ditching Philly for our lesser-neighbor up North, why social networking and work don’t mix, and gosh darnit, more proof that no one can fix that Philly budget deficit. Plus more goodies. In order of importance for your ease.

• Seems like First Round Capital is spendin’ a little too much time in the Big Apple lately. Last week, founder Josh Kopelman did a breezy interview on Obsessed with Samantha Ettus, a Web show created with North Jersey’s wine connoisseur and marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk. Wednesday, First Round announced that it was launching a startup mentoring program in the New York region, reports Peter Key of the Philadelphia Business Journal. Ouch. Don’t drink the Kool-aid, Josh, it’s probably a Pinot.
• Employers are stressing about workers who talk smack about their companies on social networks, McClatchy Newspapers reports. We’re down with firing food service workers who posted YouTube videos sneezing on pizza, or amazingly enough, bathing in a stainless steel restaurant sink, but we’d be damned to say we haven’t complained about co-workers on Facebook. Maybe city employee Latrice Bryant, who took heat last fall for calling Fox 29 racist for reporting that she allegedly used company time for personal business, should take note. She’s recently been criticized for several postings on her Facebook account: “Would you sell your soul to the devil for 90k?” she wrote as her status, before deleting the message. Bryant earned $90,000 from the City of Philadelphia last year, the Daily News reports.
• A taxi driver that hit a woman riding a bicycle in South Philadelphia and sped off seemingly doesn’t have a chance of getting away with it. The cabbie musta forgot that every taxi is fitted with a GPS device that inspectors at Philadelphia Parking Authority are tracking, MyFoxPhilly reports.
• No one can balance that damned Philly budget. Of 3,000 users that participated in the Economy League’s Philadelphia Budget Challenge that we reported on in April, nearly 60 percent ended up with a deficit.
• Remember MaBell? No? Hit up your Encyclopedia Britannica (or Google, for you new heads). Well, even if you’ve forgotten, PhillyOfficeRetail.com hasn’t. The developers are collecting old-school call centers, including an 84,000 square-foot former Verizon Corp. building at 7200 Chestnut St., and others, reports PhillyDeals’ Joseph DiStefano. To think: someday someone will be collecting antiquated startup offices that moved up and onward.
• Newspapers ain’t doing all that bad. Malvern’s AnySource Media, which we covered in our Friday Q&A in April, has struck a deal with The Associated Press for the content provider to distribute a 24-hour on-demand news platform on the TV box, according to a press release. Oh wait. That’s actually no good for newspapers.
• Our Most Trafficked Story of the Week: Ten Philadelphia tech organizations that should have Wikipedia entries but don’t.

Every Friday morning we make sure you didn’t miss anything with Friday Tech Links.

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

It isn’t true, so you really ought to stop saying it.

That’s the crux of a cease and desist letter that Verizon Communications has sent to Comcast in response to the telecommunications giant’s series of advertisements called “Don’t Fall for FiOS,” in which, among other claims, Comcast calls a triple-play-like service for bundle from Verizon $400 more expensive per year than the ‘Cast’s version, as reported Tuesday by the Inquirer’s Bob Fernandez.

“Verizon’s been running a negative campaign against Comcast for years and its response to our campaign shows that they can dish it out but they can’t take it,” a Comcast spokeswoman says.

Boys and girls, that fight is getting tweeted:

After the jump, Comcast reports to the FCC, a mildly awkward Comcast interview on Web teen safety and four other stories that would interest any Comcast-head.

In order of importance for your ease:

• The Inquirer’s Fernandez also reports that that squabble isn’t slowing Verizon, which is expanding its FiOS TV wireless mobile service with more real-time sports games. Cable360 reports that Verizon’s CTO was talking about broadband strategy this week.
• The Business Journal reports that NBA TV has inked a deal to be on Comcast’s Digital Classic lineup. As we’ve reported, contentious negotiations with the NFL Network ended in Comcast’s favor last month, followed by a deal with the NHL Network. Because MLB TV, which Comcas partially owns, is already on the tier, pressure remains on the telecommunications giant to work with the cricket channel.
• PC Mag reports on what stakeholders in a national broadband plan told the FCC by Monday’s deadline for reporting. They give crib notes for the responses from Comcast, Google, Verizon and others. The Inquirer’s Fernandez also�reports that Comcast told FCC that nearly all of the households in its franchise areas already have access to high-speed Internet, among other details.
• Oh, and because we love the meta of Comcast interviewing Comcast and talking about safety using Comcast products, we bring to you a recent interview by Comcast Local Edition foxy anchor Jill Horner of the company’s Internet security minister Jay Opperman.

When there is just too much Comcast news to follow, the Comcast Roundup will be there to fill your every Comcast desire or fantasy.

One particular company in our region garners more news coverage than any other by far: Comcast, of course.

It isn’t the region’s largest employer, nor is it even the biggest or most profitable. It just makes a lot more noise. While we cover some of it and hope to do more, a lot of that noise isn’t worth much more than a sentence or two. But much of it is worth following, and we bet many of you readers would like to, so we’re going to sort everything you need to know.

This is the Comcast Roundup, what may or may not become a regular department of ours (we don’t make promises we can’t keep, except to our illegitimate children).

• The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that the Comcast Center, the tallest building in Center City, has garnered another distinction — the tallest LEED-certified building in the country.

Read more on the company’s continued battles with Verizon, NFL Network, how Comcast might be defending your right to not pay more for heavy Internet use and more.

• The New York Times reports that Time Warner Cable backed down from a plan to impose new fees on heavy users of its Internet service but that the debate over the price of Internet use isn’t done. But not everyone buys the need to charge more for heavier Internet users. “All of our economics are based on engineering for the peak hour,” said Tony Werner, the chief technical officer of Comcast. “Just because someone consumes more data doesn’t mean they drive more cost.”
• tweeted:
  to Comcast Cares day this Saturday. Oooh, free tour.
• The Courier Post reports that the telecommunications war between Comcast and Verizon is growing. Where are the hottest battlegrounds outside Philly? Dirty Jersey!
• The Inquirer reports that 13 regional companies are on this year’s Fortune 500 including, yup, the “ever-ballooning telecommunications giant,” Comcast.
• PC World reports that Comcast TV is coming to your laptop — for paid subscribers, of course.
• Corporate blog Comcast Cares featured an interview by Scott “BlankBaby” McNulty with Comcast founder Ralph Roberts.
• “The” USA Today reports that some say this dispute between Comcast and the NFL Network that we reported on won’t be resolved for “months.”
• A press release on Verizon’s expansion of its remote DVR management service for FiOS TV customers.

We’d like to share the best Comcast comment — seen anywhere online — of the week, so if you see one, tweet us @technicallyphl or contact us.

When there is just too much Comcast news to follow, the Comcast Roundup will be there to fill your every Comcast desire or fantasy.