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Google breaks ground today on the super-fast fiber optic network it plans to build for the lucky residents of Kansas City, Kan. They'll get a 1 gigabit-per-second Internet connection, which will offer downloads 100 times faster than what most Americans get. Uploads will be a thousand times faster than average.

Kansas City won this privilege over 1,100 other cities in March 2011. Since then, Google and the city have been surveying, planning, and eating "way too much barbecue," says Google's manager, Kevin Lo. Today, they start laying cable. A few months behind the Kansas side, neighbors on the other side of the river in Kansas City, Mo. will get the hook-up as well.

Last week a congressional subcommittee approved the "Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011." On its surface, that seems like a wholly altruistic endeavor by our congressional leaders and a law worthy of praise. Yet, when it comes to privacy and law enforcement, there are ulterior motives at play.

The bill, also know as H.R. 1981, would require Internet Service Providers such as Comcast or Cox Communications to retain the personal information of its users for up to 18 months. This "mandatory data retention" policy would include names, IP addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses etc. and allow investigators to track online behavior such as websites visited and messages posted on the Web. Essentially, if the government wants, it could track everything you have done online for the last year and a half without a warrant or user consent. The debate over mandatory data retention has been evolving for nearly a decade and has caused a ruckus among privacy groups that claim it is a violation of civil liberties and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Never mind life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, if the U.S. were to follow in Finland's footsteps, then "broadband" would be added to that list of inalienable human rights. Today, Finland became the world leader in Internet access by making broadband every Finnish citizen's legal right and ensuring that every citizen will have access to a 1Mbps broadband connection.

The decision stands in stark opposition to the state of the Internet in the U.S., where, far from ensuring Internet access to every citizen, the battle over Net neutrality rages on.

According to a new survey commissioned by the Federal Communications Commission, 80% of Internet users in the U.S. don't know the advertised speed of their home Internet connections (PDF). A quarter of respondents thought that they were always getting the advertised speed their ISPs promised them, even though they did now know what speeds to expect.

In order to get reliable statistics about the actual speeds that consumers are getting from the ISPs, the FCC announced a new initiative today that will place broadband speed measurement devices in the homes of 10,000 volunteers.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in his address to the World Mobile Congress on Tuesday that Google's future is not to compete with mobile operators. Instead, he pointed primarily to search advertising as Google's focus. But notably, Schmidt also mentioned Google's interest in enterprise software to deflect operator's concerns that the search giant wants to compete with them.

Schmidt's address to the world's leading mobile executives came as Google treads a delicate path. Google entered the mobile market in January. Instead of working through carriers, Google decided to sell its Nexus One directly to consumers. Last week, Google announced it would be offering Internet connectivity to select communities. That's another sore point for operators who wonder if Google is planning to enter the networking business.

Google just announced that it will beginning to build and test an ultra high-speed broadband network in a small number of locations in the United States. The company wants to offer fiber-to-the-home connections that will reach 1 gigabit per second. For now, Google plans to first roll out these connections to around 50,000 people, with the potential to reach over 500,000 people at a later stage.

According to 4chan's Twitter account and status update blog, they have been "explicitly blocked" by the Verizon wireless network.

If you're unfamiliar with 4chan and why an ISP/wireless company would block it, read more about it on Wikipedia. The high-traffic image board of mostly anonymous users was created by Christopher Poole in 2003 and has been the subject of a fair amount of negative media and legal attention over the past six years. But why would Verizon choose to block the site now? Does this put Verizon on par with foreign ISPs that block torrent sites and social networks? Or is there more to the story?

FCC Chaiman Julius Genachowski outlined a number of new principles today that will guide the commission's rulemaking with regards to net neutrality. As Genachowski points out, openness was a key factor that made the Internet the success it has become. While the FCC never adopted any formal rules with regards to net neutrality, the commission adopted a set of four policy principles in 2005. Today, Genachowski announced that the FCC will begin the rulemaking process to formalize these principles and also announced two additional principles that should guide this process: non-discrimination and transparency.

The Federal Communications Commission launched a Twitter account and Blogband - a blog that will chronicle the progress and development of the National Broadband Plan. Said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, "We want it to be a two-way conversation. The feedback, ideas and discussions generated on this blog will be critical in developing the best possible National Broadband Plan". Genachowski has until February 2010 to submit a plan for broadband deployment to Congress. Telecoms, net neutrality lobbyists, tech companies and regular citizens are tripping over themselves to weigh in.