Comcast's dream of acquiring NBC Universal can't come to fruition until Vivendi executives sell their 20% stake in the company, according to the Los Angeles Times. Obviously the value of that 20% differs greatly depending on how much the company is deemed to be worth -- and according to the Times, Vivendi wants that number to be at least $500-$900 million greater than what's currently on the table. GE has placed a value on NBC Universal of $27 billion to $30 billion. While Vivendi and GE hash out the numbers, consumer advocates continue to lambast the deal as only really being good for industry executives, giving the companies yet more market power, and the authority to restrict competition from Hulu (which Comcast would gain control over after the deal).

If you recall, back in May of 2008 we told you how the Comcast web portal was hacked by a group calling itself "Kryogenics," posting the usually gramatically incoherent shout out to their own supposed awesomeness and fellow nerd homies. The hack disrupted user access to the portal and the official Comcast forums for several hours, before Comcast tracked down the problem and the fix was propagated across DNS servers. According to the Philadelphia Business Journal, the three young men responsible for the hack have been indicted for "conspiring to disrupt service." The indictment claims the hack cost Comcast "a little less than $129,000," though each defendant could receive a maximum sentence of five years in jail, three years of supervised release, a $250,000 fine and a $100 special assessment, on top of potential forced restitution to Comcast -- who certainly could use the money.

When last we checked in with Comcast's Internet video "TV Everywhere" initiative, it was looking more like "TV in some places, some of the time," given there were hints the service wouldn't be available to customers who weren't using a Comcast cable modem for broadband access. The idea of course is to provide existing TV customers access to free Internet video so they won't cut the cord -- but as we've explored, if the industry screw things up it could have the exact opposite effect.

We've certainly levied more than our fair share of criticism at Comcast over the years, but late yesterday the cable giant took one hell of a beating for doing, well, absolutely nothing. It began when Slashdot posted a story saying that Comcast had imposed a new throttling system.

In discussing yesterday's earnings on a conference call with reporters, Comcast hinted that -- despite being profitable and in hot pursuit an NBC Universal acquisition -- employees should prepare for layoffs. There's no word on where exactly these layoffs will be happening or how many, but early indications are that many of the cuts will be in advertising. According to the Boston Globe, at least 64 positions have already been trimmed at Comcast's Spotlight advertising division, though those cut were informed of the decision back in September.

Update: One user sends in an additional Boston Globe report ranking Comcast as the top place to work. Great news -- assuming you still work there.

Comcast issued their third quarter earnings this morning, which indicate that while growth has slowed slightly at the cable giant, the money continues to roll in thanks to a combination of rate hikes and customers adding additional services. The company recorded a quarterly profit of $944 million, up from $771 million one year earlier.

According to the New York Times, Comcast's rumored deal to acquire NBC Universal could be finalized and officially announced sometime this week. A finalized deal would involve Comcast owning 51% of NBC Universal, with General Electric maintaining control of the other 49%. The one sticking point for the deal is convincing Vivendi, which owns 20% of NBC, to sell their share -- according to the Times.

Last year around this time, Comcast implemented a 250 GB cap for all of their users, which was a welcome change -- given they'd been expecting customers to guess what constituted "excessive use" for much of the decade. Last year, the company said they'd be providing users with a bandwidth monitoring tool in January of 2009. We're now approaching December, and Houston Chronicle blogger Dwight Silverman notes the tool is still nowhere to be found. According to Comcast, they're still testing the tool among employees, "and making some refinements to the meter." "As you can imagine, we want the tool to be simple to use and accurate before we launch it," says the company, whose consumption FAQ still directs users to get the bandwidth meter offered free by Comcast as part of the McAffee security suite.

A little more than a year ago, Comcast got their wrist slapped by the FCC for throttling upstream P2P traffic (and lying about it to the press and consumers), though the "sanction" contained no substantive punishment or fine. Still, Comcast has been battling the ruling ever since, arguing that the FCC's neutrality principles (pdf) don't give the FCC the authority to investigate the issue, much less sanction the company.

Calling it "video on demand on steroids," Comcast CEO Brian Roberts today gave new details on the cable industry's "TV Everywhere" initiative, which will offer existing cable customers access to a limited selection of online video. According to the sneak peak shown at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, the service will have content only from broadcast partners who've agreed to the deal, and will only be accessible via your home computer.

Speaking to attendees of the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts proclaimed that the company's use of Twitter to reach out to customers (something covered to dizzying if not nauseating lengths over the last year) has entirely changed the company's corporate culture. Led by Frank Eliason, Comcast now has a dozen employees constantly monitoring Twitter, constantly responding to customer complaints and concerns.

Broadcasters and cable operators haven't been seeing eye to eye about the cable industry's TV Everywhere initiative, which will offer online users Internet video as a free supplement to their cable subscription. The debate so far is over compensation -- with some eager to impose unskippable ads on consumers, and other even hoping to charge for the added functionality.

Expanding on and confirming our post from last week confirming Comcast's new Homepoint wireless VoIP handset, Comcast reach out to us today with a little more detail on the service. According to the nation's largest cable company, the service is only going to initially available in Denver Colorado and Fort Myers, Florida -- but Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas tells us "other markets will be forthcoming." As we noted last week the service costs $5 per month, replacing the $3 per month VoIP hardware rental fee. Comcast tells us they're offering users a HD Triple Play customers with HomePoint for $114.99 with a free handset. The company also says existing video and broadband customers are getting a $24.99/mo for 6 month CDV offer with HomePoint.

While we've frequently noted how you can haggle with your broadband/TV/VoIP operator to get a better deal on service -- occasionally somebody slips by a carrier's internal routines and gets just too good of a deal. That's the case with this poster in our Comcast forum, who, because of a series of service problems, has seen a slew of account credits resulting in him getting nearly $300 worth of service (including 7 free HD DVRs) for free. The user (who started a Twitter account to track the process), says he's been notified by a Comcast security audit specialist whose job is to make sure Comcast representatives didn't over-credit the user. Looking at a copy of the user's bill, it's not hard to see what set off flags at Comcast HQ, but at the same time it was Comcast who applied this endless sea of credits for supposedly legitimate service interruption issues.

Insiders at Comcast inform Broadband Reports that the cable giant is gearing up to launch a new VoIP phone handset system dubbed Homepoint. While the website for the service is already available, we've yet to see this mentioned elsewhere, and it appears the service will only be made available in limited markets.

Comcast reached out to us today to note that they're employing a new strategy to help deal with customers they've identified as having trojan-infected PCs. According to Comcast, the company is going to start issuing alerts on subscriber PCs (see screenshot below) should the user be showing the telltale signs of botnet or spam relay infection.

Comcast has stopped by our forums to note that the carrier has partnered with the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) to, for the first time, deploy a DNS Root Server on the Comcast network. "This benefits our customers by supplying faster resolution to the DNS Root, but also benefits the Internet community generally, by adding redundancy to the DNS F-Root servers that ISC manages and has deployed all around the world," says a Comcast representative in our forums. Comcast's been beefing up their DNS servers, services and tools lately, in part because they want to improve service quality, but also because they probably want to bring some of the DNS redirection ad money lost to Open DNS back in house.

As noted this morning, rumors are flying about a possible Comcast purchase of NBC from GE, though a Comcast denial was issued in such a way to suggest the deal isn't signed yet. As further evidence that the company hopes to buy all or part of NBC, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts sent out an e-mail to employees today we assume is aimed at those worried about the company's stock price, which dropped as much as 7% this morning on the rumors.

A few weeks ago rumors began to bubble over that Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator, has been saving its pennies to make a major content acquisition. By major, the rumors suggested the company could go after such giants as Viacom or Time Warner, harkening back to the days when Comcast failed to acquire Disney.

Back in April we reported how Cablevision was launching 101Mbps+ connection at a $99 price point (albeit with a whopping $300 activation fee), a first for the industry. Given the product is the marketing equivalent of a drop kick aimed squarely at Verizon's face, it wasn't surprising to see Verizon quickly downplay the offering, calling it little more than a "parlor trick." For now, Verizon believes their top offering of 50 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up is more than enough bandwidth for the average user.