While there's absolutely no doubt that Google Fiber has been a positive thing for the industry, critics have singled out two problems with Google's ultra-fast offering. One, the company backed off of open access promises that would have allowed multiple companies to come in and truly compete over the infrastructure. Two, whereas old franchise models aimed for uniformity (the very reason many of you even have cable at this moment) Google's deployment model heavily celebrates cherry picking, or only deploying services to the most profitable areas.

Google countered this somewhat early on in Kansas City with Google Fiber "rallies" determined to help the community decide which areas got service first. Still, it soon became clear that lower-income communities still found themselves lagging for attention, with wealthier neighborhoods doing things like hiring their door to door salesmen to improve their chances. It's just a variation on the same problem of selective deployment.

For obvious reasons AT&T clearly loves cherry picking, CEO Randall Stephenson telling investors this week that they'd just love to offer 1 Gbps to people, but government requirements make that impossible (not true, but more on that later). Stephenson also argued that now that Google has made cherry picking more acceptable, deployment of 1 Gbps lines nationwide will surely pick up speed:

AT&T West employees in California and Nevada are currently reporting to work, but have threatened to strike if they can't strike a new deal with AT&T. According to Southern California Public Radio, the 18,000 workers and CWA members rejected a new contract proposal from AT&T last week over wages and benefits. As is usually the case, AT&T says they have a "contingency workforce of well-trained managers and vendors" to handle the workload disruption if a strike happens, though a strike will of course mean major delays in DSL and U-Verse installs and repairs.

AT&T appears poised to begin offering new U-Verse speed tiers that should offer a belated speed increase for bandwidth-hungry users. Earlier this year AT&T promised users they'd eventually see 75-100 Mbps using line bonding, though the company was somewhat murky on deployment time -- or upstream speeds.

AT&T broadband users continue to claim there's something not quite right about the way AT&T calculates data usage for their capped DSL and U-Verse users. As Broadband Reports was the first to exclusively report last year, AT&T began imposing 150 GB caps on DSL users and 250 GB caps on U-Verse users -- with $10 per 50 GB overage fees.

AT&T has announced their long-awaited plan to address the upgrade path for the company's DSL networks. According to AT&T's plan, the company will spend $14 billion on a new network expansion initiative that will include upgrading some current DSL users to U-Verse, but will also involve pushing many DSL users in outlying areas to their LTE network.

Last year we were the very first to report AT&T was planing to apply caps and overages to their U-Verse and DSL services. More than a year later and the effort appears to still be a rather ham-fisted affair.

Last week we noted that AT&T is now forcing customers with DSL to upgrade to AT&T U-Verse if it's available in their area -- or face disconnection. While normally you might argue that being upgraded to next-gen is a good thing, in this case the upgrade is resulting in some major price hikes for DSL users -- many of which have had the same pricing for many years.

Like Verizon's FiOS, AT&T has frozen all U-Verse expansion, meaning that if you didn't get upgraded on the first go round, you're out of luck. These freezes leave millions of customers on last-generation DSL lines that the carriers (whose focus is on wireless and $10 per gigabyte overages) don't feel like upgrading.

Stop The Cap! has gleaned some interesting information from their source inside Frontier noting that Frontier's next-generation plan for many users will be -- AT&T U-Verse? According to documents obtained by the website, Frontier is in talks with AT&T to license AT&T's U-Verse technology and offer it to select portions of Frontier's footprint sometime in the latter part of 2012.

The 100,000 FiOS customers (or what's left of them after extensive price hikes) will still be supported, but any new "next gen" expansion will be AT&T U-Verse.

We recently noted how AT&T's U-Verse expansion is essentially over, and if you haven't seen your market upgraded yet you probably aren't going to. So what happens to a little less than half of their current customers still on older DSL technology? Like Verizon -- who offloaded millions of users in somewhat ugly deals with Frontier and Fairpoint, it appears that AT&T is looking to sell off many DSL markets and keep their focus on wireless.

In May of last year AT&T confirmed that at the end of 2011 they'd effectively be stopping their deployment of U-Verse upgrades, with 30 million homes passed (not necessarily served), leaving about 40-45% of their footprint on older, slower technologies. On their recent earnings call AT&T again confirmed that the U-Verse build is "largely complete," and the focus now is on ramping up adoption in deployed areas.

In March of last year we were the first to exclusively report that AT&T would be imposing caps on DSL (150GB) and U-Verse (250GB) users, with consumer having to pay $10 for every 50GB over the cap they travel. Our leak caught AT&T a little by surprise, as the company wasn't quite ready to announce the plans yet.

Broadband Reports was the first to learn, and has confirmed with AT&T, that the company will be implementing a new 150GB monthly usage cap for all DSL customers and a new 250 GB cap on all U-Verse users starting on May 2. From March 18 to March 31, AT&T users are going to be receiving notices informing them of the change in the company's terms of service.

CNET columnist Elinor Mills laments how AT&T can make ordering dry loop or "naked" DSL a bit of a mystery, something we've found varies from geographic region to region. Phone companies of course have made jumping through hoops the standard operating procedure to obtain the service, with the thought that they were protecting legacy landline phone service.

AT&T's decision to run FTTN instead of FTTH has remained a sticking point, with AT&T's top U-Verse speed (after video) sitting at 24Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream for customers within range. While that speed is (at least downstream) nothing to laugh at, it's quickly being overshadowed by Comcast deployment of 50Mbps DOCSIS 3.0, which is now available in more than 80% of Comcast markets (with 100 Mbps to come).

We recently explored how AT&T is raising both regular DSL and U-Verse service prices as we enter 2010. They've also kicked off a "any speed, one price" promotion for DSL customers, which, as the name implies, allows users to sign up for Express (1.5 Mbps), Pro (3 Mbps) or Elite (6 Mbps) service for $24.95 if you sign a one year contract.

AT&T and the State of Connecticut haven't exactly been getting along. The State has angered the powerful telco by requiring AT&T U-Verse adhere to cable franchise law (a fight AT&T won), requiring AT&T grant homeowner consent before plunking bulky U-Verse VRADs down in front of customer homes, and by investigating poor customer service in the state. AT&T has now annoyed Connecticut, by firing sixty individuals in the state and moving the jobs to Michigan. "AT&T's customer service has deteriorated after the company eliminated nearly 1,000 customer service related jobs in recent years," says State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to the local media. "These latest layoffs will further degrade customer care, in clear violation of legal standards."

Back in July AT&T announced that the company’s agreement with Dish Network to sell bundled TV, phone and broadband packages would be terminated at the end of this year. This caused speculation that the purpose of the announcement was to incite a bidding war for AT&T partnership between Dish and DirecTV.

Last quarter, both AT&T and Verizon reported the lowest DSL subscriber gains ever. To try and improve their fortunes, AT&T is running a promotion that locks your current DSL prices down for two years with no price hikes.

AT&T has told Dish Network that the telco is ending their agreement at the end of the year to sell bundled TV, phone and broadband packages. According to Reuters, AT&T Is setting the stage for a bidding war between DirecTV and Dish Network for who'll get to partner with the nation's largest broadband provider. Obviously AT&T wants consumers to use their U-Verse IPTV service, but they're still going to want a DBS partner in the significant number of market where U-Verse won't be profitable to deploy. It's not particularly good news for Dish, which was already facing a decline in subscribers. I've dropped a line to AT&T to see how this will impact the Homezone DSL/DBS service they offer in conjunction with Dish Network.