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.

Last week P2P client developers Azureus/Vuze released data they collected from a new Azureus plugin. That plugin detects the total number of network interruptions from false RST TCP packets, with some highly contested results.

From the "we're terrified of becoming a dumb pipe" and "that ad revenue sure looks tasty" departments comes news that AT&T is developing their own web browser, dubbed Pogo. The new browser is Mozilla based and includes 3D visual technology developed by Vizible, which AT&T has a stake in.

AT&T has announced that it will be laying off over one percent of its workforce this year. However, the company will also be hiring new employees in its growing areas of business which are primarily in the broadband and wireless sectors of the company. Overall, AT&T expects to retain as many employees as before but to shift the placement of those employees to reflect the company’s changes in focus. They also say that the changes should improve customer service.

Web users regularly receive warnings from around the industry that the Internet is going to reach its capacity and stop working. The general argument is that the growing number of broadband users who are downloading videos and playing games are taxing the ability of the current system.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson probably didn't make many friends today by stating the telecom giant was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the States from India. AT&T has so far only brought back 1,400 of those promised 5,000 jobs to the States, and blames the US education system (and apparently your crappy SAT scores) for his company's inability to keep their promise. story continues..

Yesterday we noted that AT&T's spam filters have been getting a little aggressive, eliminating legit e-mail alongside spam. AT&T tells us mail delivery was impacted due to "an unexpected error" that occurred during a maintenance update. "The impact was on a small percentage of messages compared to the overall e-mail volume," AT&T's Jenny Parker tells us. "AT&T quickly realized this error and began immediate efforts to restore e-mail delivery to normal conditions." According to Parker, users who continue to struggle with mail delivery can fill out this form.

AT&T is apparently upset that Verizon got all of the attention last week for their tests involving a new P2P system. The new P2P system, developed as part of a "P4P coalition" of researchers, carriers and P2P developers, is more efficient because it puts a priority on local peers, conserving the number of hops and therefore reducing network strain. The project's white paper (pdf) does mention that AT&T has been testing the system on their network as well. Both carriers are apparently eager to use Comcast's recent troubles with the FCC as a marketing advantage, though AT&T's planned use of piracy filters and slower VDSL network don't put in them in quite the same PR sweet spot as Verizon.

It looks like AT&T will be joining Comcast and others in charging consumers extra if they want to pay their bill over the phone with a human being. An anonymous AT&T employee tells the Consumerist that by May, AT&T will be charging $5 if you desire human phone contact during a bill payment.

AT&T says they'll be spending $1 billion worldwide this year on their network infrastructure, focusing in particular on running four undersea cables connecting North America and Asia-Pac. Like Verizon and Google, the carrier is responding to a massive surge in demand for bandwidth across the Pacific, which has about half the capacity that's running across the Atlantic. The press release from those cuddleable ragamuffins at AT&T says they'll also be adding new core MPLS routers in Europe, Asia and the U.S., beefing up existing data center hosting capacity and building a new hosting center in Bangalore.AT&T recently fired a PR shot at Comcast by posing as a cable customer and buying 150 cable connections from the company. After testing the network, the telco claimed most Comcast customers weren't getting the speeds they were advertised. With their FTTN plans unable to match the end throughput of DOCSIS 3.0 for most users, their execs have begun ramping up marketing the company as having a superior global network (though in this case they're primarily highlighting their enterprise capacity).

AT&T has announced that they've launched their U-Verse VoIP service (aka "U-Verse Voice") in Kansas City (the one in Kansas, not the one in Missouri). This is the service's third launch market, after previous launches in Detroit and portions of Connecticut.

AT&T this year will voluntarily put mechanisms in place that will filter pirated material from the company's network. No specific technology has been announced, but insiders say that AT&T has been testing a solution from Vobile since last Spring.

As we mentioned last week, AT&T has decided to raise the price of several of their DSL tiers by $5. The company's Basic (768kbps) tier is increasing from $14.95 to $19.95, their Express (1.5Mbps) tier is increasing from $19.99 to $25, and their Pro (3Mbps) service is increasing from $24.99 to $30.

The NY Times blog adds that the price changes, which begin February 16, do not impact BellSouth territory users, who were already paying more anyway. They also speak to industry analyst (and frequent cable stock cheerleader) Craig Moffet, who says that if you're waiting for a broadband price war, don't hold your breath:Of course we already knew that, given that AT&T has long desired non-price competition, and Comcast insists you pay more for their service because it's the telecom equivalent of a BMW.

Coming on the heels of an outage in AT&T's 3G and Edge network that affected many Midwestern states, the Chicago Tribune is reporting that the telco will be tacking on an additional $5 a month for its DSL service:
Apparently, customers paying for the highest-speed elite plan will not see an increase nor will those who have long-term contracts.

Back in October, AT&T purchased a significant amount of 700 MHz spectrum from Aloha Partners. When completed, the transaction would make AT&T the company holding the most spectrum excluding acquisitions made during the FCC auction (which began this week). At the time of the purchase announcement, AT&T said that they hoped to have all necessary government approvals to close the deal within 6-9 months. Less than four months later, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is pushing to get that deal approved by the rest of the FCC staff. He needs two votes out of four to make the deal happen but no decision has yet been made.

AT&T has finally unveiled their long-awaited new VoIP service, which the company is calling U-Verse Voice. The service, which will ultimately supplant AT&T's CallVantage service, is being launched first in Detroit.

Boing Boing's Gadgets editor Joel Johnson was asked to appear on The Hugh Thompson Show, an AT&T-produced program that airs on the AT&T Tech Channel. Johnson was obviously supposed to speak about gadgets, but instead used his allotted time questioning AT&T's plans to implement piracy filters across their network, which the show's producers apparently didn't appreciate.In a second take gadgets are discussed, but network neutrality and AT&T's relationship with the NSA become fodder for conversation.