'AT&T has a only had about a year since the takeover to clean up the bell south territory.'
Clean up? Seriously. Clean us up?
Simple answer here. Too many connections across equipment (modems, for one) that can't handle hundreds of connections opening and closing. That's a differentiator between at&t and bellsouth.
I have to agree with this. Bellsouth may have been a bunch of "good ol boys" but they had a much better network than SBC/AT&T with much loftier goals than U-Verse.