In July of last year, Broadband Reports was the first to report that AT&T was cooking up a new 24 Mbps down 3 Mbps up tier for U-Verse users, and in December of last year the product launched under the "Max Turbo" brand. The tier, which costs $65 a month but requires you bundle other AT&T U-Verse products, was originally launched in Austin, San Antonio and St. Louis. According to an AT&T press statement today, AT&T has now expanded the availability of the tier to all of their U-Verse markets. AT&T currently offers U-Verse in 120 markets across 22 states.

AT&T chose to save cash by using copper instead of upgrading to fiber the the home. As such, while some people close to the CO see their U-Verse gateways sync at 100 Mbps, most people see about 25 Mbps of total bandwidth at about 2,500-3,000 feet from the VRAD or CO. AT&T's therefore continually engaged in a balancing act that involves using compression and real time traffic management to ensure broadband data and HD IPTV signals get along.

The faster speeds come courtesy of a new 32Mbps/5Mbps gateway profile that supports the higher speed. The upgrade will also eventually support three simultaneous HD streams -- something U-Verse users should see in fairly short order.

While 24 Mbps is certainly more than enough for the average user, it's quickly being overshadowed on the marketing front by deployment of cable industry 50 and 100 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0-based service. Repeatedly-delayed pair bonded VDSL will be AT&T's retort, with AT&T enlisting a second copper pair to each house (assuming an extra pair is available) to increase speeds and extend U-Verse's range. AT&T says they should be able to double the bandwidth they're currently delivering, though other estimates peg the speed bump at closer to 25-30%.

Of course like Verizon, more than half of AT&T's users still reside on last-generation DSL. Also like Verizon, there's been indications that AT&T is slowing down deployment of their "next generation" product into additional territories. In other words, many AT&T customers won't see anything resembling next-generation speeds for a very long time. However, if you're in a U-Verse market, things just got a little bit faster for you.