AT&T has announced it is bringing its U-verse broadband, telephone, and television system to Springfield, Missouri providing residents an alternative to cable service from Mediacom.

“We’re very excited to offer a competitive choice to Springfield consumers,” said Kris Ryan, general manager of AT&T Home Solutions for the greater Missouri region.

Unfortunately, most Springfield residents will have to wait before the service becomes available in their neighborhood.  AT&T has only limited service available in Springfield, Battlefield, Nixa, Republic and parts of Fremont Hills.  The company has a tradition of announcing U-verse, and then slowly deploying service on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis over the next several years.

Potential customers noticed, complaining that entire zip codes in and around the Springfield area currently do not have U-verse available.

When the service does arrive, residents can expect pricing ranging from $19 – $167 a month, depending on how many channels and what type of broadband speed is desired.

Mediacom can beat AT&T’s broadband speeds in Springfield, as it upgraded to DOCSIS 3 service, permitting customers to get up to 50Mbps service from the cable company. AT&T’s U-verse tops out at 18Mbps in the Springfield area.

Residents can check to see if U-verse is available at their address by visiting the AT&T U-verse qualification website.

[flv width=”360″ height=”260″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KSFX Springfield ATT Launches U-verse in the Ozarks 3-22-10.flv[/flv]

KSFX-TV in Springfield reports on the unveiling of U-verse in the greater Springfield area.  (1 minute)

The United States has a goal of 100Mbps ubiquitous broadband service by 2020.  Hong Kong residents already have access to speeds up to 1Gbps, leaving many unimpressed with the American broadband goals established in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan.

City Telecom CEO William Yeung called out the current state of American broadband, noting many Americans are still stuck with megabit speeds in the single digits, while 100+ megabit access is widely available across most of Hong Kong from fiber optic networks.

Yeung thinks 100Mbps service will be considered slow by the time 2020 rolls around, noting an insatiable demand for enhanced broadband speeds.

Google’s Think Big With a Gig project underlines Yeung’s beliefs as hundreds of American communities clamor to be among those chosen for a demonstration project that will deliver up to 1Gbps speed to homes and businesses on an all-fiber network.

Yeung rejects the notion that wiring Hong Kong was a natural for super-fast fiber optic broadband just because of its dense population, reducing potential costs.

“I think it’s a matter of short term vs. long term thinking,” Yeung told Bloomberg News.

According to Yeung, American broadband providers are afraid constructing super-fast broadband lanes threaten to cannibalize their existing revenue streams, especially from cable television.  That’s because Americans could end up dropping their cable packages in favor of watching everything online.  Yeung also thinks Wall Street is preoccupied with short-term Return on Investment, making it difficult to upgrade to fiber service despite the enormous potential long term revenue, even in rural areas.

For Yeung, it’s all about marketing the benefits of fiber.  His company, City Telecom, is busily signing new subscribers despite the fact the island already enjoys near-universal broadband access.  Offering faster speeds and better service will drive customers to switch providers, Yeung believes.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Yeung Says Hong Kong Broadband 10 Years Ahead of U.S 3-19-10.flv[/flv]

Bloomberg News talked with City Telecom CEO William Yeung about fiber-optic broadband and the fact Hong Kong is well ahead of the United States on broadband speed and service.  (4 minutes)

[flv width=”600″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/City Telecom Promo.flv[/flv]

City Telecom’s HKBN service has a history of running bizarre advertising.  One recent example is included here, along with a short promotional video touting the company’s accomplishments in constructing an all-fiber network.  (4 minutes)

Cincinnati residents relying on Time Warner analog cable are finding four fewer channels on their lineup since last August — two of which have been dropped this month.  Residents with digital-ready televisions will find many more missing, albeit temporarily, as of tomorrow.

Time Warner Cable in Cincinnati is moving channels around, including shifting former analog channels to digital and repositioning others in an effort to create additional space for new HD networks on the local cable system.

John Kiesewetter, the Cincinnati Enquirer‘s media blogger noticed the disappearing act last summer when two regional PBS stations — WPTD-TV Dayton and WCVN-TV Covington, Kentucky were dropped from the analog lineup.

This month, two more channels joined those PBS stations on the digital cable tier — Great American Country and Style.

Kiesewetter notes expanded basic customers’ bills remained the same, despite the loss of four channels from their lineup.  Company officials said customers can continue to watch all four channels by upgrading to digital cable for an additional fee, a prospect that bothers Kiesewetter:

Not everyone wants/can afford digital cable, despite all the TWC ads about bundling and locking in rates. The bottom line is if you’re a country music fan, you’ll have to pay more (getting digital cable) to see GAC.

Kiesewetter

“We realize this is unfortunate for GAC fans, but Time Warner Cable has decided to move GAC to Channel 255 to make  room for additional services,” Scott Durand, vice president, marketing for GAC told Kiesewetter. “Fans with only the expanded basic level of service will need to contact Time Warner  Cable to upgrade to digital in order to continue viewing GAC, the country music network that actually plays music.”

In fact, Time Warner Cable is dropping analog channels to make room for additional HD networks, which are digitally compressed and can be delivered in greater numbers than their analog counterparts.  Comcast customers across the country are also familiar with the erosion of analog cable channels in favor of digital for precisely the same reason — freeing up additional space.

But the result is almost always no reduction in rates for analog-only subscribers, despite the shrinking number of channels.

Cincinnati residents with cable-ready digital televisions may find an even smaller lineup waiting for them tomorrow morning.  That’s because Time Warner is shifting most of the local channels to new channel positions, again to make room for new HD networks.  Those with older sets or who use a Time Warner cable box will not notice anything, but those with HD, digital ready sets will need to rescan their channels to allow the TV to map their new channel positions.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WLWT Cincinnati Time Warner Cable Customers Need to Rescan TVs 3-24-10.flv[/flv]

WLWT-TV Cincinnati educates viewers step-by-step on how to rescan their television sets to pick up local stations’ new channel positions.  (1 minute)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WCPO Cincinnati Time Warner Customers May Have to Rescan TVs 3-23-10.flv[/flv]

WCPO-TV in Cincinnati is also impacted by Time Warner Cable’s changes, and explains exactly who is affected.  (1 minute)

Cricket, the mobile provider best known for its urban and youth-targeted commercials, Tuesday launched nationwide “talk and text” service through a new roaming agreement with Sprint and others that delivers unlimited calling for $30 a month.

That’s $10 a month cheaper than any other prepaid nationwide unlimited plan currently available in the United States.  Competitors MetroPCS, which owns its own network charges $40 a month for unlimited service, and TracFone Wireless’ Straight Talk, which uses Verizon Wireless’ network, costs $45 a month.

The other players in the prepaid market will have to match Cricket or face the consequences.

However, Cricket’s new calling plan and extended roaming service agreements do not include mobile broadband coverage.  Cricket provides that service through its own CDMA network providing a mix of 1X and 3G coverage, primarily in its home markets.

Cricket’s “talk and text” expansion means more than 125 U.S. cities can now sign up for Cricket service.  Most of those cities will actually depend on Sprint’s cell towers to place and receive calls.  Cricket subscribers also benefit from the expanded roaming capabilities the company now offers, although customers should verify coverage carefully before signing up.  Using a designated “roaming area” will set you back 25 cents per minute.

For customers choosing service plans of $40 or more, Cricket now offers unlimited international long distance calling to landlines in select cities and towns in more than 100 countries (including unlimited calls to landlines in Mexico) and unlimited text messages to Mexico for an additional $15 a month.

“We believe our nationwide coverage and enhanced service plan structure represents the highest value offer in the wireless marketplace,” said Al Moschner, executive vice president and chief operating officer for Cricket. “Cricket continues to deliver greater value by providing a diversified portfolio of products and payment options and now offers and supports those products everywhere our customers live, work and travel. Each of these new service plans positions the Cricket brand as the wireless leader in the unlimited, no-contract segment of the wireless industry.”

Existing Cricket customers need to contact customer service to switch rate plans if they wish to take advantage of “nationwide talk and text coverage.”  For most customers, there is no change in rates — just a change in their plan designation.

Cricket's new national coverage map (click to enlarge)

All new rate plans include nationwide talk coverage. Changes to previous rate plans are noted below:

The Federal Communications Commission is catching on to a long-known telecommunications industry secret — always provide top quality, showcase service in areas where the movers and shakers of power and politics can make your life easy or hard.  Early results from the Broadband.gov national speed test project confirm this is still the case.  After a few weeks of testing, the FCC reports America’s best broadband speeds are available in and near two cities – Washington, DC and New York, NY.

In Virginia and Maryland, where most of DC’s workers-by-day commute home to at night, average download speeds topped out at 11-13Mbps.  Upstream speeds were, on average, best in the nation at around 3.6-4.3Mbps.  In New York and Massachusetts, where Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable predominate, average downstream speed was 11.6-13.6Mbps, but upstream speed in the northeast suffered more thanks to upstate New York and western Massachusetts dragging the numbers down.

Several critics have joined Stop the Cap!‘s concern that the two speed tests, provided by Ookla and M-Lab, are providing widely different results.  The FCC plans to expand the available speed test options shortly to attempt to get a wider sampling of broadband speeds.

Despite this, Jordan Usdan, an attorney-advisor to the Broadband Task Force, claims the group is happy with the results:

87% of test takers are home users, which is the FCC’s target audience with this application. Additionally, a clear trend is visible across business sizes, high bandwidth connectivity for community institutions, and lower bandwidth for mobile connections. Again, these results are non-scientific extrapolations from the Beta version of the Consumer Broadband test. Additionally, about 98% of user submitted addresses are geo-coding correctly, which is a very good rate.

Thus far, Californians have taken the most speed tests, but their results are less impressive than those enjoyed on the Atlantic seaboard — average downstream speeds in the state are 10.1 to 11.5Mbps; upstream speeds are 2.1 to 2.6Mbps.

Where are the worst speeds?  In the Northern Plains states, where rural populations predominate.  Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana delivered the worst combined upload/download speed results.  But speeds are only marginally better in the midwest and southeast — with lots of low scores in the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Mississippi.  Customers in northern New England stuck with FairPoint Communications also have little to celebrate.