AT&T has introduced 23 new communities and adjacent service areas in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Texas, and Tennessee to the possibility of getting gigabit broadband speeds, if customers are willing to wait for AT&T to reach their home or small business.

Here are the latest cities on AT&T’s new launch list:

• Florida: Coral Gables, Homestead, Miami Gardens, North Miami, Oviedo, Sanford, and Parkland
• Georgia: Alpharetta, Cartersville, Duluth, East Point, Avondale Estates, Jonesboro, and Rome
• Illinois: Bolingbrook, Mundelein, Shorewood, Elmwood Park, Volo, and parts of Munster, Ind.
• North Carolina: Clemmons, Garner, Holly Springs and Salisbury
• Tennessee: Spring Hill and Gallatin
• Texas:  Hunters Creek Village and Rosenberg

AT&T claims its fiber to the home service will eventually reach more than 14 million customers across its service area, but adds it will only reach a fraction of them – one million – by the end of 2015. Most customers will have around a 7% chance of getting gigabit speeds from AT&T this year.

Warren

In Salisbury, N.C., where Fibrant delivers community-owned broadband at speeds up to 10Gbps, AT&T gave space in its press release for Rep. Harry Warren, the local Republican member of the state House of Representatives, to praise the phone company.

“I’m excited about this new development, and appreciate AT&T’s continued investment in Rowan County,” Warren said.

Warren says he fought to protect Fibrant from a 2011 state law — drafted by the state’s largest phone and cable companies — that effectively outlawed community-owned broadband competition. But he, along with most of his Republican colleagues, also voted in favor of it.

Earlier this year, Federal Communications Commission chairman Thomas Wheeler announced the FCC would pre-empt municipal broadband bans in North Carolina and Tennessee. Warren told the Salisbury Post he wondered if Wheeler was guilty of “federal overreach.”

“That’s my biggest concern about it,” he said.

Both AT&T and Time Warner Cable have been regular contributors to Warren’s campaigns since 2010.

Brock

State Sen. Andrew Brock, also a Republican, told the newspaper Wheeler’s actions show how out of touch the Obama Administration is with “technology and the pocketbooks of American families.”

“I find it interesting that a bureaucrat that is not beholden to the people can make such a claim without going through Congress,” Brock said.

The year Brock voted in favor of banning community broadband competition in North Carolina, he received $3,750 from telecom companies. This election cycle, Time Warner Cable is his second largest contributor. AT&T and CenturyLink also each donated $1,000 to Brock’s campaign fund.

While AT&T is free to expand its gigabit U-verse upgrade as fast or as slow as it chooses, the community providers that delivered gigabit speeds well before AT&T are limited by state law from expanding service outside of their original service areas or city limits. In plain English, that effectively gives AT&T state-sanctioned authority to decide who will receive gigabit speeds and who will not.

The FCC’s pre-emption, if upheld despite ongoing challenges from Republican lawmakers on the state and federal level, could allow Fibrant to join forces with other municipal providers in North Carolina to expand fiber broadband to new communities around the state.

Comcast is accelerating its rollout of compulsory usage caps, adding new markets in the southern U.S. to its three-year old “trial” of what it calls its “data usage plan.” DSL Reports received a tip Comcast is now sending e-mail to affected customers.

Little Rock, Ark., Houma, LaPlace, and Shreveport, La., as well as Galax, Va., will be treated to Comcast’s 300GB usage cap with a $10 per 50GB overlimit fee beginning Dec. 1. These three states join Florida, Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, Maine, Mississippi, South Carolina and Arizona, which now face Comcast’s form of usage rationing.

In Tennessee, Comcast is introducing its 300GB cap in Johnson City, Gray, and Greenville. The cable operator is also risking customers by introducing caps in Chattanooga, where it already faces serious competition from gigabit provider EPB, which has no usage limits, and AT&T U-verse, which doesn’t dare enforce its own 250GB cap.

Comcast began rapidly expanding its usage cap trial this fall, with new markets being announced for usage limits about once a month.

Chattanooga resident Ron Rogers called to cancel his Comcast service this afternoon. He’s giving up a good promotional discount Comcast offered to keep him a customer back in January and is headed to EPB Fiber.

“This was the last straw for Comcast,” Rogers tells Stop the Cap! “I am tired of being abused by these people. They must be crazy to think anyone who seriously uses the Internet is going to tolerate this when there are two other providers smart enough to realize usage caps are ridiculous in this day and age. Comcast can shove it.”

Comcast’s spreading usage caps are not popular with customers. Within hours of the news Comcast would be expanding its cap “trial,” more than 900 negative comments appeared on Reddit slamming the company.

“It is just staggering that despite all the bad press, publicity and truly awful service, Comcast is actually taking calculated measures to make things worse,” wrote one Reddit commenter.

Comcast’s frequent defense of its usage plan is that the majority of its customers will never be affected by it, consuming less than 40GB a month. But those with experience living under Comcast’s cap tell Stop the Cap! anyone playing downloadable video games or using online video are at serious risk of being charged penalty overlimit fees.

“It is very easy to hit 100GB just downloading game updates and if you watch your shows online, you will come uncomfortably close to the cap,” said Pat Kershaw in Kentucky. “Leaving a live video stream running overnight one night by mistake after I fell asleep meant a Netflix-free weekend for me last month, because it would have put me past my allowance. Hulu’s autoplay feature is also very dangerous.”

Hans says any household with kids will quickly learn Comcast isn’t being honest claiming usage caps only affect a “few customers” after they start getting warning messages injected into their web browser.

“What is worse is every time I call support about the messages that I am getting on the 18th of the month because I have already burned through my limit with my kids watching all their online content, support keeps putting me back on the queue for the next person or dropping the line,” Hans writes. “No one wants to deal with it!”

Those web warning messages also become intrusive for many customers, because some claim they never go away until the end of the billing cycle.

“I made sure to go over the 300GB cap this month to see what would happen and I received a phone call telling me I’ve went over and now I receive a popup from Comcast on my computer about every 30 seconds telling me I’ve went over as well,” writes Gldoorii. “The popups never stop. I have to deal with them until the end of the month as they keep interrupting my work.”

Other Comcast customers have grown suspicious about the company’s usage measurement tool, which in some cases reported spikes in usage only after the cap began to be enforced.

“I checked my data usage on Oct. 21 and it said I only used 162GB,” writes Sharon. “I even have [a screenshot] and saved it as I had a feeling Comcast would pull something. [On] Oct. 23, I had a pop-up on my computer that says ‘you have used 292 of 300GB’ and I went to the data usage and it shows that. Nobody in my house downloaded any huge files the past two days. So, is Comcast artificially pumping up our usage to make us go over or what? It is impossible that I only used 162GB for 21 days and then used 130GB the past two days.”

Sharon is lucky her usage meter is working. Other customers report Comcast’s meter often stops working for weeks.

“My data usage meter still does not work and it has been 19 days,” says Gldoorii. “No chat or support person has been able to figure out why it doesn’t work and that I need to call or chat whenever I want to ask what my usage is.”

Customers who want out also get the Comcast treatment as they head for the exit.

“We were charged a $150 early termination fee because Comcast does not consider imposing a usage cap to be a material change to our contract, which is unbelievable,” writes Anna Lu in Ft. Lauderdale. “These guys are nothing less than crooks and they only forgave it after my roommate complained to the Better Business Bureau. They said they were doing us a favor forgiving the charge. No wonder everyone hates Comcast.”

But not everyone is unhappy about Comcast’s usage caps.

“Our call center volumes are way up ever since Comcast brought caps to Atlanta and Florida,” reports an AT&T sales representative who agreed to talk to Stop the Cap! if we kept his identity private. “It’s common knowledge we do not enforce any caps on U-verse although we cannot tell customers that officially, but most never even ask. We’re signing up ex-Comcast customers right and left. They are not happy we cannot give them the same speeds Comcast does, but they won’t have to worry about a cap from us, at least for now.”

Other customers are waiting impatiently for Google Fiber or other competitors.

“In Atlanta Comcast now offers an unlimited data option add on to your plan for additional $35,” writes a customer on Comcast’s support forum. “So now we get to pay over $100 for 25Mbps service whereas Google Fiber [in] Atlanta [charges] $70 for one gigabit service and no data cap.”

In July, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts downplayed the impact of the company’s usage caps with investors, suggesting some customers actually supported the usage plans.

“We do have a few trials going on in different markets,” Roberts said. “The responses have been neutral to slightly positive. We don’t have any plans on expanding that to other market/bases anytime soon.”

Frontier Communications continues to face challenges keeping customers in its legacy copper wire service areas, where only modest investments in network upgrades have proved insufficient to stop customers shopping around for better service.

Company officials reported a loss of about 30,000 residential customers during the last quarter, a drop of nearly 1% of its total customer base. Nearly 2% of Frontier’s business customers also took their business elsewhere, leaving the company with 3.1 million remaining residential customers and 294,000 business customers.

Frontier CEO Dan McCarthy blamed many of the customer losses on customers moving.

“During the summer, we do tend to see an uptick in customer [losses] that might have double play and in some cases triple play, as they move or make their decisions about moving their homes to a different location,” McCarthy said, claiming that most of Frontier’s losses overall came from voice-only customers.

As Frontier expands rural broadband opportunities, the phone company is still adding Internet customers, picking up a net gain of 27,200 broadband accounts. The company depends heavily on broadband to replace revenue lost from landline disconnects.

“We continue to see more customers choose higher-speed broadband products,” McCarthy said on a conference call to investors earlier today. “In the third quarter, 47% of the broadband activity was above the basic speed tier of 6Mbps. More than 70% of our residential broadband customers are still utilizing our basic speed tier, so we have substantial opportunity to improve our average revenue per customer as they upgrade their service.”

McCarthy offered no statistics about how many of Frontier’s DSL customers can substantially upgrade their speeds using Frontier’s existing infrastructure. Many Frontier broadband customers have complained their speeds reflect the maximum capacity of Frontier’s network in the immediate area, and many claim they do not consistently receive the speed level Frontier advertises.

Service is appreciably better in areas upgraded before being acquired by Frontier. McCarthy said some areas of Connecticut, acquired from AT&T, are now able to get speed “in excess of 100Mbps over our copper infrastructure.”

“Over time, we will be expanding the technology we use for 100Mbps in Connecticut to more of our markets elsewhere,” McCarthy promised. “In our FiOS markets, we already offer speed up to one gigabit and we have seen the benefit of offering these higher speeds as customers choose speed tiers to match their lifestyle choices.”

Frontier also separately notified the Federal Communications Commission it has no immediate plans to slap usage caps or metered service on customers.

“Frontier does not apply usage-based pricing to any of its broadband offerings,” Frontier said in an FCC filing. “Frontier has no plans at this time to offer a metered broadband service. We continue to monitor the market and continue to consider a usage-based offering as an option.”

Frontier suggested several factors would be considered when discussing usage-based billing: “the FCC’s Open Internet rules, policies of other companies, consumer demand, network capacity, and cost, among other factors.”

Google Fiber today announced it would accept applications from Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, and Tampa to become the next cities qualified for its fiber to the home service.

We’re inviting Oklahoma City, OK, Jacksonville, FL and Tampa, FL, to explore bringing Google Fiber to their communities, as we did last month with three other cities. These growing tech-hubs have a strong entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to small business growth. Their list of accolades is long—from Jacksonville’s title as a top 10 city for tech jobs, to Tampa Bay’s #2 spot on the list of best cities for young entrepreneurs, to Oklahoma City’s recognition as the #1 city to launch a business. One of our goals is to make sure speed isn’t an accidental ceiling for how people and businesses use the Web, and these cities are the perfect places to show what’s possible with gigabit Internet.

Google continues its informal boycott of the northeastern United States, where community interest in fiber service has been rebuffed through a lack of responsiveness.

The three latest cities will have to prove they can meet Google’s extensive list of requirements on everything from zoning to pole attachment access and fees. Things that tend to upset Google include endless zoning paperwork, intransigent bureaucracy, and dealing with an excess of county, city, town, and village governments (states in the northeast are also often notorious for layers of local government, all demanding compliance with local codes.) Communities are even expected to get their arborist on board.

Local governments that take the attitude Google must win them over are unlikely to ever see the service. Those that bend over backwards to accommodate the fiber project are the ones managing successful applications. In other words, ask not what Google can do for you, ask what you can do for Google.

Tampa is the first city invited to apply that is also served by Verizon FiOS, although Verizon is in the process of selling its wired networks in Florida to Frontier Communications. Tampa’s cable competitor is Bright House Networks, itself in the process of being sold to Charter Communications. Jacksonville is Comcast and AT&T country and OKC is served by AT&T and Cox Communications.

Making it to the invitation list does not guarantee Google Fiber service, although most local governments are lobbied by their constituents to do whatever is necessary to secure fiber competition.

Sanders

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called out Verizon’s employment practices in a speech Monday delivered in solidarity with Verizon workers conducting informational picketing as they continue to fight for a new contract with the phone company.

“Their greed knows no bounds,” Sanders told the crowd in Manhattan. “Verizon is a metaphor. You got corporate America making huge profits, their CEO’s getting huge compensation packages, and then with all of their money what they do is hire lawyers in order to make it harder for workers to survive in this country. Workers need decent pay raises, they need decent health care, and they need decent pensions.” Whenever they’re injured, they must be well-compensated. If not, they have the right to contact a work comp lawyer.

It was the first time any major presidential contender joined a worker protest since Jesse Jackson joined a protest against a strike-breaking firm in 1988.

“Let me get to the point,” Sanders said at a picket line outside of a Verizon Wireless store. “The middle class in this country is disappearing and what Verizon is doing to their workers is exactly what has got to be fought if we are going to rebuild the American middle class. What this campaign is about is that corporate America can’t have it all.”

“I think Verizon needs to hear from the American people,” Sanders added. “We want them to create more broadband. We want them to pay their workers a decent wage. We want them to sit down and negotiate a decent contract.”

A Verizon spokesperson dismissed Sanders’ speech as “a stunt.”

Sanders is no stranger to telecom issues in the northeastern U.S. He remains a fierce critic of FairPoint Communications, which acquired Verizon landlines in the northern New England states of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. After the company declared bankruptcy reorganization, FairPoint workers went on strike after the firm imposed the elimination of all retirement benefits, health care coverage, pensions, and job security.

Sanders sponsored a Thanksgiving dinner for the strikers and their families in Vermont at the Burlington High School. He is a frequent critic of corporate mergers in the telecommunications marketplace.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bernie Sanders Verizon Rally 10-26-15.mp4[/flv]

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) attacks Verizon’s corporate policies at a union picket outside a Verizon Wireless store in Manhattan. (5:25)