If you thought waiting three days for a service call was too long, you haven’t talked with Tod Robberson, editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News. AT&T has scheduled his U-verse installation 23 years from now.

Robberson has been buried in AT&T promotional mailings pushing its U-verse fiber to the neighborhood service he was ready to sign up for two years ago, but wasn’t yet available in his neighborhood. Dozens of mailings arriving this summer indicated that finally changed and he was ready to see the back of Time Warner Cable:

I phoned one day after receiving my first notice. I signed up immediately for service. The friendly sales person told me because of high demand, she couldn’t set an installation date for sooner than two weeks. Whatever. Fine. We agreed on August 19, somewhere between 9 and 11 a.m. I couldn’t wait.

Then, on August 16, they called with bad news. They needed to delay the installation for another week. Big disappointment, but I could live with it, I thought.

A week later, they called again and said there was another delay. The lines in my area needed “conditioning.” Each week since then, I’ve received a call from an AT&T person telling me about the conditioning problem. I finally offered to get out my own bottle of conditioner and do it myself. They didn’t get the joke.

Finally, today, I escalated. I talked to Gilbert in Complaints. Gilbert the Problem Solver. He heard me out. I told Gilbert that AT&T had me at hello. I was just dying to get U-verse and was very frustrated that no one at AT&T would listen. I could swear he even giggled a little when I made the “bottle of conditioner” joke. Then he did some checking around and told me that, well, truth be told, I could be waiting another year before they got around to installing my service. That’s right, one year.

Turns out that Gilbert was optimistic. I went online today with AT&T just to make sure I didn’t misread the notice I got from AT&T. Did they really tell me that service was now available? Well, I couldn’t have signed up if it wasn’t. AT&T’s system is set up to block you if your neighborhood isn’t ready.

But now, the “due date” on my installation has changed. It reads: 12/31/2036.

Dallas is home to the headquarters of AT&T and was an early adopter of U-verse. But AT&T has won the right under state law to decide when and where it chooses to deploy the service, leaving a large number of Dallas residents waiting since its introduction in 2010.

For the foreseeable future, Robberson’s tree-infested, satellite-unfriendly neighborhood is stuck with one choice for pay television and broadband: Time Warner Cable.

The shutdown of non-essential government services that began early this morning apparently also applies to non-human digital data at the Federal Communications Commission, because employees heading home on furlough from the federal agency brought down the agency’s website on the way out the door and replaced it with a basic page that looks straight out of 1986:

The melodramatic response to the impasse in Washington was not repeated by most other federal agencies.

The web site for the EPA is still up and running with a subtle banner indicating it would not be updated until the shutdown was resolved. The same is true at the Department of Education, the Department of the Treasury, the EEOC, HHS, and the Department of Labor, to name a few.

Even the government-funded Voice of America, Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio/TV Marti, and Radio Sawa are all soldiering on, despite the loss of about 60 percent of the staff at the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

But VOA News did outsource its editorial column on student issues to China. A Chinese student studying in the United States compared the U.S. government’s financial-related actions in Washington with those in Beijing.

Instead of worrying about contacting the FCC or other government agencies in an emergency, we suggest you instead use the contact form on this website. As America saw last week, he has plenty of time to spare.

*-Terms, conditions, and a whole lot more applies.

Austin residents are getting spoiled with promises of gigabit broadband — the first major city in the country offered a competitive choice of 1,000Mbps Internet providers — Google and AT&T.

But one of those claiming to offer a “100-percent fiber Internet broadband network that will deliver up to 1Gbps per second,” is already fudging on that commitment before activating its first fiber customer.

AT&T’s sudden interest in selling 1,000Mbps service came as a surprise to Austin residents that have been told for years their broadband service was fast enough as is. Grande Communications had been the choice for customers seeking the fastest speeds — they sell up to 110/5Mbps for $110 a month. Time Warner Cable still tops out at 50Mbps and AT&T’s U-verse, still not fully deployed in Texas, sold up to 24Mbps ‘screaming fast’ Max Turbo service as its top offering until recently, when AT&T began limited roll-out of up to 45Mbps service.

Mere hours after Google announced Austin as its next choice for Google Fiber, “me-too” AT&T was announcing it would build its own gigabit fiber to the home network in the same city. That was a complete 180 for AT&T, which has consistently argued that running fiber to the home was an unnecessary expense. While Verizon faced the wrath of Wall Street for its decision to launch FiOS — an all-fiber-network — analysts were complaining Verizon was spending too much while AT&T was spending considerably less on its fiber to the neighborhood U-verse system that keeps existing copper wire into the home.

Right from the beginning, AT&T has always accompanied certain terms and conditions for any fiber deployment — winning equal concessions that Google received from local officials with respect to pole attachment fees, zoning, permits, and other expenses. If those were not forthcoming, AT&T could walk away from its fiber commitment at any time.

On Monday, AT&T announced it had started deploying fiber for AT&T U-verse with GigaPower, with a plan to launch in December in neighborhoods with the highest number of votes to get the service. AT&T is taking names and numbers of interested customers seeking to show their interest in fiber service. No deposit or commitment is required to vote, but you will be placed on AT&T’s marketing mailing lists.

“Austin embodies innovation and social consciousness, and is the heart of a vibrant, ever-evolving tech culture and entrepreneurial spirit,” said Dave Nichols, president of AT&T Texas. “With our all-fiber U-verse services, we are building the foundation for a new wave of innovation for Austin’s consumers, businesses, and civic and educational institutions. It’s about engaging the full community and empowering the city and its people with all that technology can offer us. This investment will help attract new business and new jobs to Austin.”

Phillip Dampier

As long as those consumers, businesses, and jobs are within the first deployment zone for AT&T’s fiber network.

For the rest of this year and well into the next, that will be a very exclusive neighborhood.

AT&T’s press release claims it will “initially reach tens of thousands of customer locations throughout Austin and surrounding areas this year, with additional local expansion planned in 2014.”

The five-county Austin–Round Rock metropolitan area has a population of 1,834,303 residents. Assuming AT&T managed to offer fiber service to 100,000 residents — and that is a generous figure, that represents only 5.5% of Greater Austin. The old U-verse is still a work in progress in several Texas cities, so it could take years for AT&T to deploy fiber in Austin. Expect AT&T to start with the low-hanging fruit — multi-dwelling units such as apartments, condos, and other similar buildings, some that already have existing fiber connections in place.

AT&T may never get around to offering fiber to more rural locations in Austin’s suburbs: “There are many factors involved in stringing an advanced fiber network, so having your neighbors vote to be notified about U-verse with GigaPower is no guarantee we’ll get to your neighborhood first, but it does give us some idea of where we want to focus our efforts; and besides, things are always more fun when we work together.”

AT&T is already backing away from its commitment to offer gigabit service, at least initially.

“The December launch will initially feature symmetrical speeds of up to 300Mbps, […] with an upgrade to speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second when available in mid-2014, and at no extra cost,” AT&T writes in its press release.

Speaking of cost, nobody at AT&T is willing to give us one for the 1,000 300Mbps launch tier.

If AT&T is smart, it better set it lower than what Google is likely to charge, considering AT&T will initially only deliver less than 1/3rd of the promised gigabit speed.

While thinking about that, AT&T might also want to dump usage caps. The fastest U-verse tiers come with a 250GB usage allowance, which can really crimp a screaming fast fiber experience once your allowance runs out.

A website glitch by Verizon Wireless last weekend let customers with legacy unlimited data plans to upgrade to a new subsidized smartphone on a two-year contract and keep unlimited data.

This afternoon, Verizon Wireless representatives confirmed they will honor upgrades from customers that took advantage of the mistake, despite the fact Verizon’s CEO has gone out of his way to declare unlimited data service “unsustainable.”

Over the past weekend, there was a software issue involving some orders for customers seeking to upgrade their devices. A number of customers who were upgrading devices were able to maintain an unlimited monthly data feature while paying a subsidized price. Verizon Wireless will honor those orders that were approved this past weekend, allowing those customers to retain their unlimited plans for the duration of their contract and receive their new device. Verizon Wireless corrected this software issue today.  The company no longer offers unlimited data plans and customers who want to retain existing unlimited data plans, must pay full retail price for a replacement phone.

Verizon Wireless discontinued offering unlimited use data plans, but has allowed customers still on those plans to keep them indefinitely. Last year, Verizon Wireless amended its policy for grandfathered unlimited customers denying them access to subsidized, discounted devices unless they switched to a usage-based plan. A website error allowed unlimited customers to bypass a usual restriction requiring them to abandon their unlimited plan to complete the upgrade order. Dozens of customers reported this morning they had received their new phones with unlimited data still intact. With the glitch fixed, customers attempting to upgrade will once again need to give up unlimited data in return for a device discount.

Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said last week offering unlimited data service was “unsustainable” as a matter of physics. McAdam said carriers still offering unlimited data will be overwhelmed by excessive customer use, running wireless networks “out of gas.”

Sprint countered it has plenty of “runway” to continue selling unlimited data service, and even offers a “lifetime guarantee” of unlimited service on its wireless network.

At least one Wall Street analyst agreed with Sprint.

“This Verizon comment simply makes no sense. When two different people look at the same thing you often get two completely different perspectives. That’s what is happening here. It does not mean either is right or wrong, just different,” said tech analyst Jeff Kagan. “Unlimited wireless data may not make sense for Verizon Wireless for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they want to have some control over how much wireless data is being used. Perhaps they want to increase their profitability. Whatever the reason, this is Verizon’s belief and they are not wrong, for Verizon. Sprint is a different story.”

Sprint’s chief financial officer Joe Euteneuer, speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference in New York on Thursday, said Sprint’s acquisition of 2.5GHz radio spectrum from Clearwire will give it a capacity edge once its 4G network build-out is done in mid-2014.

“We feel very good about our positioning having that spectrum . .. and our portfolio spectrum vs. the competition,” Euteneuer said. “So we’ll get leverage there.”

“Sprint’s unlimited plans are the right idea at the right time,” added Kagan. “They have plenty of capacity on the network. Sprint in fact has much more spectrum than Verizon. Sprint needs to hang on to their existing customer base and attract new users. If Sprint charged the same as Verizon or AT&T they would lose. So Sprint needs to attract attention. That’s what always happens in a market. The leaders and the followers take different marketing and positioning angles. And that’s exactly what is happening here.”

If “follow the money” is a maxim in business, then it should come as no surprise Verizon favors the making the bulk of its investments and expansion in its enormously profitable wireless business.

Verizon Wireless earned the company $12.9 billion in operating profits during the first six months of 2013 while landlines and Verizon’s fiber optic network only delivered $87 million. That inconsistency may help explain why Verizon FiOS expansion is stalled while Verizon throws enormous sums into its 4G LTE wireless upgrade project.

The average Verizon Wireless bill is now over $150 a month. FiOS customers pay an average of over $150 a month as well, but Verizon’s costs to reach its smaller customer footprint are higher. Revenues for basic landline service are considerably lower than either wireless or fiber service.

With wireless providing a virtual ATM for Verizon Communications, the New York Times notes it is unsurprising that Verizon wants to buy out its European partner Vodafone, which owns 45% of Verizon Wireless. Once the $130 billion transaction is complete, Verizon will keep wireless profits all to itself as it continues lobbying for permission to decommission rural landlines and encourage those customers to use its vastly more profitable and almost entirely unregulated wireless network instead.

Exactly 100 years after Verizon predecessor AT&T/The Bell System voluntarily agreed to be a regulated monopoly provider of telephone service, Verizon Wireless and AT&T have successfully established unregulated wireless networks that serve most Americans with cell service and wireless data at prices that would be shocking to people 20 years ago.