*-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.

Since 2005, five cable and telephone companies and their respective lobbying trade associations have donated nearly $12 million to New York politicians, making Big Telecom companies among the biggest political donors in the state. Now a government reform group wants an investigation by the state’s anti-corruption commission.

By exploiting giant loopholes in New York’s campaign finance laws, telecom companies that used to live with annual campaign finance limits of $5,000 are now donating millions to powerful political leaders in Albany – the majority conferences in the legislature, the state party committees, and the governor. Some are using secretive “housekeeping” accounts controlled by political parties. Others hide behind shadowy contributions from “limited liability corporations” (LLCs) established by some of the state’s biggest cable and phone companies and treated under current law as living, breathing people.

“Big Telecom exemplifies the pay-to-play culture which has come to define Albany, giving generously to the leadership in exchange for veto power over bills which favor the public interest,” said Common Cause-New York executive director Susan Lerner.

The Optimum donor to state “housekeeping” accounts among telecom providers is Cablevision.

No telecom company donates more in New York than Cablevision, which has given more than $5.3 million in contributions to state politicians since 2005 as it fights its way through union problems, fierce competition from Verizon, and complaints from subscribers about rising cable prices and questionable service. The cable company doesn’t just donate in name-only. Common Cause-NY discovered Cablevision using eight different LLCs to evade contribution limits, handing over $1.5 million to candidates and committees. Gov. Andrew Cuomo received $130,000 from four different Cablevision-controlled LLCs between July and October 2010. On April 29 of this year, former Nassau County executive Tom Suozzi’s campaign received $190,000 from three Cablevision-controlled LLCs on that single day.

Verizon (82%) and Time Warner Cable (70%) prefer to quietly give the largest percentage of their political donations to the parties’ secretive, soft money “housekeeping” accounts. The Republican and Democratic recipients are not using the money to buy Endust, mops or spare light bulbs, although the average voter might assume as much.

Corporations with an agenda just love New York’s hush-hush “housekeeping” accounts because they come without dollar limits or complete disclosure about how the money was ultimately spent.

The State Board of Elections says “housekeeping” money is supposed to go toward maintaining a party’s headquarters and staff or “ordinary activities that are not for the express purpose of promoting the candidacy of specific candidates.” Unfortunately, nobody bothered to require detailed accounting, allowing funds to disappear down a political rabbit hole, to be distributed at each party’s discretion.

Comcast (59%) and AT&T (53%) are considerably smaller players, in part because neither company serves many wired cable/broadband customers in New York.

Verizon’s corporate PAC also likes to raise relatively large numbers of small contributions given in the name of company executives or employees, not necessarily mentioning the company itself. Campaign finance disclosures may list only the individuals’ contribution(s), not the company that signed their paycheck.

Where does all the money go?

Common Cause-NY says most of the money is channeled to the most influential politicians in the state, with minority parties and unelected candidates typically getting much less.

To gain influence on the state level, Big Telecom companies contribute to the governor, attorney general, and the majority parties controlling the state Assembly and Senate, with Republicans getting the lion’s share (over $3.5 million) in the Senate and Democrats (over $1.6 million) in the Assembly.

For local issues of interest to the state’s local cable and phone companies, contributions are funneled to influential county-level political machines, perhaps helpful in making life difficult for a competing Wi-Fi project, a municipal fiber network, or helping to cut red tape to place a cell tower in a controversial location.

The top six recipients of Big Telecom’s political cash in the legislature:

• Key Party Leaders: Dean Skelos ($117,700), Tom Libous ($57,150), Jeff Klein ($49,450), and Sheldon Silver ($32,749.61)
• Current and former Chairs of the Senate Energy and Telecom Committee: George Maziarz ($79,718.02) and Kevin Parker ($34,444.00).

Common Cause-NY notes the corporations involved don’t give money without expecting something in return. After generous contribution checks were deposited, a number of telecom consumer protection bills mysteriously died in committee or never made it to the floor. The same fate did not meet bills offering special tax breaks for cable and Internet Service Providers that have cost New York taxpayers nearly $500 million and counting.

“Multi-million dollar campaign contributions clearly help Big Telecom maintain the status quo of corporate control, high prices, and lax regulation,” Common Cause-NY concludes.

The legislature is rife with examples of bills that would have likely passed with popular support but suddenly or “mysteriously” didn’t:

• A 7635-A / S5630-A: Establishes a moratorium on telephone corporations on the replacement of landline telephone service with a wireless system.
  • The “VoiceLink” moratorium bill, passed the Assembly, had broad bi-partisan support in the Senate but never came to a vote.
• S542: Relates to enacting the “Save New York Call Center Jobs Act of 2013,” which requires prior notice of relocation of call center jobs from New York to a foreign country; directs the Commissioner of Labor to maintain a list of employers who move call center jobs; prohibits loans or grants.
  • The “Call Center Jobs Act” would take away tax breaks and state grants if companies move a call center to another country. The bill passed the Assembly in 2012 (A9809) and had bipartisan support in Senate but was blocked. The 2013 bill died in Senate committee.
• A6003/S5577 — Directs the Department of Public Service to study and report on the current status of cable television systems providing services over fiber optic cables.
  • Bipartisan support in Assembly for further oversight of broadband but gets little support in Senate, the same bill was also blocked in 2012.
• A5234/S1075 — Enacts the “Roadway Excavation Quality Assurance Act” demanding utility companies or their contractors shall use competent workers and shall pay the prevailing wage on projects where a permit to use or open a street is required to be issued.
  • Bipartisan support in the Senate and Assembly but no passage in either 2012 and 2013.
• A6239/S4550 — Creates the State Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate to represent interests of residential utility customers.
  • Bipartisan support in Assembly, dies in Senate.
• A6757/S4449 — Requires providers of electric, gas, steam, telephone and cable television services to issue standardized bills to residential customers; provides the standards for such bills shall be established by the Public Service Commission.
  • Bipartisan support, passes Assembly, dies in Senate.

Another ex-AT&T customer deals with bill shock: “Dishekie” reports he disconnected AT&T service in March after the phone company failed to get his small company’s Voice over IP phone system functioning properly. “I was reassured my contract was nullified because the VoIP phones never worked,” says the customer. Wrong. AT&T claims the bill is for fraudulent calls placed over the company’s hacked phone system. AT&T has not been willing to resolve the charges, which continue month after month, but hasn’t turned the customer over to collections either, leaving “Dishekie” opening one eye-popping bill after another. He took his case to Reddit, which seems to have finally gotten the attention of a vice president of finances at AT&T who may have a solution, or not.

Verizon FiOS is the fastest nationwide broadband service available.

That was PC Magazine’s assessment in its ranking of the fastest Internet Service Providers of 2013. It’s not the first time Verizon FiOS has taken top honors. In fact, the fiber to the home broadband service has consistently won excellent rankings not only for its speed, but also for its value for money and quality of service. The worst thing about FiOS is that many Verizon customers cannot buy the service because its expansion was curtailed in early 2010.

Verizon FiOS has seen its national speed rankings increase this year. In 2012, the provider’s nationwide download speeds averaged 29.4Mbps; this year FiOS average downstream speeds jumped to 34.5Mbps. Upstream speeds are also up from 26.8Mbps to 31.6Mbps. In part, this is because a growing number of customers have moved away from Verizon’s entry-level 15/5Mbps package with a $10 upgrade to Quantum FiOS 50/25Mbps service. FiOS TV customers can upgrade themselves with their remote control.

Frontier Communications made the top five in the Pacific Northwest, thanks to FiOS infrastructure the company inherited from Verizon.

Other high-ranking ISPs included Midcontinent Communications, a small cable provider serving the north-central states. Midco’s DOCSIS 3 upgrade allows the company to offer most customers up to 100Mbps service. The average download speed for Midco customers is 33.1Mbps; average upload speed is 6.4Mpbs.

Where cable operators face head-on competition from Verizon FiOS, the usual competitive response is speed increases. Cablevision is a good example. It came in fourth place nationally with average speeds of 25.9/5.9Mbps. Comcast has also been boosting speeds, especially in the northeast where it faces the most competition from fiber. It came in third place with average speeds of 27.2/6.8Mbps and offers Internet speeds up to 505Mbps in some areas.

There were companies that performed so poorly, they barely made the regional rankings. The most glaring example largely absent from PC Magazine’s awards: Time Warner Cable, which has lagged behind most cable operators in the speed department. It scored poorly for the second largest cable company in the country, beaten by Charter, Mediacom, and CableONE — which all usually perform abysmally in customer ratings. The only regional contest where Time Warner made a showing at all was in the southeast, where it lost to Verizon FiOS, Comcast, and Charter. Only TDS, an independent phone company, scored worse among the top five down south.

Even more embarrassing results turned up for AT&T U-verse, which performed so bad it did not even make the national rankings. AT&T has promised speed upgrades for customers this year, and has implemented them in several cities. Unfortunately for AT&T, its decision to deploy a fiber to the neighborhood system that still depends on copper to the home is turning out to be penny wise-pound foolish, as it continues to fall further behind its cable and fiber competitors. At the rate its competitors are boosting speeds, U-verse broadband could become as relevant as today’s telephone company ADSL service within the next five years.

Other players scoring low include WOW!, a surprising result since Consumer Reports awarded them top honors for service this year. Also stuck in the mud: Atlantic Broadband (acquired by Canada’s Cogeco Cable, which itself is no award winner), Suddenlink, Wave Broadband and Metrocast, which serves smaller communities in New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut, South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama.

The magazine also ranked the fastest U.S. cities, with top honors going to the politically important Washington, D.C., and its nearby suburb Silver Spring, Md, which took first and second place. Alexandria, Va., another D.C. suburb, turned up in eighth place. No cable or phone company wants to be caught delivering poor service to the politicians that can make life difficult for them.

Brooklyn, N.Y., took third place because of head-on competition between Cablevision and Verizon FiOS. Time Warner’s dominance in Manhattan and other boroughs dragged New York City’s speed rankings down below the top ten. Among most of the remaining top ten cities, the most common reason those cities made the list was Verizon FiOS. Florida’s Gulf Coast communities of Bradenton (4th place) and Tampa (6th place) have fiber service. So does Plano, Tex. (5th place) and Long Beach, Calif. (7th place). The other contenders: Hollywood, Fla. takes ninth place and Chandler, Ariz. rounds out the top 10.

As residents across flood-stricken Colorado begin the task of cleaning up damaged homes and in some cases rebuilding them on now-empty lots, many have navigate to these guys and made calls to various utilities, trash collectors, and service providers to hold off on further bills for services they cannot use. The electric, telephone, and trash hauling companies were all understanding and reassuring. DirecTV and AT&T were not. They want their money — one for the value of satellite equipment that may have since floated into New Mexico or Kansas, the other for fees incurred from excessive texting, talking, or data usage.

DirecTV was willing to settle with Jenny, a resident living outside of Boulder whose first floor was inundated with waves of water which swept her personal property out the rear door, if she was willing to charge $400 on her Visa credit card today for one lost satellite dish and two receivers. Otherwise, “collection activity will begin that could harm your credit.”

Jamestown resident Juliette Leon Bartsch is contending with 10 feet of mud, her husband’s car smashed against the house, and AT&T’s nagging fees for excessive texting.

That will be $400 please. Call your insurance company. We want to get paid.

Bartsch says AT&T has been pounding her phone with text messages telling her she will be paying AT&T’s regular prices of 20 cents per text, 30 cents for any text with attached photos, because she exceeded her allowance sending and receiving updates about the status of her home to worried friends and family. Her idea was to keep the phone lines clear for emergency personnel contending with serious telecom outages. AT&T’s idea was to rake in 20 cents for a short message that costs them virtually nothing to handle. Sending text messages is the preferred method of communicating in a disaster area over a wireless network and it turns out to be mighty profitable for AT&T as well.

Bartsch told the Denver Post AT&T store employees were “completely unhelpful” to her plight. AT&T also never misses an opportunity to upsell a traumatized customer to a more profitable service plan, even when that customer is a disaster victim.

After waiting around for 30 minutes, an AT&T employee rudely grabbed her phone in what Bartsch interpreted as a demand to “prove” her claims of disaster-related texting. After scrolling through the messages, all the employee was willing to offer was a paid upgrade to a more expensive texting plan to cover current and future text messages.

After contacted by the newspaper, AT&T changed its tune.

“As is our routine in an emergency, we began suspending collections calls to impacted customers last Friday, and we will not be billing those customers for flood-related overages to their wireless-minute or text-message plans,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement. “AT&T has reached out to our customers to clear the flood overage charges, and we apologize for the oversight and inconvenience.”

Bartsch has not heard back from AT&T to find out if her bill will be, in fact, credited for the charges.

DirecTV has a less opaque policy for disaster victims published on its website. Getting the company to follow it is another matter.

DIRECTV has policies in place to assist customers who are impacted by natural disasters. If you live in a declared disaster area, we’ll work with you to find a solution that best fits your needs. Options available include:

You are over your texting limit.

Jenny, a Stop the Cap! reader, heard a completely different story from DirecTV.

“They were adamant, they really wanted to get paid either by me or the insurance company,” Jenny writes. “They even wanted to know the name of my carrier and my insurance policy number, which I refused to give them.”

This isn’t the first time DirecTV has ignored its disaster policy in Colorado. During this summer’s wildfires, fire victims were treated to similar demands for compensation.

Jeremy Beach’s Black Forest home burned to the ground and melted his satellite dish and reduced his DirecTV receivers to charred boxes. Then came DirecTV’s demand for cash.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he told the newspaper. “I had lost everything and they acted like they could care less.”

Even more incredible, a DirecTV spokesperson told the newspaper it was ignoring its disaster assistance policy because “most people’s insurance would cover the cost of its equipment.”

That is the same response Beach received. He hung up on the representative making the demand for payment.