Time Warner Cable, the nation’s second largest cable operator, has agreed to carry Al Jazeera America on its cable lineup nationwide, giving the network 10 million more potential viewers.

The contract, to be announced later today, will bring the English language U.S.-focused news channel to major cities, including Los Angeles and New York within weeks. Time Warner Cable customers in other cities will see the channel added by next March.

Al Jazeera America launched two months ago and has not been an initial ratings success. Despite being available in 44 million homes, fewer than 25,000 people watch the news channel at any given time. The ratings are comparable to Fox Business Channel after it launched.

“We said in January that we would consider Al Jazeera America,” Melinda Witmer, the chief video and content officer for Time Warner Cable. “Now that the channel is live, we think that it would be of value to our customers and are pleased to make it available.”

Time Warner Cable threw Al Jazeera’s predecessor, Current TV, off lineups the instant the network was sold to the Qatar-based news channel. AT&T U-verse also dropped Al Jazeera English just as it premiered, sparking a lawsuit.

The news network is touting the carriage agreement with Time Warner Cable as evidence the network is being taken seriously by cable industry executives. An Al Jazeera spokesman told the New York Times the company was in active negotiations with other cable and satellite providers to pick up the channel.

To win the agreement, Al Jazeera may have temporarily agreed to pay Time Warner Cable a launch fee described as compensation for marketing and ad support. Typically, cable networks receive payment for carriage, not the other way around.

Unlike Al Jazeera English, a global English language news channel intended for an international audience, Al Jazeera America is an American cable news channel, featuring recognizable news personalities including Soledad O’Brien and Ali Velshi, both formerly with CNN.

AT&T has expanded its TV Everywhere service to cover more devices and networks, adding more than 20 channels available for streaming outside of the home.

AT&T U-verse live TV streaming is available to customers subscribing to a U-family or higher U-verse TV package, and can be viewed on a growing number of devices including iPad/iPhone (iOS) and more than 25 current generation Android smartphone models.

Many, but not all popular cable networks are available for streaming, as are most premium movie channels.

But the biggest change subscribers are looking for is streaming those cable channels outside of the home on the go. Most cable carriage agreements still restrict out-of-home streaming, but providers are negotiating to drop that restriction.

“By making live TV content available across devices we’re enabling our customers to watch TV on their terms when and where they want it,” said Mel Coker, chief marketing officer, AT&T Home Solutions, in a statement. “U-verse has always been about delivering a TV experience built around our customers, and this enhancement gives them even more flexibility and control.”

The networks now available for out-of-the home viewing:

AXS TV, Big Ten Network, CNN, Disney Channel, Disney Jr., Disney XD, Encore, Encore-West, Encore Action, ESPN 1/2/3, ESPN U, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Channel, HDNet Movies, HLN, NFL Network, NFL RedZone, Showtime (All variants), Starz (All variants), The Movie Channel, The Movie Channel West, TMC Xtra, and TMC Xtra-West.

All online viewing from a U-verse broadband connection counts against AT&T’s U-verse monthly usage cap of 250GB, presently unenforced in most areas.

An enterprising reader of the Broadband Reports‘ AT&T Forum stumbled on proposed pricing for AT&T’s faster speed services for U-verse and, presumably, their planned fiber-to-the-home rollout in Austin, Tex.:

The prices are no bargain in comparison to the $70 a month Google charges Kansas City residents for 1,000/1,000Mbps service, but on the lower end, AT&T’s 45Mbps U-verse option is comparable to Time Warner Cable’s 50/5Mbps tier, which now sells for $65-75 a month on a one-year promotion:

Time Warner Cable’s latest broadband offers

AT&T U-verse customers hoping for speeds faster than 24Mbps may have significant hurdles to overcome to qualify for a speed boost up to 45Mbps.

AT&T realized they were at a disadvantage in the broadband speed race as their biggest competitors — cable operators — began transitioning to DOCSIS 3 technology and launched speed upgrades to 100Mbps or more for broadband customers seeking a faster online experience. In November 2012, AT&T announced Project VIP — an investment plan to expand and enhance AT&T’s U-verse service to approximately 57 million customer locations by the end of 2015. AT&T claims it has already upgraded 1.8 million U-verse broadband customer locations, including 500,000 U-verse video locations. As part of the upgrade, AT&T promises up to 100Mbps speeds in the future.

But customers are finding just getting 45Mbps more difficult than they first imagined. A report published by Broadband Reports explains why.

The new 45/6Mbps ‘Power Tier’ requires VDSL2 pair bonding, a technology used to increase the available bandwidth to a customer’s premise. Customers who can now purchase the Max Turbo (24Mbps) tier are the most likely to get manually qualified for 45Mbps service. It’s pot luck for almost everyone else.

Among those not qualifying are most customers in apartments, duplexes, townhouses, those served with ADSL2+ or xPON connections, or through network extenders like DSLAMs. AT&T’s website may offer availability information that suggests faster service might be available, until a technician arrives to explain it is not because the line length or copper quality between your home and AT&T disqualifies you.

With AT&T still dependent on its aging copper wire facilities, service variability will remain a fact of life and until fiber replaces more copper. AT&T customers should expect many of the company’s U-verse speed claims to be possible, not probable.

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.