A DNS failure took out internet service for more than 15 hours for many Charter Communications broadband customers in Texas.

Outages were first reported Wednesday evening from customers unable to reach web pages or other internet services. The outages primarily affected former Time Warner Cable customers in Dallas-Ft. Worth, San Antonio, and Austin.

A Charter spokesperson admitted there was a widespread outage last evening that extended into this morning. At 8:38am, the company suggested rebooting your cable modem to restore service, but as of lunchtime, admitted problems are ongoing in certain areas.

The outage affected the company’s broadband service and its Spectrum TV app, which relies on the internet for video streaming its cable TV service.

Some customers exploring the outage discovered the problem was with Charter’s DNS servers, which manage website addresses. All customers needed to do to restore service was to stop relying on the cable company’s DNS servers and use another provider like Google instead. (If interested, instructions are here.)

Customers were miffed that it took more than half a day to resolve the problem. Those without service can get a service credit for the outage by visiting the cable company’s website and using its online chat function to request credit.

Texas customers, our apologies as we are seeing a return of Internet service issues. Thank you for your continued patience.

— Ask Spectrum (@Ask_Spectrum) November 2, 2017

A San Antonio homeowner was upset when she discovered two AT&T subcontractors installing a fiber line in her backyard were instead engaged in what seemed to be a fight/wrestling match/comedy routine.

“Caught this sissy ass fight on my security camera today in my backyard,” the unidentified homeowner wrote on her Facebook page. “These idiots are supposed to be installing AT&T fiber wire not getting into a lovers’ quarrel. It’s a full on chick fight, about the sissiest fight I’ve ever seen in my life. I could have done a better job at kickin’ those boys tails.”

Only in Texas.

“‘Honestly, I couldn’t tell if they were playing around and wrestling or what,” she complained. “Then I saw some sissy hair pulling and thought, ‘Oh no way! This is for real!’ Two grown men rolling around pulling hair like a bunch of sissy pants.”

An embarrassed AT&T sent the Houston Chronicle a statement about the unfortunate incident.

This involved employees of a company that was hired by one of our contractors, and obviously didn’t meet our requirements of how they conduct themselves… The contractor has assured us they will no longer use this company when working for us.

In response to the story, a local company offered the duo free fight lessons.

“If either of these guys want to learn to fight, shoot us a message,” wrote Genesis Jiu Jitsu SA. “We offer a free month of lessons on the house.”

AT&T Subcontractor Fight Club: A San Antonio homeowner’s video security system picked up this encounter between two workers that were there to install a fiber cable. She posted the fracas on her Facebook page. (1:30)

In Bexar County, Texas Public Radio found only a few customers (shown in green) qualify for AT&T GigaPower service. (Image: TPR)

AT&T charges customers $40 a month/$480 a year more for its U-verse with GigaPower gigabit broadband service in cities where it does not face direct competition with Google Fiber.

AT&T has announced six new cities will eventually get gigabit speed service, including Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando, Miami and San Antonio. Whether customers will pay $70 or $110 for the same service depends entirely on one factor: Google Fiber.

The Consumerist notes communities with forthcoming competition from the search engine giant will pay $40 less for gigabit service from AT&T than communities without Google Fiber.

In San Antonio, Nashville, and Atlanta — all forthcoming Google Fiber cities, customers will pay AT&T $70 a month. In Google Fiberless Orlando, Chicago, and Miami, customers will pay $80 for a 300Mbps tier or $110 for 1,000Mbps service.

Although AT&T is usually the first to market 1,000Mbps service in its service areas, actually qualifying to buy the service is another hurdle customers have to overcome. In San Antonio, most customers will have to wait.

In an informal survey conducted by Texas Public Radio on social media, about 60 Bexar County residents checked to see if their home addresses could connect to AT&T’s GigaPower. Only 11 could, most in far west Bexar County beyond Leon Valley. Other limited service areas south of Live Oak also qualified. Most of the rest of metro San Antonio does not qualify for GigaPower and AT&T will not say when customers can get the service.

AT&T later admitted gigabit service was available in “parts” of San Antonio, Leon Valley, Live Oak, Selma, Schertz, Cibolo, as well as portions of New Braunfels, Medina, and unincorporated Bexar County.

The Consumerist writes AT&T is proving the importance of robust broadband competition. Communities that have it pay less and get quicker upgrades for faster Internet speeds. Those without pay AT&T a premium or are long way down on the upgrade list.

In the northeastern United States, now a no-go for Google Fiber, broadband is often a feast or famine proposition. Those served by Verizon FiOS in New York City also have the competing options of network-upgraded Cablevision or Time Warner Cable Maxx. Those in New York not served by FiOS have a much poorer choice of Time Warner Cable (up to 50/5Mbps) or <10Mbps DSL service from Verizon, Frontier, Windstream, and other phone companies. In Northern New England, Comcast routinely outclasses DSL service from FairPoint Communications, but significant parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and western Massachusetts often have no broadband options at all.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KSAT San Antonio GigaPower Internet coming to San Antonio 9-21-15.mp4[/flv]

KSAT-TV in San Antonio covered AT&T’s launch of U-verse with GigaPower in San Antonio. As elsewhere, AT&T routinely invites city officials to share the good news with local residents. But it may take a year or more for the service to become available to everyone in the area. Even when it is, a snap poll conducted by KSAT found just over half of its viewers had no interest in getting gigabit service from AT&T. (1:51)

Time Warner Cable is nearing the end of its $60 million “Maxx” upgrade of San Antonio, company officials said in a news release.

The Maxx upgrade most noticeably boosts broadband speeds up to six times faster than what customers used to receive, at no change in price, up to 300/20Mbps.

Time Warner Cable Maxx Broadband Speed Comparison

Earthlink customers will also get a speed boost.  The traditional EarthLink Broadband plan will become EarthLink Extreme with speed up to 50/5Mbps. EarthLink Cable Max will become EarthLink Ultimate with speed up to 100/10Mbps. Customers who want faster Internet will have to switch back to Time Warner Cable to upgrade above 100Mbps.

As part of the upgrade, Time Warner has converted its analog television signals to all-digital service. Free digital adapters are available to customers until Dec. 28, 2016. After that, each adapter will cost $2.75 a month.

Time Warner Cable is notifying its customers in Charlotte, N.C. to prepare for the transition to all-digital cable television service which will be complete by the end of this summer. Further south, San Antonio customers can swing by their local cable store and pick up Time Warner Cable’s new terabyte DVR, which can record up to six different programs at the same time and store six times more content than current DVR boxes.

The changes are part of Time Warner Cable’s Maxx upgrade program, which will vastly increase broadband speeds and deliver an all-digital experience to current customers in cities where the upgrade is underway.

“The bad news is you need boxes on all of your televisions,” writes Stop the Cap! reader Susan in Charlotte, who had to pick up three new set-top boxes to keep cable television running in her home. “They are going to move channels in groups to digital-only service over the summer so you will gradually lose your cable television unless you have a box on every set.”

The transition begins in early June and will last into August. Time Warner is offering customers a digital adapter to bring back the digital-only channels on older televisions. Those ordering before Dec. 10 will get them free until Aug. 11, 2016. After that, they will cost $2.75 a month each.

“Weren’t they going to rent these things for $0.99 a month,” asks Susan.

Indeed, when Time Warner Cable unveiled the small devices, they promoted the post-promotional price as $0.99 a month. Earlier this year, the price jumped to $2.75 without explanation. Standard set-top boxes can cost $7 or more a month, but are equipped with an on-screen guide and can access on-demand shows that the digital adapters cannot.

In San Antonio, customers can ditch their old DVR for a major upgrade with more storage space and a better user experience, or so the company claims. Current DVR users should be able to swap out the equipment by bringing in their existing box for an exchange. Be aware all recorded shows will be lost.