Hey, John Blust, why do you want to kill Greensboro's chances to land the Google fiber network?

Our state senator is a co-sponsor of the bill that would place onerous restrictions on municipal broadband services, and possibly scratch North Carolina from Google's list. Opponents describe it as a job-and-innovation killer, too.

Raleigh's city council has passed a resolution opposing the legislation. Zach Matheny says he'll ask the GSO council to do the same tomorrow night.

Irony points to the N&R for hiding its front-pager about the issue in the Google-proof vault.

Alert reader RP, noting that the National Broadband Plan says a reasonable target for local service is 4 megabits/sec for downloads and 1 megabit/sec for uploads, says:

My TW broadband is having node problems nightly that lower download speeds to 1mg. Uverse says deployment in my 27401 (Fisher Park) address is over 12 months.

Why is TW sitting on DOCSIS 3.0 deployment that could boost speeds ten fold?

Comments

[bubba]

"My TW broadband is having node problems nightly that lower download speeds to 1mg. Uverse says deployment in my 27401 (Fisher Park) address is over 12 months."

My U-Verse installation is this Friday. I'm looking forward to making the phone call that fires TW.

[Ed Cone]

Bob -- hope you'll update us here and/or at your blog about the experience, from installation to actual use. If all goes well, your call will bring vicarious pleasure to a lot of folks.

[Ron]

Doesn't surprise me one bit...he's a republican.

[bubba]

I selected the U200 program bundle w/HBO, the internet Max ("up to 12 Mbps download"), and two line phone service. this mirrors what i currently have at TWC, with a (theoreticly) slower Road Runner service.

I estimate the savings over TWC around $1000 first year (including bundle/sign up discounts and spiffs), and second year savings of around $500.

[James]

Yes, Bob, please keep the updates coming. I'm waiting for U to hit my neighborhood in Chapel Hill and will switch the second it's available.

Did you plan come with an in-home wireless router as part of the deal? Also, is your cellphone bundled in as well?

[bubba]

Yes on the router, no on the cellphones. We just re-upped with Verizon last summer on cells, and I didn't see any offers on cell service in the U-verse promo.

[Dan]

Hi, I got on Uverse about 2 weeks ago. The service does include a wireless router in the central "brain" which distributes services to the house. Uverse bundles TV, internet and phone -- cell phone service is separate.

It was a lot of fun to hand TW's modem back to them and tell them I'd gone to Uverse. Installation went fine and the installer's supervisor came by to make sure everything went well.

I got TV and internet and enjoy them very much. Internet speed has been as advertised or greater during the 2-3 times I've clocked it.

Disclaimer: I'm an employee of ATT.

[James]

Thanks, guys. Can't wait to make the switch.

[RBM]

I'd like to see more competition in my neck of the woods but apparently it won't be Uverse - not planning on offering to NE residents according to their availability form.

[Dan]

Some pertinent info (ars technica)

[YouDidntHearItFromMe]

Good link, Dan. Contains important information for Bubba, both as a U-verse customer and as an adversary of net neutrality:

AT&T now aggressively markets its fiber-to-the-node U-Verse service in markets across the country, selling bundled access to IPTV, VoIP, and Internet access, all delivered through the same last-mile connection and all using Internet Protocol to deliver the traffic. But AT&T has an advantage that companies like Vonage or Netflix lack: it can simply reserve a dedicated portion of the line for its IPTV and VoIP traffic, while Internet competitors (called "over-the-top" providers in ISP-land) all have to squeeze into the unmanaged Internet portion of the line.

When all the traffic uses the same protocols, is this fair? The issue of “managed services” became a major point of contention during last year's network neutrality debates at the Federal Communications Commission. Critics charged that the big ISPs could simply subvert the open Internet by making their “managed” services run over separate, dedicated parts of the last-mile connection. The ISPs would then lack incentives to make their Internet access "too good" so that the managed services were more appealing or even necessary. Or ISPs might impose data caps on the open Internet connection, though not on their own video services.

That's what AT&T will do with its new data caps. I asked the company if a U-Verse subscriber's IPTV traffic would count toward the cap and was told that it would not. Accessing Internet video from YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc. would count, however.

[bubba]

"Net Neutrality", as envisioned by some proponents, isn't. There are many reasons why I don't see any future for that sort of thing.

I'm not alone in that sentiment.