AT&T's fourth quarter earnings released late today indicate that T-Mobile continues to aggressively erode AT&T's postpaid wireless subscriber base. While the full earnings report crows that AT&T added 2.8 million wireless subscribers on the quarter, the lion's share of those additions are tablets (many of which are all-but given away on promotion) and connected cars (many of which may not actually subscribe to AT&T embedded LTE service beyond introductory periods).

The good news for AT&T? AT&T added 469,000 prepaid subscribers -- compared to 426,000 for T-Mobile, and losses of 157,000 and losses of 491,000 at Verizon and Sprint, respectively. Still, postpaid customers are the ones that most carriers lust after (since they're more likely to consistently pay their bills), and on that front it's clear T-Mobile continues to be a sizable thorn in AT&T's side.

On the fixed line front, AT&T says it added a net 214,000 TV customers under the DirecTV brand, but lost 240,000 TV customers under the U-Verse brand and platform, And while some of this is because AT&T is actively encouraging U-Verse customers to switch to DirecTV, the telco still saw a net loss of 26,000 video subscribers despite the supposed "synergies" created by the the merger.

And while AT&T added 192,000 U-Verse broadband users, it lost 246,000 DSL customers for a net total loss of 54,000 broadband users.

Despite the fact AT&T's losing postpaid wireless, TV and broadband customers, and missed most Wall Street estimates, company CEO Randall Stephenson remains impressed.

Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure continues to insist that the company's plans to cut support staff and implement major network changes will only improve things for the company's customers. Claure today disputed recent reports that the company was considering a major plan to migrate towers to government land to cut costs, a project one Sprint insider claimed would be incredibly disruptive and actually reduce coverage for Sprint customers in outlying regions.

“We are going to do that without jeopardizing the customer experience,” Claure said on the company's earnings call.

"We are focused on densification, without jeopardizing the customer network," the CEO said.

Kentucky is one of many states tired of incumbent broadband providers with no incentive to compete or improve local service. In Kentucky, the state is trying to do something about this via the $232 million public-private partnership known as KentuckyWired.

Sprint bumped up its earnings release by a week in order to try and counter the narrative that the company's in a bit of a tailspin. The new earnings somewhat support the idea of a slow turnaround.

The Communications Workers of America is coming out against Altice's proposed $17.7 billion acquisition of Cablevision, and will testify before regulators this week that the deal will result in a debt-saddled company incapable of investing in serious infrastructure improvements or maintaining customer service. Cablevision used to be on the bleeding edge of broadband speeds, but over the last few years had drifted in neutral as the company's owners looked for a buyer.

In a filing with the FCC, the CWA says the $8.6 billion in debt being taken on to finance the deal will be compounded with the $5.9 billion in existing debt.

"This level of debt will require such deep cost cutting at Cablevision that both staffing and network investments are likely to suffer, to the detriment of both consumers and workers," states the union.

Sprint employees tell Reuters that the company is cutting 2,500 employees, or about 7% of Sprint's workforce, in a continued attempt to trim around $2.5 billion in expenses at the wireless carrier. Employees were informed of the cuts last Friday in an e-mail, the sources claim.

• Why Charter–TWC Merger Is a Bad Deal [variety.com]

• Kentucky to build 3,400-mile state-owned broadband network – and a fight is brewing [theregister.co.uk]

• iPass, Panasonic strike in-flight WiFi deal [totaltele.com]

• Seven telcos sign up to new UK regulatory code for business broadband speeds [eurocomms.com]

• This is the real price you pay for 'free' public Wi-Fi [mashable.com]

• Sprint slashes 2,500 jobs as cost-cutting measures continue [yahoo.com]

• Rumor mill: AT&T preparing bid for piece of Time Warner Inc. [nypost.com]

Hoping to reshape the conversation ahead of what's expected to be mixed earnings, Sprint today issued a press release claiming that the company's LTE network now offers faster speeds than AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. The company's claims lean on Nielsen Mobile Performance (NMP) data, which was compiled from 75 million "mobile download events" in cities across the country covering more than 270 million people.

Just about a year ago the FCC raised the minimum definition of broadband from a relatively-pathetic 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up to 25 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up. Last week, Republican politicians loyal to the nation's broadband duopoly fired off a letter (pdf) to the agency complaining that having such a high standard was "arbitrary" and unfair.

We've repeatedly explored just how corrupt and dysfunctional West Virginia has been when it came to spending their $126.3 million in broadband stimulus funds. The Charleston Gazette highlighting for years how Verizon, Frontier and Cisco convinced the state to buy ridiculously overpriced, overpowered and unused routers, and ridiculously overpaid, redundant consultants who haven't actually accomplished anything.