Comcast VP of public policy Rebecca Arbogast informed attendees of a Free State Foundation conference this week that the "alleged failing and falling state of U.S. broadband" is "based on misunderstood and misused statistics." According to Arbogast, the claim that the United States is 22nd in broadband is effectively a lie, used by critics to unfairly attack what is secretly a top ranked broadband infrastructure. Arbogast went on to argue that comparing the United States to markets in Asia is "silly at best" and that those criticizing United States broadband are just engaging in "hand wringing":Granted this ignores that you can go to pretty much any broadband statistic warehouse (from Akamai and the FCC to the OECD and OOkla's Net Index) and find that the United States is indisputably and utterly mediocre in the majority of broadband metrics, whether it's price, penetration or speed. Pretending everything is just fine is her job, and denial has long been the battle cry of the industry's lobbyists, PR flacks, astroturfers and fauxcademics, who'd prefer things stay exactly as they are for most of us: uncompetitive and costly.

United States broadband users stuck on expensive and slow satellite and DSL services in particular are surely comforted by Arbogast's belief that they're effectively delusional.

Windstream isn't having a very good few weeks in the peach state. First the company's anti-community broadband bill failed after locals noticed Windstream was trying to stop others from expanding broadband -- in areas they refused to.

A controversial bill concocted by AT&T, Windstream and CenturyLink to prevent communities from wiring themselves with broadband continues to move forward, despite heavy criticism from both locals and industry. The bill initially banned any town or city from deploying its own broadband services if just one user in a zip code had a line capable of 1.5 Mbps.

Windstream CEO Jeff Gardner told investors last week that the company will be slowing down broadband expansion as 2013 rolls forward. After a recent modest expansion, some Windstream customers can get speeds up to 24 Mbps if they're lucky, but huge swaths of the company's footprint remain stuck on much slower DSL courtesy of no competition, something Gardner acknowledged to investors.

Back in 2011 the FCC began collecting real-world user broadband data from customized routers, then issuing reports on which ISPs were failing to deliver advertised speeds. It's one of the few FCC policies in recent years that has truly paid dividends for consumers.

Windstream Communications has settled charges with the state of Oklahoma over allegations that the company bribed a state school superintendent in order to keep a business deal in place. Back in August Windstream was indicted for giving a school superintendent two all-session tickets to the 2007 NCAA basketball tournament in Atlanta, in addition to paying for his lodging and local entertainment needs.

Windstream is preparing to deploy some faster speed tiers for the company's DSL users starting next month. According to this post by the company in our Windstream forum, starting November 12 the telco will be deploying VDSL2/GBOND technology across 87 exchanges allowing for a significant speed boost for existing customers.

What's a cash-strapped phone company to do when you're unable to provide a quality, next-generation broadband or IPTV product to most of your footprint? Why a marketing campaign that pretends you offer a next-generation product, of course. Taking a page from the Comcast Xfinity playbook (sans serious network upgrade), Windstream Communications has decided to rebrand their DSL services under the product name Merge.

Consumer advocates remain worried that Verizon's co-marketing partnership and spectrum deal with the cable industry contains either a documented or undocumented "gentlemen's agreement" that Verizon will limit future expansion of FiOS to prohibit more intense landline broadband competition. As we discussed, that would mean that the company's already stalled FiOS upgrades would remain that way as a courtesy, in exchange for being able to sell LTE service to millions of new cable customers.

User sethf writes in to note that Windstream is informing DSL customers of some significant price hikes. "3Mbps -- which is still the max for a considerable amount of their footprint, despite having received stimulus money -- went from 39.99 to 47.99," he notes, adding that Windstream's 6Mbps tier went from $44.99 to $49.99, and 12Mbps went from $49.99 to $52.99. "Since 2004 my Internet bill has gone from $34.99 to $47.99 while my speeds have stayed exactly the same." A representative in our forums notes that rates aren't rising for users who signed up for "price for life" promotions, though users note that this promotion was never offered for standalone broadband users. Windstream's full pricing breakdown can be found here.

Todd Spangler over at cable-industry trade magazine Multichannel News crows that cable operators came out on top in 2011 in terms of speed. According to data compiled over at the Ookla Net Index, the six fastest residential ISPs in the U.S.

Earlier this year Netflix began ranking the quality of video streaming performance for each of the nation's largest ISPs. HD streams have variable bitrate but can potentially top out at around 4800 kilobits per second, and the data provides a bird's eye view by ISP of sustained throughput available from a given ISP over time.

A Winstdream representative tells users in our Windstream forum that faster speeds could be on the horizon for some customers. "By the end the year some areas will have VDSL available that will enable upload speeds as high as 4 MB for the customers that qualify," says a support rep in the forum. Windtsream's apparently not too proud of their current upstream speeds on their 3, 6 and 12 Mbps DSL offerings, as their pricing page complete omits mentioning upstream speeds whatsoever. For those interested, Windstream recently began offering direct, private support in our forums, allowing users to get help with their DSL line right here at DSL reports (and without having to listen to awful hold music!).

Windstream Communications has joined a growing number of broadband ISPs that have decided to offer private, direct support to users right here in the Broadband Reports forums. Now in addition to finding help and information from other users in our public Windstream forum, users who need more personal support for technical or billing issues can post their problems in the Windstream direct forum. The forum gives users a secure, private environment to discuss account information directly with certified Windstream support representatives. You can view our growing list of ISPs that are now offering official support via Broadband Reports here, and we're working on deals with additional ISPs.

Like many ISPs, cable operator Mediacom is now using DNS redirection to direct people who mistype URLs to a an ad-laden search portal instead of a 404 error -- as a way to generate additional revenue. Also like many ISPs, our users are noting that Mediacom's opt-out for this service doesn't really work, with users still getting the Mediacom ads even after clearly saying they'd like not to. Interestingly, this has been happening for Google search bar results whether or not users use a third party DNS service like OpenDNS -- suggesting the company is tinkering with additional layers of deep packet inspection technology (recall Windstream struggled with bugs with this technology and hijacked Firefox search bar results). Mediacom says the company has fixed the problem, and that users need to opt in to DNS redirection ads -- then opt back out again -- in order to actually opt out. If you're a Mediacom customer, can you drop us a line and let us know if that's working for you?

As the rural telco consolidation trend continues, Windstream continues to quietly grow in the shadow of larger deals, like CenturyLink and Qwest or Frontier and Verizon. Granted this kind of merger and acquisition activity comes with a human cost -- the company announcing they're laying off 220 employees in Iowa and Minnesota as part of their acquisition of Iowa Telecom. Most of the cuts will occur before the end of the year or in early 2011, with most of the positions being in network operations, information technology and finance. The Iowa Telecom deal was completed in June, and added 256,000 access lines, 95,000 broadband customers and 26,000 digital TV customers to the Windstream footprint.

Earlier this year Windstream followed in the footsteps of other carriers (notably Comcast and Qwest) and began offering users a "price for life" guarantee -- which included 3 Mbps DSL service and unlimited local and long distance for $60. The company this week expanded the promotion to the triple play -- namely voice, DSL, and Dish Network satellite TV service for $90.

Yesterday we noted how Windstream Communications had hijacked Google toolbar search results so users were redirected to Windstream's own search portal. While many ISPs now use DNS redirection to push users who enter mistyped or nonexistent URLs to an ISP-run search portal, this appeared to take a significant step beyond the traditional NXDOMAIN tinkering, given it impacted users not using Windstream DNS servers.

Most ISPs out there have now implemented some form of DNS advertising redirection, which redirects users who type in nonexistent or misspelled URLs to an ISP-branded search portal. The technology allows ISPs to create an additional revenue stream off of your lousy typing.

Many of the bigger carriers ignored the first round of broadband stimulus funding because they generally prefer their taxpayer dollars without any pesky restrictions. After lobbying to have the rules weakened, we're not surprisingly seeing major carriers change their tune on applying for funds.