CenturyLink users report that the company is suffering what appears to be a nationwide broadband outage across a significant portion of the company's 38 state footprint. Users in our forums in locations ranging from Olathe, Kansas to Fort Hood Texas say they're unable to get any broadband connectivity whatsoever, and that the company's support lines have been busy for the last few hours. CenturyLink says they have technicians working on the outage and assessing the scope of the issue, but hasn't been able to offer technical specifics. The company's Twitter feed has provided restoration ETAs of 24-48 hours to some users. The outage comes on the heels of a massive voice system outage by Windstream last week.

As I noted last week, CenturyLink has announced a very small trial whereby they plan to offer around 40,000 people in Omaha, Nebrasks fiber to the home connections. The trial, which appears to be piggybacking on older Qwest "Choice TV" discontinued hybrid coax trial technology, will run users $150 standalone, or $80 when bundled with existing television and phone services.

CenturyLink has announced plans to offer a small fiber to the home pilot providing speeds of 1 Gbps. While Google Fiber's expansion hits competitively-challenged AT&T and Time Warner Cable hard in a few markets, their recent announcement of expansion into Provo, Utah hits smaller, regional incumbent CenturyLink even harder.

As we noted last week when Google Fiber announced they were expanding into Provo, Utah, the deal is particularly bad news for CenturyLink, who, after a decade of pampered monopoly privilege and regulatory capture in the SouthWest, is nowhere close to being able to match Google speeds. For years (under the Qwest brand) the company has bullied local municipal fiber builds in Utah, crushed all local competition, then provided sub standard broadband services that in many cases can't provide users with anything faster than 3 Mbps.

Google this afternoon officially confirmed that they'll be bringing Google Fiber to Provo, Utah. According to an announcement sent to reporters and a blog post, Provo was selected because it's the home of hundreds of tech companies and startups.

Earlier this month CenturyLink confirmed to us that the company now imposes usage caps of 150 GB for 1.5 Mbps lines, and caps of 300 GB for anything faster. Users who exceed those caps get on-screen warnings and are urged to upgrade to faster tiers or business-class service.

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":

CenturyLink has confirmed with Broadband Reports that there are usage caps in place for residential users. A thread in our forums contained more than a few users who were confused about the caps; some users saying they'd been warned and even disconnected -- while other heavy users had never been warned.

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.

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.

ISPs which in the past had historically improved in Netflix performance because of faster speeds, are now finding themselves falling in Netflix's new monthly streaming ISP rankings because they're not signing up for Netflix's CDN network. As noted recently, Netflix stated they'd start offering users "Super HD" and 3D streams -- if their ISP signed up for Netflix's new Open Connect Content Delivery Network.

CenturyLink is the latest telco to run into union worker negotiations trouble, and members of the Communications Workers of America have authorized a strike if their demands aren't met. CenturyLink and the CWA are trying to hash out a new deal for 13,000 employees across thirteen states before the current arrangement expires Saturday night. Workers in particular are opposing a bump in health care premiums and are trying to bring more jobs back to the United States. Unlike Verizon, who is dealing with their union woes by dumping DSL users in a ditch and focusing on wireless, CenturyLink appears to be in the rural residential market for the long haul, even if they've shown no serious ability to upgrade the majority of those users.

CenturyLink is looking to expand their business presence and is pondering an acquisition of Time Warner Telecom. According to a report on the deal in Deal Reporter, the two companies have been in talks for several weeks and a possible acquisition deal could be looming. CenturyLink closed their massive acquisition of Qwest just last year, after acquiring Embarq several years earlier. Insiders say that Level 3 Communications also considered buying TW Telecom, but balked at the high price tag.

Despite pioneering in the IPTV field, latter day Qwest wasn't much on the idea of getting into the TV business, repeatedly insisting they supported the idea of an "over the top" solution. Granted that was partially because Qwest spent the last few years shopping itself around, and made debt reduction its first priority.

While opponents of municipal broadband like to trot out a lot of idealism when they rail against community broadband, what they're really doing is protecting un-competitive duopolies who charge an arm and a leg for sub-par service. Take for example Monticello, Minnesota, where customers under-served by local ISP Qwest for a decade decided to improve local connectivity with FTTH service.

Over the last ten years, dozens of States have passed bills literally written by incumbent ISPs, banning or restricting the rights of local communities to wire themselves with broadband -- even if the local ISP won't. More recently such efforts have been just as obnoxious but more watered down, simply bogging communities down in rules and restrictions designed to "level the playing field" (read: make it impossible for them to succeed).

Back in November CenturyLink sent many customers notices saying they were shutting down Qwest's VoIP service in a few months, after acquiring Qwest last year for $22.4 billion. Users were of course nudged away from the less-expensive VoIP service and toward CenturyLink's pricier legacy phone service and all the usual fees that entails. However, not all customers say they got the notice. Windows-focused writer Ed Bott says CenturyLink never sent him a notice that his Qwest VoIP service would be going dark, and that he needs to pay twice as much for POTs service with half the feature, and now risks losing his old number. Progress courtesy of mergers and acquisitions?

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.

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.

Despite pioneering in the IPTV field, latter day Qwest wasn't much on the idea of getting into the TV business, repeatedly insisting they supported the idea of an "over the top" solution. Granted that was partially because Qwest spent the last few years shopping itself around, and made debt reduction its first priority.