AT&T executive comments yesterday that the carrier might be ditching the current "all you can eat" $30 iPhone data plan for usage-based pricing didn't go over very well with either the company's users or the press. Many felt AT&T was blaming its customers for the company's inability to adequate meet iPhone bandwidth demand. Others felt AT&T was continuing the industry trend of pretending that the flat-rate pricing model doesn't provide enough revenue for network upgrades. The coverage has had echoes of Time Warner Cable's botched attempt to hoist usage-based billing upon their customers earlier this year.

As has repeatedly been the case when it comes to AT&T's 3G network this year, AT&T again found itself in the unenviable position of having to do damage control. As such, AT&T's been going around to various news outlets insisting that AT&T Wireless boss Ralph de La Vega's comments were "taken out of context." As such, they're providing a link to the one hour presentation where the comments were made. Here's the transcript of the relevant bits: story continues..

Back in 2005, a lawsuit was filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court alleging that AT&T was not offering the speeds promised in marketing materials for AT&T DSL service.

Back in January a Comcast insider leaked word that Comcast would be launching a new backup and storage service. It may have taken nearly a year to arrive, but one of Comcast's new Twitter customer support reps blogs that the service has now soft launched.

Investors like Craig Moffett have been urging AT&T to ditch the $30 unlimited pricing model and start charging customers more money for wireless data in the form of steep overages. While there's some customers who think a more usage-based approach is a good idea, they usually fail to understand that when carriers implement such models, they frequently don't offer improved value, and users wind up paying higher prices.

Cox has reached out to us to note that they're launching their faster 50 Mbps downstream 5 Mbps upstream "Ultimate Internet" service in Las Vegas today. The company's faster DOCSIS 3.0 service, already launched in parts of Rhode Island, Arizona, Northern Virginia, and Lafayette, Louisiana, varies by price depending on the level of local competition.

Back in July you might remember that we reported on rumors that AT&T was busy cooking up a faster U-Verse tier that was supposed to drop before the end of August. A little behind the rumored schedule, AT&T directed our attention this morning to an announcement that the company is launching a 24 Mbps tier.

Despite being one of the early pioneers of telco TV (not too long ago they shut down their VDSL-based IPTV service ChoiceTV), Qwest continues to insist that unlike other Ma Bell offshoots AT&T and Verizon, Qwest has absolutely no interest in becoming a TV provider. While Qwest is sometimes criticized for playing wait-and-see with video, the decision could ultimately come back to be the right one if "over the top" Internet video-delivery winds up trumping IPTV projects like AT&T's U-Verse.

In last year's 700 MHz Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum auction, Cox Communications won 14 Block A and 8 Block B licenses for bids totaling $304 million. Through a joint venture with Sprint and several other cable companies, Cox also spent $2.37 billion to buy 137 AWS licenses.

A few weeks ago cable provider Mediacom was the latest to try and claim the broadband speed crown by announcing plans to offer 105/10 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 service in Waterloo, Iowa, topping a 101 Mbps service by Optimum Online unveiled last April. As with Optimum's service (which is $99, but comes with a $300 "activation fee") the pricing isn't for the faint of heart. According to comments by MediaCom to industry trade mag Multichannel News, the 105 Mbps tier will cost $150 per month for 12 months and about $200 per month after. Mediacom, which says they'll be deploying DOCSIS 3.0 to eight other unnamed markets shortly, also says they'll offer a 50/5 Mbps tier. That tier will run you $99 for twelve months, then somewhere around $130 (apparently Mediacom's still thinking about it) after that.

Glenn Fleishman pens an interesting look at the road to gigabit Wi-Fi in a new piece this morning over at Ars Technica. Within a few years, notes Fleishman, crossing the 1 Gbps barrier at a Wi-Fi hotspot will become "routine," and Wi-Fi will replace Ethernet as the connectivity flavor du jour for most users. Assuming backhaul issues are sorted out, a new wave of multi-stream 802.11n devices is slated to deliver raw throughput of up to 600 Mbps, with three and four stream radios improving range, robustness, and throughput (albeit not always simultaneously). "The flexibility of three-stream devices should allow networks to be optimized for raw speed, speed-over-range, or range, without giving up much in the process," notes Fleishman.

For years, ISP lobbyists and their hired mouthpieces have pushed the bogus concept of the "Exaflood", or the idea that bandwidth demand is growing so quickly, ISPs can't possibly keep up unless they get X. Usually X in this equation is fewer consumer protections, no price caps, the right to charge incredibly high overage fees, not having to pay taxes -- etc.

The cable industry this week is busy patting itself on the back for a new initiative they've dubbed "Adoption Plus." According to the cable industry's chief lobbying and PR arm, the National Cable And Telecommunications Association, Adoption Plus has been created to "promote sustainable broadband adoption for a vitally important-but-vulnerable population" -- namely middle school-aged children in low income households without broadband. As such, the industry says they're offering discounted broadband to low income homes.

If you're outside the range of terrestrial options, your only choice for broadband is a satellite broadband provider. Unfortunately, as our user reviews for Wild Blue and HughesNet will tell you -- satellite broadband barely earns the broadband title as it suffers from high latency, slow speeds, and very high prices.

You'll of course recall that back 2008 we were the first to report that Comcast was implementing a clear 250 GB usage cap for all users. Despite some grumbling, this was actually a good thing, given many Comcast users spent the better part of the decade complaining that Comcast was kicking people off of the network for "excessive consumption," without actually defining what "excessive" was.

According to the Washington Post, AT&T's chief lobbyist Jim Cicconi is upset with some comments made by White House deputy chief technology officer Andrew McLaughlin. In a recent blog post, McLaughlin noted that "if it bothers you that the China government does it, it should bother you when your cable company does it." McLaughlin is pretty obviously speaking generally about any restriction of data, be it by carrier or government.

Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada last week opined that within the next ten years the game console will cease to exist -- at least in its current form. We're already seeing the life-cycles of gaming consoles extended courtesy of a constant stream of GUI and functionality upgrades delivered via broadband. The next step is making the console simply a dumb terminal with the network and remote servers doing the heavy lifting -- a segment OnLive is trying to tap into (though it will still likely take half a decade or more for this to arrive). Combined with the huge rise in casual browser-based games and the success of digital distribution platforms like Valve's Steam, Xbox Live and the Playstation Network, it's pretty clear that broadband has changed everything. Just keep an eye on those looming broadband caps and overage charges.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Comcast has settled a nearly four year customer class action lawsuit. The suit alleged that Comcast, even as far back as when it was AT&T Broadband, overcharged franchise fees -- in some instances for periods of time when customers weren't even active subscribers. The amusing part is that even though the amounts were fairly small to begin with, subscribers won't see a dime. However, the lawyers for the class action suit get a tidy payday of $462,962.50, nine times the actual settlement. On the plus side, Comcast has agreed to donate $50,000 to one or more local charities.

Users in our Rogers forum note that the Canadian cable provider will be beta launching an open beta of their On Demand Online service beginning November 30. The service, which is Rogers' version of "TV Everywhere," promises to offer users streaming access to several dozen channels of Internet video content, provided you already have Rogers TV service. According to users, the service will come with high quality (500kbps) or higher def (1Mbps) streaming options, all of which will eat away at your Rogers usage cap, incurring overage penalties. In house ad-driven content fueled by high per-GB overages is essentially most cable operators' dream business model -- though we'll see how well Rogers' product fares in the open market when it launches next year.

40% of the money consumers pay into the Universal Service Fund goes to fund the FCC's E-Rate program, which was designed to help deliver telecom services to unserved areas, and deliver broadband service to libraries. The program has doled out more than $25 billion since its inception in 1998, but as the government itself often acknowledges, the FCC has never really bothered to track how this money is spent.

Earlier this month we noted that Verizon had started offering a trio of new prepaid wireless broadband options for those of you who couldn't find an open Wi-Fi hotspot, simply hate contracts, and don't mind paying a steep premium for bandwidth. Verizon now offers a $15, 75MB "day pass" plan, a $30, 250MB "week pass" plan, or a $50, 500MB "month pass" plan.