In response to Uncle Sam's request for input on the nation's new broadband plan, AT&T was one of hundreds of companies eager for money who filed a comment (pdf), fully supporting 100% broadband penetration and adoption by 2014.

Bruce Kushnick, well-hated by incumbent carriers for being one of the only people in telecom that actually remembers telco promises from the past, takes the opportunity to highlight AT&T's shortcomings when it comes to broadband delivery (including recent slowdowns with U-Verse). AT&T promised to have 100% of their 21 legacy states wired for broadband as part of their 2007 merger with BellSouth, something that never happened, claims Kushnick.

In contrast, AT&T tells us Kushnick is comparing "apples and oranges," and the company insists they met their merger commitment. "We committed to offer broadband Internet access service to 100% of the residential living units in the AT&T/BellSouth territory using a combination of wireline and alternative technologies, such as satellite or fixed wireless," says the company. "This condition was met."

Though industry analyst Dave Burstein tells us AT&T's stretching the truth a little bit -- or maybe a lot. "Satellite goes everywhere, and that's what they are counting," says Burstein. "That means they met the requirement before the merger, as well." In other words, AT&T's promise, and the merger condition, were utterly meaningless.

Kushnick sticks to his overall point that AT&T has a very long history of taking taxpayer funds, subsidies and tax breaks to deliver promises never kept. "The fact that no regulator bothers to actually investigate whether the companies have fulfilled their obligations, either in annual and quarterly reports or merger conditions allows the companies to continually make stuff up, then not deliver," says Kushnick.