AT&T; has released the company's third quarter earnings, which show AT&T; saw a net income of $3.8 billion on revenues of $32.2 billion. AT&T; added 989,000 wireless subscribers in the third quarter, 363,000 postpaid, Still, just 178,000 of those were smartphone additions suggesting a saturated market and continued price pressure from T-Mobile. The company also sold a record 6.7 million smartphones during the quarter. AT&T;'s CFO hinted at as much in the company's earnings conference call, suggesting the company is seeing pressure from "price-sensitive" customers.

Still, existing customers remain quite profitable, with wireless revenues rising 5.1% on the quarter to $17.5 billion with wireless service profit margins at 42%. According to AT&T;, 30% of the company's Mobile Share accounts have been choosing allotments of 10 GB or higher.

On the wireline side of the equation, AT&T; stated that the company has passed the 10 million U-Verse subscriber mark.

The company added 265,000 U-Verse TV customers and 655,000 U-Verse Internet customers on the quarter. Still, the company saw a net loss of 26,000 broadband customers because of the departure of DSL customers in un-upgraded markets. AT&T; stated the company's new 45 Mbps tier now covers two-thirds of their U-Verse footprint, though as we've recently noted many of those customers still may not be able to get the tier.

Back in December NASA announced that the agency would be conducting a Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) they believe will someday be capable of delivering speeds up to 600 Mbps. The test was successfully conducted this week, and involved communicating with the LADEE robotic probe orbiting the moon using telescopes that are just under one meter in diameter.

Comcast this week announced that in conjunction with Ciena, they've conducted
the country's first 1 terabit live network trial, the first time in which live data traffic was carried over a 1Tb/s 16QAM super-channel on an existing, commercial network. The 1Tb/s trial used Ciena's 6500 Packet-Optical Platform solution over a distance of 1,000 kilometers. "This comes soon after we completed our Nx100G backbone upgrade in the past few years," writes in Comcast employee and DSLReports user ccneteng . "Comcast today has upgraded paths on the network to upwards of 14x100G and continues to invest heavily in capacity growth every quarter."

ISPs like Time Warner Cable and Comcast have tried to damper some of the enthusiasm surrounding Google Fiber by insisting repeatedly that nobody needs 1 Gbps speeds. While on the surface such comments seem just plain unimaginative given the history of technology, they're intentionally designed to shift the overall conversation away from the sector's lack of competition and toward the idea that the often costly service incumbents are willing to provide is simply good enough.

Many cable operators have been very wary about implementing usage caps and per byte overages ever since Time Warner Cable's rather disastrous effort back in 2009 to force low caps and high overages on consumers. Since then, companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable have spent their time "experimenting" with different options and caps as low as 5GB -- while being cautious (so far) to ensure these options are voluntary for users.

For the first time, T-Mobile will be selling Apple's iPads directly to consumers, offering Apple's new iPad Air and a new version of the iPad Mini when they arrive in November. In another new wrinkle, T-Mobile's trying something a little different: they're offering people who purchase an iPad Air with cellular radio 200 MB of free data.

As recently promised, streaming live TV provider Aereo this week released their new Aereo streaming app for Android. The app's available in the Google Play store and is technically in beta, only supporting devices running Android 4.2 or later. Aereo's currently available in Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Salt lake City, New York and Boston. Detroit is expected to join the list of launch cities next week, with a slew of additional markets expected before the end of the year including Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington DC.

France is the latest country to get annoyed by the NSA's behavior courtesy of a new round of leaks by Edward Snowden. According to French newspaper Le Monde (with English dissections over at The Guardian and The Washington Post) new Snowden leaks indicate that during one 30 day window, the NSA collected metadata and recorded conversations of more than 70 million French citizens.

• NCTA CEO on 2014 priorities: ‘broadband, broadband and broadband’; Also says window is still open for cable operators to pursue usage-based models [broadcastingcable.com]
• Transition to increasingly complex, IP-centric mobile networks brings mobile broadband high-profile outages [lightreading.com]
• NSA-friendly law CISPA back on the table with new Senate bill [theregister.co.uk]
• GigSky gives you 10MB free mobile broadband in over 70 countries [tgdaily.com]
• Struggle Continues For Windstream [seekingalpha.com]
• Senator unveils plan to restrict tracking of your location data in retail stores, backed by industry [theverge.com]
• Toronto company files proposal to run broadband line through Arctic [ctvnews.ca]
• eBay plans to expand same-day delivery to 25 cities [gigaom.com]
• Apple Announces iPad Air—Dramatically Thinner, Lighter & More Powerful iPad [apple.com]
• Aereo app finally arrives on Android [engadget.com]
• Identity: The Connective Tissue of the Internet of Things [allthingsd.com]

Former FCC boss turned top cable lobbyist Michael Powell wants a sexier moniker for DOCSIS 3.1, the faster and more efficient cable specification that CableLabs yesterday announced would be officially unveiled before the end of the month. "We need to own this thing and sell this thing with passion and commitment," Powell told attendees of a cable engineer expo in Atlanta this week. "We’re in a 4G and 5G world -- we need to sell this thing to consumers." "Our industry has historically been a little conservative, a little slow on the swing, a little scared to take risks," Powell added later. "I think sometimes we're slow on the uptake."

A New York Level 3 switch failure was to blame for outages experienced by several ISPs over the weekend, according to the Wall Street Journal. While the Journal notes Cablevision routed users around the problem about an hour after the outage hit on Saturday, Time Warner Cable users experienced problems for significantly longer -- as this thread in our forums illustrates. Time Warner Cable wouldn't comment to the Journal on why it took them longer to route users around the problem, which resulted in users being unable to access numerous key websites for much of Saturday. "Maintaining a high-performing, efficient network for customers is our top priority," Level 3 assured the Journal.

We've already discussed how Cox Communications has been quietly upgrading the speed tiers available to their customers around the country, most recently in Louisiana and Connecticut. Users in upgraded markets say Cox is now offering the following options: "Starter" at 1 Mbps down, 384 kbps up; "Essential" at 5 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up; "Preferred" at 25 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up; "Premier" at 50 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up; and "Ultimate" at 150 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up.

Following on the heels of decisions to shut down their secure e-mail services by Lavabit and Silent Circle, CryptoSeal says they too will be shutting down their VPN service due to government requests for the company's cryptographic keys. The companies that have been closing have protested that government requirements have made their very existence as secure service providers untenable, while also claiming gag orders violate their free speech rights.

A new report (pdf) by consumer advocacy group Free Press argues that the FCC has turned a blind eye to the wave of mergers and consolidations gobbling up local television stations. According to the group, companies like Sinclair Broadcast Group, Media General and Nexstar are using "shady tactics" to build "national media empires" that then erode the quality and diversity of local media and reporting.

As noted yesterday, Sprint reseller Millenicom is telling customers they're no longer able to offer unlimited wireless data service starting October 31. Now Sprint-owned Virgin Mobile also appears to be changing their tune on unlimited.

The government's Obamacare website (Healthcare.gov) has come under well-deserved fire the last few weeks for being quite a mess, the estimated $600 million price tag on the website coming with an ocean of glitches and other issues earlier adopters have been struggling with since launch. As part of the President's effort to get the website working again, an anonymous source tells USAToday that Verizon will be among those brought in to help get the website working properly. "Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov," an HHS blog post said on Sunday in describing a "tech surge" planned by the government to resolve issues.

The FCC has pushed back their planned H block auction due to the recent government shutdown. According to the FCC announcement (pdf) the auction will be shifted from its originally-scheduled date of January 14 -- to eight days later on January 22. Sprint is considered to be the most likely suitor for the 10 megahertz of H Block spectrum. T-Mobile and Dish have also shown interest in bidding on the spectrum, but wanted the agency to delay the auction -- instead lumping the H Block together with an additional 55 megahertz the FCC is required to auction off sometime next year.

• New Google technology ‘uProxy’ to provide uncensored internet for global activists [rt.com]
• Verizon glitch allowed access to texting data from any number - Rudimentary URL hack may have exposed texting data for tens of millions of Verizon customers [theverge.com]
• Google's 'Project Shield' Will Offer Free Cyberattack Protection To Hundreds Of At-Risk Sites [forbes.com]
• Bandwidth From Strangers Challenges AT&T;, Verizon [businessweek.com]
• EU Regulators Seek Delay to New Broadband and Telecoms Measures [ispreview.co.uk]
• No One Has a Clue What They Pay for Mobile and Broadband [huffingtonpost.co.uk]
• Telco services provider Edge Communications coming to Canada [itbusiness.ca]
• Redline TV white space system wins FCC, Industry Canada approvals [fiercewireless.com]
• Report: NBA near deal to allow local streaming of home team [nbcsports.com]
• End of the line for Nintendo’s Wii [bgr.com]
• BlackBerry launches Messenger for Android, iPhone [fiercewireless.com]

CableLabs is expected to formally issue the specification for DOCSIS 3.1 sometime this month, according to comments made at the DOCSIS 3.1 engineering pre-conference symposium this morning in Atlanta. The new standard is expected to make cable broadband networks not only faster but more efficient, though consumers could have some time to wait before they begin to see the benefits in the real world.

For years many of our more "serious" users have chosen to give their business to wireless operator and Sprint and Verizon Wireless reseller Millenicom, since they've continued offering larger data allotments and unlimited options (they're a "no drama" company to quote one of our forum users). The plans were particularly popular among more rural users, whose only alternative is often very expensive and heavily capped satellite service, or dial-up.

Karl Bode , skeechan , tmpchaos , IPPlanMan , ccneteng , Gilitar