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I thought people might find this semi-official update interesting from http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r280851 ... eds-coming

New speeds coming
As you probably know by now, AT&T is going to start rolling out faster speeds in Dallas later this month as a testbed market for the newer speeds. Initially the faster speeds will come from pair bonding and later increases will come from line vectoring and increasing the frequency band to 17MHz. As part if the upgrade, we are phasing out iNIDs and using a newer RG being able to accepted 2 pairs. All new installs will be set up pair bonded so that if the customer ever decides to increase their speeds, they may do so without a tech visit. A tech visit will be required for upgrading to the higher speeds though. This new RG will now have 802.11N dual band and gigabit Ethernet. The lower 2.4Ghz will be used for your in home wifi while the 5Ghz band will be used for your wireless receivers. This eliminates the need for the WAP for the wireless receiver. The rollout will be needing many more technicians to make sure the secondary lines are where they are supposed to be and spliced properly. Be on the lookout for AT&T hirings around your area. The AT&T team here in California is looking for almost 500 new splicing techs and outside plant techs. Training all of these newbies will take some time and thus initial rollout will be slow but actively gain momentum in the coming months. We have got some great products to offer and we are very excited about the future!

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Though frankly I don't quite understand why they don't instead work on adding equipment to shorten wire distances (e.g. adding an equipment cabinet halfway along each distribution trunk from each central office).

digitalbitstream wrote:Though frankly I don't quite understand why they don't instead work on adding equipment to shorten wire distances (e.g. adding an equipment cabinet halfway along each distribution trunk from each central office).

Adding equipment cabinets requires real estate (easements) and permits in multiple jurisdictions, upgrading equipment in the existing cabinets and at the customer site doesn't require interaction with government.

And those cabinets are the points that AT&T doesn't have to give access to competition.

digitalbitstream wrote:Though frankly I don't quite understand why they don't instead work on adding equipment to shorten wire distances (e.g. adding an equipment cabinet halfway along each distribution trunk from each central office).

That's the whole point of the UVerse service, which is what that original post is about. Those VRAD cabinets are everywhere (and are AT&T's alone to use, unlike the COs).