Back in June, Sprint, Covad, T-Mobile, Clearwire and several other smaller carriers and consumer groups joined forces to create something known as the No Choke Points Coalition. Collectively, the group has been arguing that AT&T and Verizon have abused their dominant position as gatekeepers of massive backhaul and core networks, imposing unreasonable special access charges on smaller operators requiring cross connectivity. The age-old debate over these charges has heated up lately with discussions over whether special access reform should be included in the broadband stimulus plan. In a win for the group, the FCC yesterday announced they'd be taking a look at special access pricing.

Qwest's in the process of spending roughly $300 million to upgrade 1.8 million of their customers to ADSL2+ technology, offering users 12Mbps/896kbps tiers for slightly less than $50, and 20Mbps/896kbps tiers for around $100. Those are introductory rates, change depending on whether you bundle local phone, and those prices increase after a year -- though can be locked down with a long term contract. Qwest hopes to see a FTTN penetration rate of 40% by 2010, with upgrades costing the company around $175 per home.

But as Qwest deploys the new service, we're seeing a growing amount of grumbling from CLECs and customers in our Qwest forum about Qwest using the opportunity to kill off competing carriers.

User tater_gunz writes in: "Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know that Toledo-based Buckeye Cablesystem has just announced a new 20Mbps/1.5 Mbps Buckeye Express ("BEX") tier." The addition would come just seven months after the carrier announced their $80 (unbundled) 12Mbps tier. According to the Buckeye website, the new tier is arriving December 8 . The tier is only being offered to "VIP" (video, internet and phone) bundle customers for an additional $10 to whatever they're paying now (see VIP pdf). Buckeye has also been hinting to the press that DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade announcements should be coming shortly.

California-based ISP Sonic.net continues its growth as a CLEC, and just last week started offering ADSL2+ speeds to residential users on their own network, an unfamiliar tale of CLEC growth in an industry dominated by larger players. Sonic CEO and regular reader Dane Jasper blogs about the new service, saying the first customer to go live is in Santa Rosa, California. Dubbed "Fusion," the new service comes in 6Mbps, 8Mbps and 18Mbps flavors, all of which come with 1Mbps upstream. The company has broken down pricing here."In addition to downtown Santa Rosa, we have completed equipment setup in Sebastopol, Berkeley, Rohnert Park and Windsor," says Jasper. "We have put cabinets into Healdsburg, plus two offices in San Francisco, and will be bolting them down and installing equipment and power. Albany, Petaluma and other San Francisco offices are coming soon."

Jasper built the company up from a startup on the Santa Rosa Junior College campus to a CLEC with 70 employees and $17 million in annual revenues. You can frequently find Jasper posting in our Sonic forum.

A struggling VoIP company everyone thought would be dead by now partners with a CLEC everyone thought would be dead by now to resell broadband. Sound like a good idea to you? Vonage, still trying to dig out of their financial hole, has announced they've partnered with Covad to resell DSL service. It looks like they won't be reselling faster Covad's faster ADSL2+ tiers, but slower 3-6Mbps connectivity. Says Vonage CEO Jeff Citron: story continues..