Last week we told you how some sloppy AT&T lobbying resulted in an Arkansas senior citizen group writing a form letter against net neutrality to the FCC, but forgetting some important details -- like replacing the form field "XYZ Organization" with an actual company name. Telecom companies frequently use a slew of existing or artificial groups to parrot company positions, giving the illusion of broad public support. Several users have subsequently written in to note that the letter signatory, and head of the "Arkansas Retired Seniors Coalition," unsurprisingly worked for Southwestern Bell for nearly thirty years. Mike Masnick at Techdirt has also been digging into the story, and notes that the man still claims he wrote the letter himself, for whatever that's worth.

As we've been exploring, both AT&T and Verizon absolutely despise Google. Why? Because the company represents an Internet future where phone companies are relegated to "dumb pipe" network operators, and more innovative and adaptable companies wind up making a killing in the content and service business. Given their interest in protecting their positions of power created from generations of government-pampered monopoly, both AT&T and Verizon have taken every opportunity to attack Google.

Google's no saint, but most of these baby bell attacks border on incoherent idiocy.

In the summer of 2008 we noted that AT&T was no longer taking new orders for their Callvantage VoIP service. The company of course wanted to begin pushing their U-Verse Voice VoIP product a little harder, but employees also hinted to us that AT&T was cooking up a new bring your own broadband (BYOB) VoIP offering as well. That BYOB service still hasn't arrived, but AT&T this week gave a concrete date for the CallVantange shutdown, which previously was vaguely scheduled for sometime this year. According to an e-mail being sent to customers this week, CallVantage will officially be shuttered on Novermber 17. Hopefully, the seven of you still using AT&T's CallVantage service find this information useful.

Back in March a company by the name of OnLive unveiled their new broadband gaming service, which aims to replace the traditional game console with what's essentially a broadband-connected dumb terminal. Under the system, which has been proposed in various forums for years now, major title games are completely streamed over your broadband connection -- for a monthly subscription fee.

Initial demonstrations were on closed networks, and of course everyone wants to see this service in the real world -- where the company admits you'll need to live within 1,000 miles of a data center. For Standard-Definition gaming, OnLive says it needs a 1.5 Mbps connection.

As noted earlier this week, this a big day for AT&T, and everybody involved in finally bringing MMS functionality to the iPhone is worried about the strain today's launch will have on the network. Insiders involved in the launch tell Broadband Reports AT&T expects usage to surge on their network today to the tune of 40%, as users tinker with the new functionality. AT&T's announced the launch over at the Facebook page, which notes MMS will only work for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS users, but not for original iPhone users: story continues..