It doesn't seem like that long ago that we chatted with AT&T about a lack of U-Verse deployment in BellSouth territory. Things on that front went slowly the first year or so after AT&T's BellSouth acquisition in 2006, but things have definitely been speeding up in 2009, with launches in Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana and elsewhere. Expansion continues this week with U-verse popping up in Knoxville, Tennessee, and U-Verse VoIP expanding into Columbia, South Carolina and Charlotte, North Carolina. According to AT&T earnings released last week, AT&T now serves 1.8 million U-Verse customers nationally, adding 240,000 in the third quarter.

Verizon gave us a nudge today to note that the first hurdle in their mega-deal with Frontier has been jumped -- namely Frontier received shareholder approval. The $8.5 billion deal would infuse Frontier (which currently has 2.3 million customers) with 4.8 million new residential and small-business phone lines across 14 states, 1 million broadband connections, and 11,000 former Verizon employees. That huge sudden growth in subscribers and debt is what killed the last two major Verizon efforts to offload their rural subscribers in Hawaii and New England, meaning regulators will be under serious pressure not to rubber stamp the deal.

Verizon unveiled their third quarter earnings this morning, and as suspected, wireless service continued to be the company's biggest growth engine. Verizon Wireless added 1.2 million net new customers, bringing their wireless subscriber total to 89 million. Data revenues in particular jumped a whopping 48.1 percent thanks to increased smartphone adoption and the the cash cow known as SMS. 58% of Verizon's $27.3 billion in revenues comes from the company's wireless services.

When AT&T and Verizon were pushing for "franchise reform" laws to ease their entry into the pay TV market, they spent a lot of time promising how the laws would lower TV prices. In reality, the laws were largely wish lists giving the baby bells anything they wanted, including veto power over eminent domain laws, weaker local authority, the legal right to cherry pick broadband deployment, and fewer consumer protections. But dozens of States passed the laws anyway, tempted by the promise of lower TV prices.

Not surprisingly, states who passed these laws are suddenly waking up in bed next to unattractive AT&T and Verizon lobbyists, and wondering where their lower TV prices are.

Rumors now suggest that Verizon's new Android-based Droid phone could be officially announced on October 28, and launched on November 9. Many people are getting postcards inviting them to Motorola and Verizon's October 28 press event. Droid is Verizon's attempt to take on AT&T and the iPhone, and early impressions of the device seem very positive -- though given Verizon's history with closed networks and crippled devices, you have to wonder where the catch will be. The Droid launch is so important to both companies, Verizon and Google have even started pretending they don't hate each other.