Thread: Review: AT&T U-VERSE

Originally Posted by psumattDE

FIOS is being built from scratch! What, do you want them to blink their eyes and have millions of miles of plant hung from a pole overnight?? Lol...what a un-founded statement.

I would have to agree. Even if Verizon were to have an unlimited amount of money, it still takes time to build-out their hub and spoke network. Likewise, even after the local Central Offices are upgraded it will take years to install fiber to millions of homes...not to mention the battles of being a new cable market entrant, having to solicit new customers, and deal with the existing cable companies "finally" offering customers discounts and incentives to stay with them after 20+ years of bending them over.

FiOS Internet/TV has been operational in my area since October. While it is active only three miles away, my telephone service is wired to a different Central Office. Lots in our subdivision are 2-5 acres in size. Realistically, as money to upgraded the local infrastructure becomes available, I see Verizon spending most of the money upgrading 80% of area residence that live in more densely populated subdivisions (typically 1/4 to 1/2 acres lots). That would only make sense since they can pass many more homes.



"Were I to invoke logic, however, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
~Spock (circa 1982)

FiOS is three miles and three years away (as of Oct '06) if you ask my opinion. As much as we would welcome more Cable/Internet choices, I just don't see it happening anytime soon in my neighborhood. Verzon must hate the upper-middle class.

As this relates to AT&T U-Verse, I must say that Verizon FiOS TV is a far-better managed and far-better implemented product. FiOS TV rocks...price, quantity, and especially quality! Sure, the HD DVR still blows when compared to a HD Tivo Series 3 or Dish ViP622, but the SD/HD PQ will blow you away. FiOS is a fully integrated business strategy at Verizon whereas, by my account, U-Verse appears to be just another project at AT&T...and it shows.

riffjim4069: Yup. You are right - it takes time to change the entire world. But my FiOS internet is worth it! Their ActionTech router leaves a bit to be desired, but I sure don't want to go back to the old DSL!

--Doug

Originally Posted by tonyp56

More or less, look at this way, AT&T wasn't done with previous DSL service; kind of like building a house but stopping about 80% of the way, to jump over a few feet and start building another house. All that money that was put into original house, now sits wasting away.

I just read somewhere that AT&T took over the #1 spot for most subscribers. That means all of their ~12.9 million customers are paying them money. Doesn't sound like the original DSL technology is sitting wasting away as you stated.

AT&T Uverse just became available in Los Angeles. I live right outside of LA, and was excited that it is ready in my area. So despite the many challenges, I am looking forward to installing the service. When Voom went out of service, I went to Adelphia which later became Time Warner. Dealing with Time Warner has been an absoulte nightmare. It has been so bad that I am willing to try anytihng! Also, it will save me about $40.00 a month.

Well today I canceled my AT&T UVERSE service.

IMO Verizon did the right mix of existing software tech while investing their $ in infrastructure. They didn't reinvent the wheel with their TV service. At&t felt they could make up the difference of hardware investment through software which seems not only dumb in the short-term but dumb in the long-term as consumers demand ever expanding number and variety of products that suck up bandwidth.

I hear people saying they are getting synch rates at like 40+ with VDSL, and really are convinced that IT guys are just keeping the brakes on, siting huge backbones being placed etc. I also remember how Adelphia said they were going to skip DOCSIS 1.1 and go straight to superfast DOCSIS 2.0 (at least in this area). I think there is some unrealistic expectations re: at&t uverse tv and data. I will give them one thing though, every new house in my neighborhood has fiber to the house courtesy of at&t which is more than i expected from them

I am going to reply to your post that you "uninstalled" ATT U-verse and sent all the hardware back. You were correct. We stayed with DirecTV as the result of your other post. Now we have a virtually perfect picture and other operations work correctly - all thanks to your recanting your initial advice to buy U-verse which I agree is still in BETA form. I am posting this here since your "recant" is not yet on all the Internet search engines.

I am having no problems with the service. I had some trouble with the DVR, but they came out on a sunday and fixed it. I think I am going to remain with the AT&T service.

Hi everyone. I stumbled across this forum over the weekend and read all of the comments in this thread with a great deal of interest. Here in the UK we are in a similar position with IPTV [rollout started late last year] and I was one of the first to get it.

Firstly, what amazed me in reading this thread is that basically it is the same product. The rollout here is being managed by BT, our primary national telephone operator, and the service appears to be built on the very same Microsoft product. Even down to the menu fonts on the screenshots earlier in this thread, there is a huge amount of consistency.

I understand AT&T are using Motorola boxes, whereas we are getting an 80Gb PVR produced by Philips.

Taking into account the overall services [unlimited telephone, unlimited 8Mb DSL and IPTV] pricing is broadly similar at around £50 or $100 per month.

Among the users here in the UK there is a similar view that the service was released too early and in truth, it really should still be in Beta right now. Our key issues are;

* box locking during menu navigation [altho less problematic recently]
* insufficient padding around scheduled recordings
* occasional "On Demand unavailable" messages

We are promised a software patch for the padding issue by July and it's fair to say that the other two key issues have been much less of a problem recently.

I'll be continuing to watch these threads with interest, and it may be useful for us to share notes on what's happening on our respective services.

If anyone has any questions about the service this end. By all means drop me a line