AT&T: U-verse TV Subs Top 100K
Telco Also Plans to Add 5 National HD Channels by Year-End
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 9/5/2007 3:23:00 AM
AT&T has doubled the number of U-verse TV subscribers in about two months -- announcing that the service now has more than 100,000 customers -- and the phone company said it will add at least five new high-definition channels to the service by the end of 2007.
The telco last reported having 51,000 U-verse TV customers as of the end of June.
U-verse TV will soon launch new content, according to AT&T, including five HD channels scheduled to be added by the end of this year: Lifetime Movie Network HD, History Channel HD, Animal Planet HD, TBS HD and Comcast's combo Versus/The Golf Channel HD. The telco typically has offered 26 national HD channels in the markets where U-verse TV is available.
AT&T also is prepping the launch of new features it claimed will further differentiate U-verse TV from cable.
U-bar will bring "Internet-like content to the television screen" in the form of customized weather, stock, traffic and sports, AT&T said. Other pending features include YellowPages.com TV, to let subscribers search for local businesses, and Yahoo! Games on the TV, including sudoku, solitaire, mah-jongg and chess.
"We've reached today's milestone less than a year after we began scaling this service into multiple markets," AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said, in a prepared statement. "Today, we offer U-verse across nine states, and we've added new features that you can't currently get with any other provider."
AT&T expects the U-verse network to pass 8 million households by the end of this year. The company is anticipating spending at least $1.1 billion in network-infrastructure upgrades to expand the service into the former BellSouth territory in the Southeast U.S.
To promote signing up its 100,000th customer, AT&T is providing a "home-technology makeover" to a Los Angeles-area family that includes a 42-inch LCD flat-panel HDTV, an HD DVD player, an HP notebook computer and a portable DVD player courtesy of Showtime Networks. The family also will receive one free year of the U-verse TV U400 package and digital subscriber line Internet service.
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Att U-Verse is extremely poorly implemented. The information provided over the phone by sales customer service reps is that is a broadband system. That is not truthful. It is actually a hybrid of broadband and DSL, because the fibre optic cables cannot usually come directly to a home but only run along the nearest main roadway. DSL is what carries the signal to the home.
The installation job often includes sloppy work that leaves holes in the wall and requires re-installation.
No one at ATT knows what any other department is doing or how to solve any problems quickly or easily. Every problem requires a customr to call over and over and over again and talk to as many as 14 people over a period of days before problems are resolved.
While it was in our home, their electronic signal messed up our phone line for a few days. Internet was unreliable and high density would not work if someone was on the computer internet when the tv was on.
There is a complete lack of training of employees from installation and front-line customer service right on up to the "Executive Department" which is nothing more than a Tier 2 Customer Service Department.
When we had them cancel our service and arranged to return their hardware to them, they sent it right back to us. No one at ATT seems to know how to do a hardware return. However, somehow we have to get them to accept their hardware back in a couple of days or they will charge us for it. How is that condundrum resolved. And Randall L. Stephenson is UNAVAILABLE! U-Verse may be the most irresponsibly launched consumer services in the US today.
Emily L. Dye - 10/26/2007 6:00:00 PM EDT -
While certainly interesting and will most likely push the competition for newer features, AT&T hasn't been perfect for the communities. For example, they have offered PEG channels an idea (not one working yet in the country) that has the quality equivalent to You-Tube. Essentially AT&T has told PEG's to take it or leave it, and charge the PEG's to even have access to their network. So, less quality than cable, inability to actually find the channel, and then charge the PEG's access - you can see it ain't so pretty. While the PEG channels may be just channels on our cable systems, the coverage of school and local governments is not met anywhere else. Losing this to competition is fine, but state legislatures need to consider this impact at the local level.
Dmod - 9/6/2007 7:20:00 AM EDT
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