The UVERSE is Just Not Big Enough
Last week AT&T announced a major expansion of it’s UVERSE service. Announcing that it hopes to reach 30 million homes by 2010. If I were a AT&T shareholder I would be concerned by this announcement, especially if in speeding up this rollout then keep using Fiber to the Node.
I was an AT&T UVERSE Subscriber but got rid of the service due to its shortcomings. I call them shortcomings because AT&T decided to go the inexpensive route and go fiber to the node instead of doing it correctly from the get go, by going fiber to the home.
The fiber to the node just don’t work as the IP signals are transformed from fiber and are then sent to the customer house over their existing copper telephone cables. The bandwidth that these old copper cables can carry is around 30MB/s. It is because is these limitations of why AT&T I believe AT&T should scrap the UVERSE project and bite the bullet and go with Fiber to the Home (much like Verizon is with their FIOS service)
You might be asking why I would make such a bold statement, and here are a few reasons:
1) All UVERSE receivers in your house are HD Compatible, however only one TV in your house can tune into a HD channel on UVERSE at a time. This is a major issue, not only can you not only watch a different HD channel on a separate TV in your house, but you can’t even record one HD show while watching another. While a year or two ago this would not be an issue, it is not uncommon now for a home to have two or more HDTV’s in the house. AT&T has announced for plans to allow for two HD channels (or as they call them streams) at the same time, however this will not happen until at least Q3 of next year. From where I sit two HD streams is still not enough.
2) The UVERSE system is still buggy, over the past few months there have been many outage reported, not only at the local level, but on the national level. When I had my UVERSE service and we had an outage I couldn’t do anything, including surf the web or even watch shows recorded on my DVR. You would think that because the shows are recorded on the DVR you could watch them without service, however the recorded shows won’t play when there is an outage as the DVR needs to ask the home server at AT&T for a DRM key in order to play the recorded content on the hard drive.
3) The Internet is too slow, AT&T UVERSE offers the maximum connection speed of 6MB/s down and 1MB/s down. For some that may be good, but for me that was a downgrade. Where I am at in Connecticut my local COX cable system offers 20MB/s down and 2MB/s up.
In addition there were plenty of issues with the UVERSE equipment and the software used on the receivers. The receivers were slow to change channels, locked up often and required reboots often.
Please don’t think I am picking on UVERSE as I am not, in fact if you want to find out more about the issues of UVERSE I invite you to check out uverseusers.com where you can see for yourself the issues that many UVERSE customers experience.
If I were AT&T I would take a step back and take a look at what they are doing and reevaluate the service they are offering. From the way it looks now if they continue rolling our Fiber to the Node instead of Fiber to the Home then the AT&T UVERSE Network will need constant upgrades in order to try keeping up with other services.
I honestly believe that IPTV is the future of television.
The sad part of UVERSE is, if it was done correctly it could easily blow away other competitors including satellite and cable. However for some reason AT&T keeps pushing forward with this network that (in my opinion) is constantly going to need to be upgraded.
Have a good weekend!
AT&T_TECHSUPPORT commented:
Yeah.. Me as an agent in Makati Philippines. everyday there's an outage. it sucks because we're pressured by scorecards of our own performance. why the hell they AT&T puss through the fiber to the node to have good bandwidth. I myself cannot create a good customer satisfaction rate because AT&T service & technology sucks. AT&T Boss? all they do is making their belly as big as their dumb equiptment but their head is as small as their capacity of customer satisfaction. crap. screw uverse! I want to resign! and they're just paying me for 240$ a month as a technician. screw UVERSE.
DJ Megahertz commented:
Just read this post in 2009, and just got U-Verse and I have to tell you, things must have changed. I love U-Verse.. 2 HD is just fine for me, as most of the time I am watching recordings anyway. Had it for 4 weeks, and never once did I see an outage or even a 1 second loss. It is rock solid here in South Florida.
DWilloughby commented:
What a joke. I had it installed on a Wednesday and by Sunday I have two outages of six hours to include my regular phone service. On Tuesday morning my dial tone disappeared again. Enough is enough. I had the service discontinued that day and shipped the gateway and two receivers back to AT&
ramsey in austin tx commented:
Look out: After I signed the contract, U-verse poached my phone number (without my permission) away from my ISP, Time Warner, before they discovered they couldn't do an install at my house (older non-grounded electrical plugs). Now I'm without home telephone for two weeks while Time-Warner drags its feet getting my digital phone hooked up again, at an extra charge and in a more expensive package.
Nothing like being gang-raped by a couple of giant corporations.
Worthwhile noting that the poor UVerse tech was left on hold by his own company for over 20 minutes. It took me an hour (of cell phone minutes) to get anyone to complain to when I discovered my phone had been disconnected and re-routed into cyberspace.
A plague on both their houses.
Ramsey
Austin, TX
Scott commented:
I'm one of those people to whom price is the driving factor. Uverse internet (without the TV) at 1.5mb/sec is fine with me...$25 per month.
Que commented:
They might have more HD channels and DVR options but it's too bad their customer service sucks.
Kyle Luna commented:
Blame Cablevision for the lack of local news in the New York Metro area, they refuse to let FiOS or any other cable company residing in a community where they have a system have News 12.
You can also blame Cablevision for the lack of public access in many communities too, since they're unwilling to share the PEG channels they control. And since FiOS TV is new, there isn't a line of people willing to submit public access programming to them, making it hard to program their own channel in many communities. But in some communities where the local cable system doesn't control the public access scene, they do have one.
As for Government and Educational access, they have them in areas where the local government requests one. If the local government isn't going to program one, they can't carry one.
Stuck commented:
U-Verse seriously needs a faster Internet offering like 15/10 Mbps. If you're Internet connection isn't fast enough to stream HD in real time, then it's not very fast Internet. Look at NY state where 20/20 is available from cable companies or other nations where things like 40/40 Mbps and higher are available now, at very low costs.
corto.maltese commented:
My biggest problem with U-verse is subpar HDTV quality (a user since 05/2007). I have decent equipment (incl. Pio Kuro Elite 1080p), IFS calibrated TVs, plus my installation is a pet project for a senior at&t manager (all cabling and equipment replaced, VDSL stats look great, etc...) but the picture looks rather bad compared to free OTA HD (not to talk about HD disks).
And for bonding - I have a word for you: crossover. Two pairs = only about 40% bandwidth boost, three pairs even worse (double E major here).
UV-User commented:
U-Verse may not be big right now, but it's a big saving in my pocketbook. "I switch to U-verse and saved a lot on my cable bill."
It's about time someone gives those cable company some competition. I can careless about their internet speed, the last thing I want to do after a long day at work is be hunch over a keyboard. Just give me my 30+ HD channels and slick features U-Verse have and it's all good.
kevin commented:
One word: Bonding.
Ken F commented:
Verizon didn't install the right equipment at the VHOs and CO necessary to take full advantage of their spectrum.
Older FiOS service areas are limited to 54-63 QAM channels for digital, due to equipment limitations at the VHOs. Verizon is working hard to upgrade those systems now and has said it will double its channel lineup to 60 HD channels by this spring, with 150+ HD channels by the end of 2008.
This will not be accomplished with extra compression. It will be accomplished by putting the equipment in place necessary to use the remaining 72 QAM channels (=bandwidth for 144 full-bitrate HD channels).
DSLDave commented:
It's not copper nor FTTN network topology that is the problem, it is AT&T. Current VDSL2 technology supports speeds as high as 100Mbps down/100Mbps up. As usual, it is the carriers that are crippling their services, not the technologies.
FiOS User commented:
This may be all true, but Verizon has yet to add any new HD channels! I am sitting here in NJ with less than half the amount of HD channels than the cable companies and far less than Direct TV. Having lots of so-called bandwidth does NOT make a compelling service, content does, DVRs do (FiOS DVRs suck), and an improved guide that has been promised for over a year that has not shown up!
Not to mention NO PEG channels or local news like cable. Yeah, I heard it was coming too. Maybe some day before I retire or die!
