AT&T Readies U-verse Brand for the Ether

AT&T is phasing out the U-verse brand for its Internet and phone services, opting for generic monikers for its signature telecom services in a move to promote simplicity.

The U-verse TV name will remain, although the company has been transitioning its telco TV customers to its DirecTV satellite TV service for months. The telco is expected to eventually use the freed-up bandwidth to offer faster broadband speeds.

AT&T confirmed a Monday report by DSLReports that the U-Verse name was being phased out. The company said there are no plans to change the names of its TV products at this time. But in 2015, shortly after the company closed its $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV it said in an internal company memo that it planned to transition all of its TV product names under AT&T Entertainment once it established its “next generation TV platform.”   The company did not elaborate.

AT&T began informing customers of the change to the Internet and telephone products at the bottom of their monthly bills beginning last week.

“To make it simpler for our customers U-verse High Speed Internet and U-verse Voice services have new names: AT&T Internet and AT&T Phone,” AT&T said in the bill page message. “AT&T Internet product names will now align with our Internet speed tiers. Our voice plan names will remain the same.”