If you haven’t already been exposed to the hype, it’ll come soon – “Highest…!” “Newest…!” “Change the Way…” “Fastest…!” They’re talking about
AT&T U-verse, marketing it as the greatest innovation since sliced bread. But is the hype true? Around my house, the jury’s still out…
What it is: it’s bundling, pure and simple. AT&T brings signal to your house from the pole – the same signal that Comcast or Time-Warner would bring you - except that they use FiOs (fiber optics) instead of copper cable. The AT&T difference is that everything funnels through a “residential gateway.” That means high-speed internet, residential telephone (VOIP), and cable television - Internet-protocol television (IPTV), to be precise. It all comes in through a single device, which is both a wireless router and has an Ethernet connection to the main television controller. All other televisions in the house have their own control box; and the main one has a built-in DVR (optional). If you can connect a computer to the residential gateway
via Ethernet, you have a cabled connection; otherwise internet traffic is via wireless.
Telephone: We didn’t get telephone service, so I have no opinion.
Television service claims:
U-Verse offers five 100% digital service levels plus an HD option. You don’t get premium channels (
e.g., Showtime, HBO) until the second-highest level; the lowest level is “basic cable” – local broadcast stations, ESPN, CNN, and a few others. You, of course, get every shopping channel known to humanity, however. There’s also a “U-Family” package that must’ve been designed in Colorado Springs.At the highest level, you can see anything you ever wanted to – at least anything available on channels regulated by the FCC.
You can, of course, get Movies on Demand and Pay-Per-View. I’ve not bothered with either, but the services seem fairly straightforward.
A major selling point of
U-verse television is that the DVR can record up to four programs simultaneously, and playback can be watched on any television set in the house.
Television service observations: In keeping with AT&T’s nickel-and-dime mentality, every additional television control box after the first costs extra. HD costs extra. If you get the bottom-level cable packages (U-family or U-100), the DVR costs extra.
Both claims about using the DVR are true. You can record multiple programs simultaneously; you can play back on any TV in the house. You can even watch to a certain point on one television and pick up where you left off on a second. If you’re watching the same recording on two different televisions, though, there’s an annoying skip. Oddly, if viewers of two televisions happen to be watching the same channel simultaneously, the signals are curiously out of sync – no idea why.
Video signals are clear and clean, though there’s inordinate noise on the audio channel, with constant background noise that’s annoying at low volume. We didn’t spring for the HD package – why pay an extra ten bucks for something we can’t use? Each control box (required, unlike conventional cable that works on cable-ready televisions without a controller) has its own remote – they’re all alike, so I advise labeling them.
Uverse also has a couple of v-e-e-e-r-y s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w services that are supposed to be real whiz-bangs. There's internet yellow pages (pretty useless, IYAM), and on-line picture storage and on-screen viewing (haven't tried it - why bother when there's flickr and picasa, huh?). Oh, and the world's lamest local weather service, "weather on demand" - it takes five minutes to boot up and when you get it, the video may be as much as 24 hours out of date. Where I live, the "local radar" is on a six-hundred-mile scan, so it's completely useless. AT&T refuses to buy "Local on the 8s" from
The Weather Channel, instead saddling their subscibers with their home-grown crapola.
Internet service claims: there are billboards all over town claiming the “fastest internet service in Houston.” The fine print, however, reveals that only one level of service – the new Max 18, at 18 mbps downloads and 1.5 mbps uploads – is that fast. The base level is a mere 1.5 mbps downloads, 1 mbps uploads; everything else costs extra.
All the usual goodies apply to AT&T-Yahoo: up to 10 email accounts, online webmail (if you call Yahoo webmail), included McAfee security suite. You can have a "personal homepage" for each account as well.
Internet service observations: We ordered the second tier service – “Elite” – which has advertised downloads up to 3 mbps and uploads of 1 mbps. Several bandwidth tests yield results in the neighborhood of 2.8 mbps downloads, 0.94 mbps uploads. It’s in the ballpark. Wonder if they’ll accept checks for 94% of the subscription fee, though? It’s DSL, so expect the slowdowns typical of the service when neighborhood traffic is high.
The free McAfee Security Suite includes virus protection, firewall, and something called SiteAdvisor, which appears to be moderately useful. The "personal homepage" is nothing but "MyYahoo.com," and isn't even a homepage - it's a portal page.
Overall service observations: You get what you’re paying for, though you’re paying for a lot: our bill for second-tier television and internet service plus two additional controllers is about $80/month plus taxes – somewhat less than what we paid for expanded digital program plus broadband to Comcast in Illinois.
The intangibles that make so much difference:
The free installation took five hours. No one ever mentioned that you don’t get a separate modem, so any computer that doesn’t have a wireless card has to be wired directly into a port on the “residential gateway.” In our case, a little tough since the desktop computer in the office is on the opposite side of the house.
The installer left no documentation except directions for the remotes. We have no channel list¹, no features list, no instructions for the DVR. We received no instructions about setting up wireless – not even the WPA key!² What’s worse, after six hours on the phone with AT&T “support” – I use the term loosely – I found no one who’d send me hardcopies. They all told me to go to the website and view the PDFs.
The controllers randomly go tits-up every few days: it took an hour of surfing the website to find out how to reset them.
On-line support is lousy. Need I say more?
The remotes are ill-designed, not to mention resetting themselves every couple of days so that they don’t communicate with both television and controller.
Telephone support is worse than lousy: I get about a 10% success with telephone support. At least half the time, telephone support sends me to the wrong support team (they seem to think U-verse is Dish television). When you
do get support, either phone or on-line chat, the representatives rarely know the answers to questions more technical than "how do I reset my email password?"
The bottom line: AT&T U-Verse is little different from any other cable/internet service. You’ve got relatively dependable television service and reasonably dependable internet service; backed up by on-line and telephone support that will consistently frustrate you. No way I’d switch from another cable company – you’re not getting anything special enough to go through the hassle.
¹ After two months, a single channel list (quite badly formatted, IYAM) arrived in a monthly “U-Guide” magazine, which is little more than a thinly-disguised advertisement for PPV and MoD services.
² The WPA key is printed on a label near the base of the “residential gateway.” So is the password for the modem (the modem’s IP address is 192.168.1.254, in case no one told you – which wouldn’t surprise me at all)
In the last week of December, my wife -- that grandmotherly silver-haired fox -- was walking the house's adorable yellow lab in the 6200 block of Tennison Drive (ZIP 46236) when she came upon a tablet lying in someone's front yard. She looked around but there was no one in sight. Feeling that protecting the valuable electronics from the elements, accidents, or light-fingered pedestrians was the best option, she tucked it in a pocket and carried it on the rest of the walk.
