 Review by scots 
member for 13.3 years, 2967 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 1.9 years ago
 Raleigh,Wake,NC
 $230 per month about 14 days "Fast internet, great picture quality for TV portion of service." "Caps on data usage." "Good service, but the caps suck"
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(ratings below consensus)
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AT&T U-verse was launched in my area a little over a month ago. I checked when they first announced it was available, but it said it wasn't available at my house. About a month or so later I decided to check again just for the heck of it, and that time it said it was available. After checking out what was available and the pricing, I decided to go ahead and sign up for it. I signed up at the U-verse web site, and the sign-up process was very easy. I was with Time Warner Cable's Road Runner for internet & Dish Network for TV. The Road Runner is paid for by my employer, so I don't get any choice in which speed package I want. I decided to keep the Road Runner (since it's free for me) and use it exclusively for work or as a backup if necessary. The TV part of U-verse was $10 less per month for about the same channels I had with Dish Network, so it was a no-brainer to dump Dish. Dish is getting ready to bump up their prices, so that makes the savings even better. AT&T had an install date about 2 weeks out, and I signed up for the 12pm to 2pm arrival window on a Saturday. I read a lot of horror stories about installations being cancelled, no-shows, etc (however none had happened in my area), so I was a little nervous as the installation date approached.
Installation day arrived, and it couldn't have gone any better/smoother. They actually started EARLY! I got a call around 9:15am from the outside technician. He stated that he was on his way to my house, and that he would be here in 15 to 20 minutes. He arrived around 9:30am, and a few minutes before he arrived I got a call from the inside technician (Eric). Eric stated that he knew my install was scheduled for the 12pm to 2pm window, but that he had an earlier opening and said he would come over "right now" if I didn't mind. I told him that was fine with me, and he said he'd be here in about 15 to 20 minutes. The outside technician explained to me that he was going to check the signal to make sure it was good, install a new Network Interface Device (NID) on the outside of my house, and then the inside technician would take over from there. Eric arrived shortly after the outside technician started his work and explained what all he would be doing. He said that the outside technician said that the signal was good, so we should be good to go.
The install took about 4 hours, and they didn't have any problems at all that I'm aware of. Eric told me that I was the first person in my neighborhood to sign up for U-verse, and said that I was plugged into "port 1." I signed up for the U200 TV package and 18/1.5 internet. I did a speed test right after Eric finished the install, and I'm getting about as close as one can get to the advertised speeds. While the 18Mbps down is awesome, I'm really excited about the 1.5Mbps up since Time Warner has been stuck on 384K up for quite a while. From what I've seen so far, the picture quality of the TV service is equal to or better than I had with Dish Network. When he finished the install, Eric took several minutes to explain the TV service to me. He also gave me his business card, and told me to call him if I had any problems at all with the service in the next 2 or 3 days. Both technicians were very friendly, and extremely professional. I don't think they could have sent anyone better.
The router supplied is a 2wire, and the TV boxes are Cisco (Scientific Atlanta). The router is the "gateway" for both the internet and TV service. It has 4 wired ports and built-in 802.11g wireless for computers. I plugged in my own Apple AirPort extreme router so I could have 802.11n, and had no problems with adding it into the mix. I gave tech support a 4 rather than a 5 because I haven't had any need to call so far, so don't really know what it's like.
UPDATE 05/10/11: AT&T has now decided to impose data usage caps on their U-verse customers of 250GB per month. Depending on how many people you have in your house and what all you do on the internet it's possible you could use this up fairly quickly. If you go over 250GB per month, AT&T will charge you an additional $10 for 50GB. So, if you were to use 400GB in one month AT&T would tack on an additional $30 to your bill for that month. They claim that the caps will only affect 2% of their customers, yet they've failed to show any proof of this or how they came up with that number. They don't even have usage meters working correctly for most of their customers to self-monitor their usage, so if they can't get a working usage monitor how do they know how many customers this will affect? They also claim that this supposed 2% that will be affected are using up so much bandwidth that they're causing issues for the other 98% of the customers. If these supposed 2% really are causing issues, then AT&T should be doing something to limit those 2% such as slowing down their speeds or completely cutting them off. Allowing them to continue on unfettered at an additional cost does absolutely nothing to minimize the supposed ill effects they're causing. AT&T is only doing this for 2 reasons. One is to rake in additional cash to line their pockets that are already full of billions of dollars with more money. The other reason is to stifle competition to their non-data products from companies like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Vonage, etc.
U-verse is also no longer the fastest game in town anymore. Time Warner has just recently upgraded their Road Runner service to DOCSIS 3.0, and they offer 30/3 and 50/5 speeds. The fastest U-verse speed is 24/3, and that's only if you're close enough to the VRAD to get that speed.
I did add U-verse Voice phone service at some point after my original review. It works well, and I've had no problems at all with it.
We recently had bad tornados in my neighborhood. When the power finally came back on about 13 hours later my U-verse service was working immediately. I also have a Time Warner Road Runner connection that's provided by my employer, and it was out for somewhere around an additional 4 to 6 hours after the power was restored.
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