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Review by nwrickert See Profile

  • Location: Geneva, Kane, IL, USA
  • Cost: $185 per month
  • Install: about 5 days
Good reliable service
No DNS configuration options in the supplied router (RG 3800HGV)
Good value
Pre Sales Information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

I was previously using AT&T dsl, barely getting the PRO package (3 mb/s). With U-verse, I am easily getting 6 mb/s and could go up to 18 mb/s if I should need that. We are perhaps 1500 to 2000 feet from the VRAD, well within the range for reliable service.

We went to U-verse because of the TV. The alternative is comcast, and we don't much like that company. We were using over-the-air TV, but that became more iffy after the switch to HDTV.

Update April 2010, after 6 months service:

The service continues to be reliable. The price just went up, because the six month new-subscriber discount has expired.

TV is reliable and high quality. Telephone (u-verse voice) has been reliable, and higher quality than we had with POTS. And the elite 6mb/s) internet continues to work well. That the nominally dynamic IP never changes (thus de facto static) is an extra bonus.

I continue to use my own router in DMZplus mode, behind the RG, so that I can have DNS settings available. I briefly tested using the DNS support through the RG, but that did not work out very well (see »So much for 6.1.9.24-enh.tm )

Update Oct 2010, after 12 months of service.

The service continues to work well, as reported above. The main change over the last 6 months, was to remove my own router from DMZplus mode. I am still using my own router, but as an ordinary client. I made this change, because I found that the router was occasionally losing its WAN IP address (apparently the dhcp renewal was failing). Service has been reliable with the router as an ordinary client. I am forwarding ports 22 and 25 to my router in RG settings, then forwarding them to my desktop computer in my router settings.

I am still using the same defacto static IP that I was assigned over a year ago.

Update April 2011. The only change since my last update was to increase the Internet speed to the 12 MB/s download speed. Service continues to be reliable, and I still have the same IP address.

Update Oct. 2011. It is now more than 2 years since installation. Service continues to he highly reliable. In the April 2010 update, I mentioned that the new subscriber discount had ended. I forgot to adjust the monthly price at that time. I have now corrected that (see top of review).

Update May 2012. The service continues to be highly reliable. There was a recent firmware update that might be cause for concern. It removed the ability to use 10.*.*.* as a private IP on the LAN. I'm not using that, so it isn't an immediate problem. But it hints that they might start assigning 10.*.*.* as WAN ip addresses soon. If this is a hint that they are about to provide IPv6, and use 10.*.*.* as an IPv4 fallback during the transition, then that is good news. If, on the other hand, they intend sticking with IPv4, and will use 10.*.*.* to conserve IP addresses, then that is bad news. I guess I will have to wait and see.

Update Dec 2012. There has been no change since the last update.

Update June 2013. The price has increased (shown in listing). The gateway modem/router (2Wire 3800HGV-B) was performing poorly last week, so I rebooted it. That is almost 15 months since the last reboot. There has not been any other change or problem of note. We still do not have IPv6, though the firmware update for that is said to be coming real soon now.

Update Dec 2013: Mostly continued good service. There were two events of note. In October, the RG3800 gateway router stopped responding. I had to power-cycle it. That's the first time I have had that problem in 4 years of service. In September, the gateway firmware was upgraded to a newer version. I had thought that was supposed to bring us IPv6. But still no IPv6. It's about time AT&T got this working.

Update June 2014: The main change is that I now have IPv6. In May, I noticed that the RG had been upgraded to the "6.11.1.29-plus.tm" firmware. So I headed over to the site "https://esupport.att3.2wire.com/online-tool/compat-index.jsp" to check IPv6. That site said that everything was IPv6 compatible, and gave me a link to click in order to activate. I did that. Since then, IPv6 has been working well.

Update Dec 2014: Not much has changed since the last review. The monthly cost has increased a little. The increase is mostly the TV part of the fee. Yahoo is annoying. They can't keep my location straight. I check their page and it gives the weather for Richardson, TX. I change that to Geneva, IL. A few hours later, they give the weather for Sunnyvale, CA. I again have to change to Geneva. They should be able to understand that if there is no GPS on the computer, then it probably isn't a cell phone and its location doesn't change all that often.

Update Aug 2015: The main change since my last update, was that download speeds were increased from 12mb/s to 24 mb/s. There was no price increase. (There has been a small increase in other fees, but not related to the speed change).

Update March 2016: The monthly fee rose another $4.00. I should note that the fee shown includes television, and that increase was probably for TV. Otherwise, things are mostly the same. The Internet service continues to be reliable.

Update Aug 2017: Over the last year, I had been noticing more frequent resetting of the gateway router/modem. So I reported that in May 2017. They replaced it. Old gatew.ay was 2Wire 3800-HGV. New gateway is Pace 5268ac. The new gateway router is far more reliable. Statistics show that it is 49 days since it last retrained. The odd thing, though, is that statistics on the old router did not look that bad. My guess is that it was being stressed with more NAT sessions than it could handle.

After the gateway replacement, they notified me of the account changes. And it looked as if my monthly fees were higher. When my speed was increased (see the Aug 2015 update above), they added a permanent discount so that the fees would not increase with the speed change. It looked as if I had lost that discount due to the gateway replacement. I complained. And now my fees are significantly lower (around 185 per month for Internet plus TV). I think the reduction is a temporary one -- maybe a two year period. But it goes a long way to compensating for the other increase, even if this is temporary.

*** Update Jan 2019: This will be my final update of my u-verse service. I have dropped the service, and switched to MetroNet.

Overall, I have been reasonably happy with AT&T U-verse. They are a bit pricey, but the service has been pretty reliable. In my 2017 update, I was concerned that there might be a price increase. Actually, the price has dropped just a little (I'm not sure why). Since the gateway replacement in May 2017, I have not had any further issues.

The reason that I am discontinuing service, is that MetroNet now offers fiber service. And, by now, it is clear that AT&T is unlikely to ever provide FTTH (fiber to the home) in my community.

member for 19.5 years, 12834 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
updated 5.2 years ago


lou
@107.25.122.x

lou

Anon

customer non service

Those a holes make it easy to add extra "service", but when you cancel a package (I added the sports package), you have to call them on the phone and waste 45 minutes on the phone. F'n jerks.

coolwatersrw
@sbcglobal.net

1 recommendation

coolwatersrw

Anon

Customer Service From Hell

I am very unhappy with my experience with AT&T Uverse. When I called in to AT&T Uverse, I found the automated system cumbersome and time consuming. The system forces you to select choices that are inaccurate for what their customers need. Then, once I did got a live human, although they were friendly, they spent too much time researching an answer to my question only come to the conclusion they did not know the answer. All in all, I spent over an hour traversing through the AT&T phone system only to be disappointed by the ineptness of those who tried to assist me. If you are looking are a company that provides great customer care to their customers AT&T Uverse is NOT the place for you. (Even the form I used to fill out my complaint wasn’t easy to find or use.) My suggestion: Find another company who knows how to treat customers because AT&T Uverse does not.
Expand your moderator at work
TomC
join:2017-08-26
Indianapolis, IN

TomC

Member

Uverse

I'm relatively happy with Uverse. About 6 months ago they tore out all the cable and rewired the house. Speed runs 20-25 gig plus tv. Sure would like to have google fiber but that's not going to happen!