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 Review by Tanshin 
UPDATED: 92 days ago
member for 132 days, 151 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 West Simsbury,Hartford,CT
 $199 per month
 about 14 days
 "You get far more content than Comcast for your money. Moving from AT&T phone and DSL is easy."
 "Pixelated picture during storms, the service can be touchy when it's first installed"
 "If you are eligible for the switch and want to try it out, go for it. You'll be happy, I was."
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(ratings match consensus)
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Before we had U-verse, here was our original setup:
-AT&T POTS
-AT&T Elite DSL (recent upgrade from Pro)
-Comcast Digital Classic w/ HD on one TV
-Comcast Extended Basic on the rest (three others)
We were considering switching over our Internet to Comcast (before we considered U-Verse), however we tried it and the speeds were very inconsistent (ranging from 2 MBps to 100KBps), yet it was considered normal by the phone support.
We returned the Comcast internet equipment preferring to have a lower but consistent speed for our services.
When we first considered U-Verse, it was not available at our house initially however our neighbor had it. I contacted a Tier 2 tech from the AT&T Direct board and that was fixed in about a week. We placed the order that night,
We went away that weekend (we had a trip to Boston scheduled, stayed in Lexington at the Aloft, I highly recommend it  ), and were greeted with an e-mail stating that we needed to call AT&T asap due to issues with the ordering. Our house apparently was shown to already have service on their computers and the order had to be remade three times before all was good for the install. Our final order date was August 3rd, install on the 11th (8-10 AM)
At 9 ish the morning of the install, we got a call that our installer had left the garage and was on his way, sure enough he came to our door about a half hour later. He loved us because we preran cat6 through our house and already had a switch waiting for him in the basement. All he had to do was put on the ends. So he went out to the VRAD to switch us over and see what our service was like.
Our initial connection was horrible, 94% capacity (leaving 6% margin for error), and we were about 3495' from the VRAD. They reran the lines to our street and our capacity went down to about 75%.
Aside from waiting for the bucket truck and some little hitches along the way (there were three old phone lines coming into our house that needed to be ripped down), everything was smooth and complete.
After the install, we noticed that our corrected and uncorrectable blocks were high and the TV was freezing and pixelating often. I contacted another Tier 2 agent on here and a line man came out the next day and shortened 400' from our lines, bringing our capacity down to around 56% and clearing up much of the problems.
That night there were severe storms, tornado warnings, the works. So I sent a report back to the Tier 2 agent and he saw some issues with our upload speed so we had a tech come out to make sure our modem was okay. It was, but there could be an issue with the connection at the VRAD. He got a line man, it ended up being the same guy from before. He tightened and twisted our connection as much as possible, and rechecked the lines as much as he could. Our upload possibility is now much more stable, however the pixelation still happens from time to time, and pretty much the only way to fix that would be to rerun the whole length of wire from the VRAD to our house because of the changes in wire gauges along the way.
In any matter, the service is much better now and we can live with the little blips along the way.
Here is our services:
- Max (12) HSI
- U300 with HBO and HD
- Voice Unlimited
- AT&T Wireless Family Plan (don't know specifics off the top of my head)
We're happy with what we have because we're paying less than before and getting far more. We now have HBO again, and we're getting all the channels on all of our TVs, compared to just one.
I guess we should be considered lucky though because the line man was surprised that we're even getting service at all with our distance so, I'm happy.
And if anybody wants to know, the equipment given:
1x Motorola VIP1225 (main STB)
3x Motorola VIP1200 (extenders)
1x 2wire 3800 HGV-B (RG)
We supplied the switch, which is a Netgear GS108
Update: We just got our bill and here is a breakdown:
Monthly:
$199 base features
Non Monthly:
$39.80 Prorated Charges (If anybody doesn't know what this is, it is a partial charge that is a result from installations or service changes. It is usually only on your first bill)
$12.73 Surcharges
$11.79 Taxes
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Review by netboy34
UPDATED: 95 days ago
member for 8.2 years, 200 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Kennesaw,Cobb,GA
$140 per month (month by month)
about 14 days
"Great speed for the money, More upload than DSL"
"Business Tech support no where to be found, Residential support won't touch business accounts"
"Hope and pray that you don't have issues if you are a business. Residential support is great though and reliable service"
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I was on Business DSL 6.0 with AT&T and saw that U-verse started offering static IP's to business customers. Signed up for the 10/1.5 package on 1/6/09 install never showed, and after 4 hours of phone time over two days, found that my business order was put into the residential system when I ordered through chat. Re-ordered through small business rep instead of chat on 1/15/09, got installed 1/24/09, but not after the system cut off my DSL prematurely on the 16th. After an hours worth of calls, got DSL turned back on but was regular service with no static IP's, which I had before. Installer was friendly and did his thing. He was a little slow on the new homerun wire pull, but he got it done. Speed is almost right on the mark as advertised; a lot closer than DSL was. Business Tech support is no where to be found, and business billing is open till 6PM EST not 7 as the recording states. When calling billing you are always put on hold, no matter what time of day it is. Residential side picks right up and support picks right up 90% of the time.
On 6/15/2009 - I moved to a new residence and had U-verse installed again. This time I had prerun all the cables, and the install went flawlessly. Adding a static IP block took Tier II magic, but it was done in no time at all. Service is solid and hasn't had a hiccup yet.
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Review by FastAttack
UPDATED: 96 days ago
member for 9.3 years, 1787 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Fort Lauderdale,Broward,FL
Contract price not specified.
"Voip , Internet connectivity are awsome"
"Think again on the TV. DirectTV is a lot better in terms of quality"
"If you want to save money have top speed switch to uverse."
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well my impressions.
Internet is great.
Voice is great except for a snafuu which the porting didn't go as planned , therefore i can only place outgoing calls. but not receive.
it should be ready to go by monday according to the help desk.
TV impressions
Side by side with direct tv..
I must say the quality in uverse is ok but not up to par with Direct tv.. I noticed that the pictures are blurry in some aspects. Direct tv does full 1080p while uverse does 1080i.. on a 240hz tv you noticed the difference between progressive and interlace.
Sound seemed compressed a lot.. and I am an audiophile.. seems like DTV is staying and Uverse tv is getting canceled at the end of the month.Luckily i did some of the dirty work and laid cat6 around the house before he came.. so he didn't need to do that much work.
VOIP
so far on outgoing calls its great and very clear and crisp..
as far as my stats line stats at the gateway:
DSL Line (Wire Pair): RJ-11
Protocol: G.993.1
Downstream Rate: 25216 kbps
Upstream Rate: 2048 kbps
Channel: Interleaved
Current Noise Margin: 26.0 dB (Downstream) Not Available
Current Attenuation: 15.8 dB (Downstream) Not Available
Current Output Power: 14.2 dB (Downstream) -19.1 db (Upstream)
DSLAM Vendor Information: Country: {0x00} Vendor: {ALCB} Specific: {0x8100}
speed test
are consistent between 16.5-17.6 which makes sense with the overhead protocol.
i got the 18/1.5 speed
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Update somehow my voip got canceled and going through a nightmare.
But i must say Matt from at&t who helps other uverse users here is great!
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Review by riekl
Posted: 97 days ago
member for 9.4 years, 265 visits, last login: 7 days ago
Macomb,Macomb,MI
$127 per month
about 5 days
"Install was painless, technician was excellent even did an attic run. TV has been flawless no drops/freezes, same with internet"
"Hrm. I really wish we had fiber to the home so this 2HD limit would go away. I can sync to the note at 63meg but am limited"
"LOVE IT ! Bye comcast !"
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Ordered U200 package with Elite Internet on Sunday. Install was scheduled for Friday morning. I took the day off.
Tech arrived, expecting the worst I stopped him and said "If I am on the low profile cancel the order I can't live with 1 HD stream." Tech: "You are on the low profile but lets get it hooked up and test it, you never know."
20 mins later, Tech :"Uh .. the plans for your neighborhood must be SERIOUSLY wrong, you are syncing at 63 meg when I expected 20-24." When he called in to get me upgraded to the normal profile they made him retest 3 times as they didnt believe I could have that good of signal .. yeah for something going right !
The rest of the install was largely cake, 2 of the rooms I already had RG 6 to, my kids bedroom needed a new run, we couldnt find any cold air ducts directly to the basement so he went into the attic and spliced into my bedroom RG6.
End result, he left at noon with all 3 TVs and internet working flawlessly. I upgraded to 12 meg internet about an hour later and it was live 5 minutes later (wow !) I've had it for 2 days so far. No complaints, no hiccups, no freezes, nno lockups, nothing. Perfection. Wish I could get more then 2HD since I can sync much much faster then I am but i'll live with it for now I hear a 32meg 3HD profile is coming down the pipe soon for those that can sync to it.
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 Review by kyngofkomedy
Posted: 99 days ago
member for 1.5 years, 22 visits, last login: 6 days ago
Culver City,Los Angeles,CA
$130 per month (12 month contract)
about 1 days
"So far so good! Download speed is close to 3MB for the cheapest package"
"Limited functionality with the router"
"I'm still a virgin to this package, but I already like it better than Time Warner!"
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I like this product thus far. I would've liked to be able to record more HD channels simultaneously, but at least I can watch recorded programs on the other tv's.
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Review by egberts
UPDATED: 102 days ago
member for 103 days, 6 visits, last login: 90 days ago
Carmichael,Sacramento,CA
$140 per month
about 5 days
"Speed;Good Phone Quality"
"Loss of PPPoE; Crappy Firewall stuck on; Hostile to Deaf household"
"If you want to keep your second DSL; STAY AWAY FROM U-VERSE!!!"
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I used to use a SBC Yahoo DSL modem in bridge mode (PPPoE) provided by Efficient Network 5800 product (which I help to make the embedded routing software). I've made the mistake of switching over to ATT U-Verse.
With the new ATT U-Verse, you get the 2Wire 3800HGV-B gateway SW version 5.4.x.x, which is not without problems:
Even if you have two physically separate landline going into your demarcation zone (tie box), ATT will NOT allow you to have TWO separate DSL lines (one U-Verse and one SBC Yahoo DSL) because their accounting department (get this) simply CANNOT handle it. This is important because we have a mother-in-law quarter and we have different needs. I've been told (by another DSL engineer) that two DSL line is perfectly possible (despite touted but non-existant separate wire DSL crosstalk issues).
TV was nice. DirectTV and DishNetwork have better 'FAVORITE' channel surfing. DishNetwork has up to five personalized FAVORITE channel listing so that five different member in the family can surf. U-Verse only has one and is NOT defaulted to FAVORITE, but ALL channel which causes griefs in going through MANY unsubscribed channels. U-Family came with PVR receiver, but when we tried to switch U-Family with U-100 (same price), our overall cost went up 7.00 (apparently the PVR was a 'deal', just not sure why its tied to the U-Family package.)
We asked for 'unlisted directory' and got a wierd charge of 'Listed Directory' of $1.50. You won't be able to use ATT UVerse Chat to resolve this, they say they only do tech support and told me to call Sales at 800 288 2020.
Phone was crisp and functional-rich. We ordered two VOIP phone lines, so if you have an alarm company feed, it will get disconnected (and getting that 2nd land line back was a workout in itsellf).
It took three installers over 4 hours to find the original Efficient Network 5800 DSL router/bridge modem. I was out of town, Mother-in-law was no help. During that time, they proceeded to installing all new wiring (outside) where I had JUST 'tuck' in the wire into my attic space from outside (just to avoid the uglies wiring). Once I arrive home, I merely showed the installer by opening the broom closet where the all house wiring panel for Ethernet, Telephone and Cable (sigh).
I've lost my personal website server, my personal mail server, my personal H.323 gateway server (I have multiple video conference within each room of the house); lost my personal Jabber server and denied the use of my own (but better) firewall settings. I am a bandwidth sipper (not a hog). The 3800 RG's NAT algorithm needs some serious additional works.
The 2Wire 3800HGV-B residential gateway (RG) will NOT let you disable the firewall, period. Try what you will, but latency remains high because of the crappy firewall. What the RG will let you do is disable on a per host-basis (that has been identified by its own DHCP protocol). You will find that it is not easy to perform VNC from one home machine to another home machine within the same home, without exposing the VNC port to the RG and its outside world.
There are some new gaming protocols that just flat out won't work.
You will find that you no longer be able to host your webserver router at the Internet edge with this RG. This breaks several HTML referrer (and cripples virtual host web servers).
DMZ option doesn't help to completely disable the firewall option when using a 2nd router. Firewall remains active even if you take the 'double-router via DMZ' approach.
Further more, the new H.323 protocol NAT is not yet polished to support multiple receivers on the inside NAT in the 2Wire SW version 5.4.x to handle video conferencing provided to the Deaf community (Purple, CDSVRS, Sorenson). My router does handle H.323 gateway correctly.
Also, you will NOT be able to BITTORRENT to more than one computer on the inside UNLESS you use non-standard port numbers. Whereas, I had my own BiTTORRENT gateway to handle any number of computers on the inside NAT.
So, you have been warned. I only wish that ATT pre-Sales were smart enough to ask (do you have video conferencing equipments or are you a deaf household) before torturing us with a inordinate long downtime of having no Deaf video telephone service that has been Federally-mandated that ISP should provide.
Followup comments:  
madadmin
@novainfo.com
| U-Verse is horrible I have ahd nothing but trouble since the day that I got U-verse, I loved the features and the choice of HD channels but the experience I had trying to get it to work was a nightmare.
First Problem, I couldn't get my Linksys router to work with the 2wire gateway, IP conflick, ATT techs were clueless, I had to figure it out for myself. (Major) Something techs should know.
Second problem, I have a tv-tuner for my computer, top of the line and should work with everything, not with U-Verse. Techs were idiots didn't know their own equipment. (Minor)
Third problem, billing, we signed up on a deal that we would get money off of our first bill, we have a contract about that, ATT said that they would not be able to do it on our first bill but would credit us $45 per month, doesn't help that much when you get a bill for 300 when you are expecting 150.(Major)
Fourth problem, constant issues when it come to connection from the street to our condo, everyday the connection would go down and up all day for months, and we had their techs come by and tell us it was fixed repeatedly and from what one customer service rep had told us, they knew what the problem was and knew it wasn't fixed, they were too lazy to fix it the right way. (Critical)
I will never pay ATT a dime of money after that nightmare, if I recieved a free I-phone with $.50 unlimited everything for a year I would throw the phone away. Thank god I am back on Comcast. | |
| Learux
join:2001-10-23
Valencia, CA | Another provider maybe Can't you just order DSL through another provider? | |
| | egberts
join:2009-08-16
Carmichael, CA
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| Re: Another provider maybe Yes, I've been told by Surewest Sales that this second DSL can be done as I've repeated pointed out to the them that we have ATT U-Verse DSL and want a 2nd DSL.
In light of this, I believe this to be attainable, but it strikes me as 'counterproductive' for AT&T corporate bottom line perspective. | |
| | Learux
join:2001-10-23
Valencia, CA | Just order what you need, don't worry about att.
There should be no technical limitation for what you want to do. | |
| | | |
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Review by lashmun
UPDATED: 102 days ago
member for 6.9 years, 891 visits, last login: 5 days ago
Novi,Oakland,MI
$155 per month
about 5 days
"Pretty reliable on all services (tv, phone and broadband)"
"Occasional picture freeze on TV"
"Good value for the money if available in your area"
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I have had ATT-Uverse for a little over a year now and am mostly happy with it. I switched from Brighthouse Cable. The price is about the same and the features offered are about the same - I just wanted to try out what AT&T was offering.
I started out with the U200 service with TV, phone and broadband The initial install went smoothly (the tech was on time and only took a couple of hours to get everything working).
I upgraded to the U300 service with HDTV at about six months. The the upgrade went smoothly - no tech was needed for it (the upgrade took about five days to take effect).
I recently (three or four weeks ago) had an issue with the phone service (it stopped working) and when I called Tech Support they scheduled a tech to come out to fix the problem. The tech was a "no-show" (twice). The third time he showed up and fixed the problem (replaced the RG).
Yesterday (8/16/09 - a Sunday), I decided to add the HBO package and did it on-line. It only took about twenty minutes for the new package to activate (a big improvement over the last upgrade I had requested).
Overall I am happy with the service in spite of the tech no-shows for the phone problem. The phone problem happened on a Saturday and was fixed by Tuesday afternoon so the no-shows did not delay the fix for very long.
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 Review by oolagoob
UPDATED: 104 days ago
member for 9 years, 1764 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Houston,Harris,TX
$68 per month
about 6 days
"usually fast, the router's pretty good"
"sometimes slows, as if throttled"
"expensive, but I get 2.1mbps down, most of the time"
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I've had U-Verse HSI (only -- no TV) for about 13 months now. For most of the past year it's been 18mb down/1.5 mg up. It's fine, never down, although it does slow to less than 1mbps frequently while downloading large files. I'm looking forward to the 24mb service when it's available. I certainly recommend it over the cable competition at my apartment complex -- something called "TV Max." I can't order Comcast cable (because of the complex's deal with TV Max) and the highest speed DSL available here is 6mb. But I pay $68 a month for this service and that's probably a little higher than it should be.
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Review by JonBoySC
Posted: 104 days ago
member for 154 days, 196 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Pickens,Pickens,SC
$151 per month
"Knowledgeable technicians, Excellent tech support, Fast internet, VoIP works great"
"a few hiccups in the installation, but were resolved by tech support in less than a week if you can call that a bad point"
"New service still in its infancy but is still impressive. It can only get better from here."
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I ordered the U300 television package with the 6/1 internet tier, and VoIP. Premises Tech came on time and went through my house set up. There were some provisioning issues from the VRAD that were causing sync issues, but was resolved in a few hours. The original installation was all coax. I was put on the 25/2 profile so I am able to get everything AT&T has to offer. After logging in to my account I found out I was able to upgrade TV package to U450 for one month free. I did so. Also upgraded to the 12/1.5 internet for a cash back reward. A few days went by and I started to see a few errors on my RG and that my upload speed dipped well below 2048. I got a hold of U-verse tech support and they scheduled a tech to come by less than 2 days. Tech came out and ran cat5 from RG to NID and was getting sync issues again. Found out it was a VRAD issue, and a service tech was called in. He went to the VRAD and put me on a new port. Flawless. RG synced up in less than 10 seconds. TV works flawless, internet is fast and VoIP works great.
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 Review by BadHat
UPDATED: 105 days ago
member for 6.1 years, 2481 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Rosa's Place
$136 per month
"None"
"Continued disruption, pixelation on video... billing..."
"Worse service I have ever had..."
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The techs were clueless on installation. The service has not worked right since installation six months ago.
They have sent techs out again and again, and the last time we had a supervisor, which was promised the time before but never showed up. They have finally gotten the service to work pretty much as promised. Most of the techs seem new and clueless. I had a tech on installation that thought a wireless device was a flash drive...
I am still fighting the billing. They set us up on paperless billing, with an email address we didn't know about and didn't have a password for, so all we got was disconnect notices, which tended to irritate the better half a great deal. I finally got ahold of someone, after 6 months, that had a clue as to what was going on, and we got the email address changed, and the paperless billing removed, supposedly,
But now I am getting emails... wonder if I will really get a paper bill. And since I had a past due, due to the fact I didn't get a bill, they were bugging the hell out of us. Now, two days after the payment has cleared my bank, they are still bugging the hell out of us, because they are still apparently clueless and have a crappy billing system. I should have stayed with Time Warner, as bad as they are.
Update... Still bad service. The TV is working okay, part of the time, better than it was. But last night I lost internet. But it was so late, I didn't feel like going through the misery you have to go through to deal with repair. The online Yahoo games on the TV don't work anymore. And none of the remotes work on the TVs anymore, just with the cable boxes. And I saw a TV commercial for Verizon that they have the all house DVR feature now that we were promised 9 months ago. All in all, AT&T still stinks. The only saving grace is that the telephone still works.
Update... still spotty service. The HD box in the living room comes on when it decides to. And it's still a pain in the rear end not being able to watch more than 4 tv's at a time.
Update... Got so frustrated, I finally had Uverse disconnected. Then the stab in the back from AT&T. If you disconnect your TV portion of Uverse, you have to change your internet service to "Max" and your price for internet goes up to 60 bucks a month. In order to get a cheaper price, I had to go back to internet via copper. No problem, right? Wrong. They disconnected the Uverse internet, but didn't turn up the regular DSL, so now I have no internet. May be time to go back to Time Warner. At least they were dependable and the customer service is a hundred times better.
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