AT&T Slowing U-Verse Deployment?

said by Doctor Four:

I'd rather have U-Verse 12M/1.5M Max tier and the U200 package than Time Warner any day. More channels for a lower price and a much more reliable Internet connection.

At least from what my experience has been with both companies.

said by openbox9:

What if you don't have 4 televisions and/or don't watch that much TV? Everything is relative.

said by openbox9:

Copper can work just fine. Fiber isn't the be all and end all.

said by openbox9:

Copper can work just fine. Fiber isn't the be all and end all.

said by openbox9:

apparently the pair bonding isn't coming through as easily/quickly as they expected.

said by OSUGoose:

I just taked to a buddy i have at T and theres an area they has gotten the copper stolen so many times, they even hired security guards to atch that section, the thiefs waited out the guards aftera month, and stole it again. AT&T finaly decided to put the wire in conduit. at the tune of $10,000 dollars.

said by Ark:

Perhaps if you are far from the VRAD, and there are still some of those little cross-connect boxes in the path, your 2nd/3rd pair don't make it all the way back to the VRAD, but around here, they seem to put a VRAD right next to every cross-connect box.

said by tschmidt:

The problem is feeder cable size from cross connect box to customer. The whole ideal of using FTTC VRADs is to eliminate need to run fiber all the way to the customer. If they run out of copper pair and need to install more economic model falls apart.

This happened once before during the heyday of dialup modems. Lots of hard core data users opted for second phone line - causing local copper shortages in many locations.

/tom

said by cwh:

I would assume today the inverse is happening. The 2nd line is going away and probably very rapidly and those 2nd lines are still in there.

said by tschmidt:

Pair bonding assumes outside plant has multiple pairs per customer. If it doesn't then AT&T will need to add more copper or build out fiber.

Seems like an expensive stop gap measure to me.

/tom

said by openbox9:

I would guess that most house built in the last 30 years would have at least two pair ran to them.

said by tschmidt:

Pair bonding assumes outside plant has multiple pairs per customer. If it doesn't then AT&T will need to add more copper or build out fiber.

I am no expert but I assume existing telephone outside plant was not built to provide 2 or 3 pairs per customer.

Seems like an expensive stop gap measure to me.

/tom

said by openbox9:

What if you don't have 4 televisions and/or don't watch that much TV? Everything is relative. U-verse will work fine for some while others will prefer cable. Personally, if AT&T has turned up U-verse in my area, I would have tried the service.

said by openbox9:

I assume that you've spoken to tech support about the stuttering?

said by sterneriot :

doctor four, try watching hdtv on 4 tv's and surfing on web on uverse. cant do it can you? u can on cable tv.

said by pfschim:

I know that these boards can get to be almost like equivalent of religious discussions (arguments), but really, I have had the UVerse triple play for 6 months now (U450, Max18 and one Voice line) and other than a few initial issues, I am a happy camper.

We are in the range of 1500-2500 ft from the POP and get 17/1.4 internet, clean HD video signal (one set) and the voice works fine (usual VoIP kind of service).

I know that other providers, particularly cable and FTTH based providers are rolling out 25, 50 and even 100meg internet services, but honestly, other than torrents and a few very narrowly used high bandwidth things, I'm not really sure that all this local bandwidth really matters much.

I went from 6/1 DSL to Max18 with the speeds listed above, and frankly didn't get any amazing improvement in my actual user experience of the web. In other words, it was fine at 6/1 and its fine at 18/1.4.

anyway, just my 2 cents

said by vinnie97:

U-Verse has the worst PQ of all due to using the highest level of compression to ensure the data doesn't choke as it traverses over the ancient copper. I have TWC currently and while U-Verse is available, I have no interest. I am itching to move to a FIOS area 5 miles north.

said by truckjrt:

With the rumors that ATT might buy DirecTV what will happen to U-verse if they do that? Will they just pipe in Directv programming over U-Verse? Abandon U-Verse altogether?

said by MyDogHsFleas:

As far as "piping in DirecTV programming", well, I don't think that makes sense. DirecTV has its deals with programmiers and U-verse has its deals. Even if AT&T bought DirecTV those deals would still stand. They would have to cut new deals if they wanted to carry DirecTV unique content (e.g. NFL Direct Ticket) over U-verse.

said by patcat88:

No it wouldn't, all contracts have a survivors clause. Whoever buys the company, inherits its contracts.

said by defduane:

So what is at&t going to do in 2 years when they can't compete. Go back and install an fttp network? Seems like they shouldn't put too much effort into vdsl solution.

said by MyDogHsFleas:

It's not an either-or. The U-verse investment, running fiber all the way to the neighborhood node, will not be lost. Going full FTTP is not a rip and replace, it's an extension of what they've already done. They would replace or extend the current VRADs with fiber distribution boxes in order to go FTTP. And, they can do that incrementally as they wish, rather than being forced to invest in FTTP for every subscriber, as Verizon does.

said by jkeelsnc:

It seems to be that U-verse is a reasonable compromise. Considering that much of AT&T's territory would require them to bury fiber if they tried to push fiber beyond main access streets into subdivisions it occured to me the other day that building a VRAD to within roughly 1/2 mile of their customers makes sense. In the last 30+ years it has been popular to bury utilities in new communities. The downside is that its very difficult and too expensive to upgrade the copper lines in such places. For now, I can see why U-verse is actually pretty brilliant given that they are able to offer 18mpbs internet, 2 HD streams, and voice service over the cheapest, thinnest, crappiest wires that were possible to use for phone service 30-50 years ago to begin with (ie, they were barely adequate for voice service).

said by kd6cae:

Just curious how long it took to roll out the now very common ADSL and cable networks that are common today?

said by gball:

AT&T is actually deploying uverse?

said by Madtown:

How do they judge a neighborhood?

said by dlewis23:

ATM AT&T doesn't need to do 50 or 100 Mbps, there really isn't a need for 99.9% of customers.

said by HKM:

Thats beacuse they can't even if they tried and their life depended on it. But where are you even getting this statistics from? beacuse you have no use for it does not give you the right to speak for anyone but yourself.

said by HKM (2009-03-18) :

Download: 10-15GB/month (1.1-1.3 line capacity)
Upload: 127-129GB/month (97-98% line capacity)

This is my average bandwidth usage quota per month as it been the case for past 3+ years unchanged. While my download is low the upload is high by anyones standard on residential line. As I don't download much but I do upload alot.

So far my fServ stats are below:

Traffic: 2.383TB Tx/115.57MB Rx
UL: 21621.15/DL: 1 Ratio

PS: Yes thats TB as in terabyte the binary prefix.

said by dlewis23:

ATM AT&T doesn't need to do 50 or 100 Mbps, there really isn't a need for 99.9% of customers.

All they need to offer is a solid 25 Mbps with a decent upload. This 1.5 Mbps on there Max 18 is really starting to feel slowwwww.

If they did 25 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up they would have no problem for the next year.