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).
U-Verse would work fine if AT&T was willing to install three or four times the number of VRADs in an area as they are deploying now. Instead they are slowing deployment suggesting that things aren't going well. Part of the reason AT&T won't be able to compete with cable is they haven't even been willing to deploy their fiber as deep as the cable companies.
