 dddane
join:2002-01-10
Chicago, IL | AT&T U-Verse business now available to us downtown... anyone have any experience with AT&T U-verse Business (not talking about residential) for TV services? I don't really care about their Internet I'm strictly interested in how their cable TV works.
we have an office of maybe 55~ tvs, though only half of which might be on at any given time, and of those half are probably tuned to the same 3-5 networks.
does anyone know the technical side of how they've implemented their business offering? their max U-verse DSL speed is advertised as 24 Mbps/3Mbps ($100/mo). Would this bandwidth support 25 TVs simultaneously even, or do they allow you to use multiple lines? network-wise in a business, if you're mixing egress does their service allow their boxes to share our network but have us route out on their connection?
More importantly to the bandwidth equation, if 25 people are watching CNN for instance, is that roughly equivalent to the bandwidth it would take for one download stream out on the circuit or is it the equivalent of 25 download streams? I think that's probably the distinguishing factor of how well this service would work for us.
If we do approach the point of maxing out or exceeding the circuit, what happens? Does ATT set a hard limit, or does the picture quality start to chop?
I'm absolutely furious at how Comcast treats us and am ready to find alternatives, and this seems like our first viable alternative. ... our bill with them is not exactly inexpensive either. (rcn is an option if we were willing to pay for their feed to the building, that'd be a 15k project though)
do you have the business service? is the service itself similar to their residential? do they allow DVRs? (comcast does not allow DVRs for non-residential customers, which itself costs us a few grand a year and if ATT did, is a huge selling point right there, particularly if it's centralized like their residential services are).
I'm going to meet w/ them but just wanted 3rd party opinions... they may tell me one thing just to get the account but I need to be really sure of it or any issues they might not be upfront about.
thanks |
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andyrossPremium,MVM
join:2003-05-04
Schaumburg, IL | Given that UVerse is IPTV, I don't know how it could handle a large number of channels. I don't know if multiple boxes tuned to the same channel would use the same datastream or not. Or you would need to have just a few master boxes, and the TV's would have to select one of them.
At least with cable, the limit is how much signal strength you can get to a box or TV. |
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 JonPremium
join:2001-01-20
Lisle, IL
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| reply to dddane
I'm sure some here may know but you may want to repost or move this to »AT&T U-verse forum.
There's Uverse techs and network guys there can can answer the more technical questions.
I can only give my opinion as a home user and it's just me and my wife so that wouldn't do you any good. |
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dddane
join:2002-01-10
Chicago, IL | reply to andyross
said by andyross:I don't know how it could handle a large number of channels. I don't know if multiple boxes tuned to the same channel would use the same datastream or not.
that's kind of what and why i'm asking. the technology exists to "share" the bandwidth like that, you probably use web sites that employ it already. cnn.com uses it, for example... if you're in an office and 15 people are streaming the same cnn.com streaming video content, it's actually not using 15x the bandwidth assuming the plug-in for it is installed on all 15 of those machines). considering ATT controls the client completely it would be even easier to implement... even without a "master" box |
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