AT&T U-verse → is this guy really serious?..small rant

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"I have been responsible for AT&T's network since April of '08 and I have yet to have a customer complaint that our U-verse network did not give them the speed they needed," Smith said.

In combination with its FTTP plans, AT&T will enhance its existing hybrid copper/fiber FTTN network.

While VDSL2 with vectoring is all the rage, AT&T today can deliver over 50 Mbps on a single pair of copper at 2,200 feet and 100 Mbps with bonding.

In addition to bonding and vectoring, Smith said that they are working with some of their suppliers on point solutions to deliver higher speeds on longer loops, including what he calls a VDSL Service Expansion Module (VSEM).

"You go from the VRAD that serves your customers today at the fiber to the node location, do a fiber extension, put this thing and shorten the loops," Smith said.

Smith added that there could be a situation where they are able to deliver up to 100 Mbps to almost every residence in a subdivision, "but we have got three streets that go beyond that point it's fairly easy to put in a small extension of fiber hosted off that existing node and shorten those loops and get those customers as well."

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Let's break this down....

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"I have been responsible for AT&T's network since April of '08 and I have yet to have a customer complaint that our U-verse network did not give them the speed they needed," Smith said.

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Don't they have techs on this site? or someone that browses the internet for customer feedback, or have they ever answered a phone call without routing it to an overseas customer service agent?

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While VDSL2 with vectoring is all the rage, AT&T today can deliver over 50 Mbps on a single pair of copper at 2,200 feet and 100 Mbps with bonding.

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Really? Where are these speed packages...I must have been missing something the past 3 years I been in the Charlotte area.

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"You go from the VRAD that serves your customers today at the fiber to the node location, do a fiber extension, put this thing and shorten the loops," Smith said.

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Really this is your plan? To extend fiber links to more VRAD type devices? Why not run it the extra freaking 500ft to peoples homes at this point...

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Smith added that there could be a situation where they are able to deliver up to 100 Mbps to almost every residence in a subdivision, "but we have got three streets that go beyond that point it's fairly easy to put in a small extension of fiber hosted off that existing node and shorten those loops and get those customers as well."

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You can't even get all your customers 3HD streams, on a 32m profile and your talking about delivering 100mbit speeds? If its so easy then why are tons of people just out of reach of U-verse by a few hundred feet, like my moms housing development, where is their small extension to light up another 100+ houses?

»www.fiercetelecom.com/st ··· 13-05-10

Selling smoke to Wall Street to keep investor capital flowing?

Remember that this guy is a business exec. He is speaking in technical generalities and not package specifics. They can synch a VDSL connection at greater than 50Mbps. I know because my own gateway is synched at over 53Mbps and I am 800 cable feet from the VRAD. His statement means absolutely nothing from a customer perspective. It only has bearing on the raw capability of the technology.

The fact that he has never heard a customer complaint that Uverse did not give them the speed they needed is whitewashing. He is probably insinuating that customers that do complain don't have any legitimate argument or need for speeds greater than what is being offered. So, in his mind that isn't a valid customer complaint, but just whining.

I am on the 24/3 Uverse package and it seems to be reasonable for what I currently use it for. I work from home and am regularly on multi-point video conferences and moving large files back and forth. It is light years better than the 3Meg/512K I was stuck on in Ohio. Right now I would have a difficult time justifying more bandwidth, depending on the cost difference, but my children are quickly getting to the age where they are going to start competing for resources. It doesn't help that my wife and kids are DVR hogs and regularly are recording 2 or more shows at the same time I can easily see anyone else who telecommutes like I do and has older kids that 24/3 is not nearly enough to keep up with the demand.

Once my kids get a little older and start hammering the network, I'm certain I will require more bandwidth. At some point, I am sure I will have to get creative with QoS policies to avoid queue congestion. My ability to work is vastly more important than my daughter's need to stream videos.

Just a clarification, your gateway is not syncing at 53 Mbps. Your gateway's estimated max capacity is 53 Mbps. If you are lucky you are probably on the 32 Mbps profile... that is your gateway's sync rate.

Estimated != sync. If your gateway was syncing at 53 Mbps it would be very unstable with lots of un-correctables and loss of sync.

You are correct. I mis-used the term 'synch' without really thinking. Thank you for clarifying. My point still stands. The exec is making an accurate statement about the technology capability which has nothing to do with the reality of what AT&T can reliably support.

When I had DSL and had issues with it, I called AT&T and I told them that I wasn't the only one;

I told them that THEIR own AT&T support forums had threads after threads posted by AT&T customers experiencing the same issues I was having.

The lady at AT&T support reply to me was that was not possible.

She pretty much guaranteed me over the phone that if those people were having the same technical issues, their problem would had been fixed right away initially and they wouldn't be any more people posting again reporting the same thing over and over because when AT&T fixes something, it stayed fixed.

She even told me those forums are read by techs 24/7 because AT&T is on top of things.

I told her she was full of $h*t!

Put very little faith in anything told to you by a front of the line call center rep. They know next to nothing about what really is going on. They are fed scripts and instructed what to tell customers.

That rep must have recently been to customer morale training. That is not to say that AT&T ignores customer problems and does nothing about them, but many customers can and do fall through the cracks for a wide variety of issues. The primary reason is likely due to the pressure for techs to spend as little time as possible at each customer site and close as many tickets as they can in the shortest amount of time. With the amount of tech turnover they experience, the likelihood of getting a worthwhile tech, who could actually solve many of these problems is low.

So, you end up playing the open and close ticket game with customer support. Eventually you will annoy them enough and get escalated to a tech with the right skillset. The question is, how much patience do you have before you give up if you are unlucky enough to have one of the various complicated issues that requires more than simple troubleshooting?

Are you sure about that? You said your gateway's estimated max capacity is 53 mbps @ 800 feet, and yet that exec said they could do 50 mbps @ 2,200 feet. Does the extra 1,400 feet really only knock 3 mbps off the max?

/M

Now you are splitting technical hairs. It is likely he is one of the execs sitting on the new 45Meg gateway profile with a new RG with pair bonding and VDSL2 using vectoring etc. So he knows what their technology can do, regardless of what they are actually selling and delivering to customers right now. Whether or not they can support that across their entire footprint remains to be seen. I never said he was making scientifically verifiable statements. He is making marketing exec statements about what he knows their technical performance capabilities to be. In other words, his performance claims are highly likely within the realm of plausibility with a new RG and a card/firmware upgrade on the VRAD.

@Rolande:

where's the THANKS button?

AngryDallas no company is perfect. They all make mistakes. It is how they respond to the mistakes that makes the difference between one that is worthwhile doing business with and one that is not. It is unfortunate that for as sensitive a technology solution that AT&T uses (ADSL or VDSL), they have chosen a support model that leaves many customers high and dry, even after doing all the right things to help.

In response to your question... Click the 'actions' link at the bottom of the post you like and give Approval for the post.

It doesn't matter what AT&T "can" do it's what they will do. Network Operations isn't making the decisions. The bean counters are. Randall was in the finance side of the company for over 20 years including CFO of SBC before becoming CEO. The bean counters run the corporation.

"Put very little faith in anything told to you by a front of the line call center rep."

Now come on.... You know that 1st line call center reps speak with the authority of the CEO and full board of directors. Anything that comes from a CSR should be taken as the full official position of the company.

"So, you end up playing the open and close ticket game with customer support."

A lot of the time the ticket ping pong game is the fault of the customer. Customers either treat the CSR like shit by talking about there uber 1337 networking skilz. They sometimes just refuse to go along with what the CSR has to do before passing it along because they think/know that procedure is a waste of time.

If you learn to play the CSR game you will sail right through 1st and sometimes 2nd level support. Act like an ass and you will go insane trying to get past them.

Also bear in mind he's an AT&T exec, who knows how much money they spent making sure the plant servicing him was perfect.

The techs probably were required to wear white gloves while they buried his own dedicated CAT7 run from the VRAD to his house. They also probably installed an on-premise equipment rack with a CAT7 home run with a service provider grade UPS and surge suppression/noise isolation with the RG and an enterprise class 10/100/1000 48 port switch. Then then likely installed CAT6 jacks throughout the house and at least 3 or more 802.11n access points to cover each of the wings and floors of his mansion.

I think my sarcasm meter is malfunctioning as its reading off the charts, lol

Na - Company initiative FTTE (Fiber To The Executive) *sarcasm tag*

I surely do hope you are joking!

The first half is a joke the second half is from experience in dealing with ILECs and Large CLECs on a daily basis.

Couldn’t be more wrong, he's not using ATT, he's on cable

Remember last year when they were gonna create 100,000 new jobs if allowed to buy T mobile