AT&T U-verse → u-verse by AT&T: N ways you're doing it wrong

The matter of "enough" is interesting, because there are definitely people who have correctly identified that their own needs are above average, or just really high, and want a particular level of service. I think that's what causes people to say things like, an upcoming 150 megabit service is already obsolete today. (Even though I'm certain 150 megabits down would be enough for me for several years.)

On the other hand, I think a lot of very real people either have more patience or are simply doing less stuff on a network. If somebody only owns one computer, doesn't watch video online, and is otherwise a light user, is there a reason that they need a 300/300 megabit Internet service?

They would probably benefit from 300/300 with low ping, of course, but I don't think it's fair to say that they necessarily need that service.

On the other hand, it's interesting to see who wants a lot of throughput and what they want to do with it. I'm currently on a 1536/896 kilobit/second DSL line (and I push hundreds of gigs each month in and out of it), and even though I'm kind of a high end user (I have a server, and like 8-10 computers/tablets on my own, and I'm not even sharing with anybody), I imagine that I could get by with, say, a 40m/20m service. (Maybe the biggest challenge for DSL is that even if you're with a telco that will sell a service level like 40/20, which exists as a pair-bonded and single-pair service with CenturyLink, is that you need to be in such close proximity to the DSLAM to actually get it. Profile 17 and vectoring should fix that up a little bit, but 40/5 is really a more likely service level, which is why I imagine AT&T has only made 45/6 an option, and mostly on FTTH or with pair bonding.

Though, AT&T doesn't seem to be interested in letting its customers choose whether or not they want to have as much network throughput as possible, to the exclusion of TV and voice. Most "Power Tier" (45/6m) stats I see posted could probably attain 100/20 megabit throughput today if AT&T were to open up the throttle on those lines.

On the other other hand, I think that the telcos/cablecos et al pushing for as much throughput as they can physically get (and increasing that physicla limit by moving to newer DSL/cable technologies, or moving to fiber) is a good idea. Google Fiber is really interesting not because you're going to download a single movie or make a single backup at a gigabit, but because you can without reservation let all of your computers do things on your network.

I rent a room from a family of three who has 30/3 service from the local cableco. They could almost certainly use 300/300, 500/100, or 1000/1000, if U-Verse, FiOS, or Google Fiber were available where we live. (Or heck, our local Telco's pair-bonded 100/12, 80/40 or 60/30 options) just because they have os much stuff going on. Because they don't have their own local file server and because they're not forced to deal with the restriction of 1.5M, they don't necessarily think of the Internet as something other than an extension of their local computers.

(Campus environments are like this too, I work at the local university, and most computers on campus will happily transfer to both the on-site file servers and to dropbox/skydrive at the full speed of the ethernet jack at any given desk.)

Ideally, in the future, there's just going to be one service level: "Yes, I have Internet" and that Internet connection is going to operate at the full speed of whatever physical link happens to be delivering that service.

Of course, until then, $300/mo for 500/100 FiOS is going to look like insanity to people who are looking to hit a certain price point as a higher priority than a certain performance point.

Thank you for that link! It's interesting to hear about and see different strategies for upgrading networks. AT&T, CenturyLink and Verizon are all taking different strategies and seem to be moving at different paces to bring upgraded services to their markets. (Though, if you believe everything you read on DSLReports, all three are intentionally blocking YouTube and Netflix, none of them plan on ever upgrading anything ever again, and DSL is literally the worst technology man-kind has ever invented.)

Outside of Las Vegas and Omaha, CenturyLink's migration to fiber has actually been pretty quiet. It seems like what happens is it'll show up in a market, and you'll get a door hanger, and when you log into your account, 100/50 will be available as a speed tier, over the traditional DSL speed tiers, 100/12, 80/40, 60/30, 40/20, 40/5, 20/5, 20/.896, and so on down the line. (I have yet to see information on what the slowest service you can buy on CL's fiber is, but it also seems ot depend on if it's an ex-Qwest area, an Ex-CT area, or an Ex-Embarq area. CenturyLink is definitely still letting the old regional companies do most of the "local" management and decisionmaking.)

To my knowledge, Austin is going to be the first market with two different FTTP providers building out in any kind of earnest (to hear the way Google and AT&T talk about it anyway.)

It'll be interesting to see how it goes in Austin.

One other thing I think it would be interesting to see is some information on how much any given company is really saving by putting off fiber upgrades, or by deploying in a certain pattern.

CL is still working on building up FTTN, and it seems like what has happened is in a lot of areas, there will be an SAI/crossbox, and one or more CooledPed units, which can each hold up to four Total Access DSLAMs. Unfortunately, the CooledPed can (to my knowledge) only hold the TA11xx series units, and the TAs11xx series units are essentially only for DSL. As such, if CL wanted to deploy GPON, they would need to choose between the AT&T style, either adding a new cabinet or replacing the TA1148x with a TA5000/5006 (CL's modular shelf of choice, it's quite similar to an Alcatel-Lucent 7330) or Verizon-style, running fiber alongside copper the entire distance from the CO (which is where the Total Access 5000s would live) to the home, installing GPON splitters along the way.

I think each method has its merits. Unfortunately, CL hasn't really set themselves up for the "upgrade the DSLAM you have to an OLT" method, but it may still be possible, depending on how much room is available near each SAI/Crossbox.

You are confusing 2 completely unrelated topics. What customers want/need is unrelated to how much room to grow is left in existing tech. Saying FTTN/FTTCO Uverse is not maxed out because customers don't need that speed is just wrong.

If "most" customers don't need anything above 30-50 mbps then why is AT&T even bothering to deploy this 150 mbps tier? As top users will stick with the *MUCH* faster cable providers and everyone else will stick with cheaper tiers this new tier is still DOA as neither group will want it.

/M

Because AT&T is choosing to build to the "future" needs of the average customer they serve, and that future for the majority of their customers will be around 100 Mbps.

In a word, Marketing. If a "competitor" tells the world that their d*ck is bigger and everyone says "ooooh... ahhhhh...", they need to be able to say "me too!" Not that more than 1-2% of customers will actually pay for it or be able to get it.

LOL....

Yeah....that's about the size of it. LOL

I definitely think that the obsession with mega speeds is way over emphasized...I personally like to see more effort on value for the money. Costs in general even for low speed tiers with most all companies are way too high.

I'll believe it when I see it. They haven't increased the throughput per pair one iota since they started U-Verse. Pair bonding requires more pairs, and works in some places where they have enough pairs.

One of the side effects of U-Verse is a continuation of the late 90's early 2000's copper phone system where most houses had two phone lines, and a massive copper plant was built up over time. Verizon has thinned their copper plant way down since they installed FIOS, leading to far lower maintenance costs. If AT&T started converting U-Verse towns to GPON, they would be able to dismantle most of their copper system, and still offer ADSL2+ and phone service over copper, saving huge amounts in maintenance. However, they have already waste billions that Verizon didn't waste in building more and more copper.

They can do GPON in an incremental manner (or WDM-PON or xPON), but they should do it right, not another half-ass job like they did with VDSL in the first place. They should tie them together and back to the IP network at the CO, not at the VRAD, with the eventual goal being complete elimination of the VRADs in most places. It makes no sense to do fiber AND have active equipment out in the field. It's like they just keep getting things wrong over and over and over.

That is a completely false statement to say that they couldn't run GPON from the CO. We know that Verizon did, plus they set up an entire QAM system that also runs over the fiber. AT&T did things the cheap way, and it is going to cost them a lot in the long run. Verizon, on the other hand, can easily upgrade BPON systems to GPON, GPON systems can already offer gig symmetrical service if and when they want to provision them to do so, and if more bandwidth is needed, they can easily just swap out gear at the CO and ONTs to support xPON or WDM-PON, although in reality, good management of a GPON system will have plenty of bandwidth for decades to come.

They should start out doing GPON the right way, completely CO-based, and then they can quickly scale back their copper-based system.

Most places have telephone and cable delivered on overhead poles, so that's easy to do GPON, you just stick it up there. Some newer construction does use underground, and some places like Michigan just do things weirdly and have telephone underground, but they should do the easy stuff now. Here in CT, everything older than the 1990's is above ground, and they can just clip the fiber up on the poles and do aerial drops. Some neighborhoods that do have underground have conduit for fiber (I know this is the case where my parents live, it was specifically laid for AT&T fiber, yet they have basically no usable service from AT&T at all), and other areas they could use VDSL2 for a short distance while they are still working on the easy to reach GPON areas.

It's true that homes don't need 10 gig connectivity, but being able to offer gig would be huge, as cable can't do gig for at another couple of years, and even then, the fiber would be very competitive. They could crank the bitrate up on the HDTV channels, and no have any distance or speed limitations. They would be ready for having a 12-tuner DVR recording 4k content, for example.

Metro-E to the office sounds like a VPN. If they offer gig connections though, a VPN would be almost the same as being on the LAN speed wise, as long as the office has a gig Metro-E line.

That article says nothing about anything. They seem to have a lot of roadblocks to gigabit on their pathetic network.

There's no FTTH to FTTH competition, but HFC to FTTH competition can be pretty fierce. FIOS competes extensively with Comcast and TWC, and even with TWC and RCN in NYC.

No. Speeds are too low. We've already seen with Google fiber and a few small ISPs that $70/gigabit is the sweet spot for internet access, and that costs well above the average cost of internet in the US...

That's horrible. You don't have cable available in your area?

Yeah, they need to come down to the $70/gigabit price point. If they want to get the ARPU up, they need to offer good service for it, i.e. $70/gigabit, and then some cheap tier that's a couple of mbps so most people won't want it.

It's curious that Verizon hasn't stepped up to the $70/gigabit plate, as they have BY FAR the largest gigabit capable network in the US today. They already know how to do BPON to GPON upgrades, and once they are on GPON, they can offer gig symmetrical, and still be at quite a bit lower oversubscription rates that the cable companies are. They would need to switch users over to Ethernet, but that's not hard, and that just takes a tech to come to the house, there's no infrastructure deployment per se, the fiber is already there...

Do current laws prohibit att from dismantling copper service? Don't they have to provide access to phone service to all homes. Here in Louisville the old phone lines are mostly underground and most new construction have all underground utilities. Including cable.

Personally, I have no need for 45 Mbps or higher. 12 works fine for my family. As mentioned before some people don't need the higher speeds they just want them. It makes sense for att to offer higher speeds because it probably doesn't cost them anymore money to provide it. Charge for higher speeds and make more profits.

Current laws in most places do require them to offer phone service. What I am talking about is not the complete removal of the copper plant, but what Verizon appears to have done in RI. It looks like they have thinned out their copper plant quite significantly, going from say 1.5 lines per house to far less. If AT&T went to GPON, instead of having many houses with 2 lines (VDSL pair bonding), some with 1, and some with none, they would go to a tiny fraction of houses having one, with most houses having none, so they could thin out their copper. Right now, they have areas where there are 4 or 5 huge bundles of copper pairs running down the main roads on AT&T, you don't see that in Verizon's FIOS areas, you just see one thin little copper bundle serving the few remaining copper customers. AT&T is also running POTS, POTS/VDSL, VDSL, and POTS/ADSL over copper, so their system is just a mess. If you drive from Stonington, CT to Westerly, RI, the difference in the sheer mass of cabling on the utility poles is rather striking.

Sure, are 99% of people OK on 45mbps? Yeah. But if I have the choice of that or 105mbps on Comcast, I'm going to choose Comcast. Customer lost. Although to be fair, they lost them when they didn't bring fiber to my house, and they lost me when they forced me to use their crappy router. Let me use my own router and bring me fiber, and then I'll talk. Actually, I don't even have U-Verse available, even though my neighborhood is a textbook application for it. We have ADSL off of an RDSLAM, at a blazing fast 6mbps. Yeah freaking right. Our local cable company offers 55, Comcast offers 105.

And it's not even "U-Verse" DSL with an IP-RDSLAM, it's just a straight ATM fed RDSLAM. They can't even upgrade the oldest technology they are running. It's just pathetic. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

If I have the choice of spending $115 a month for cable, or $20 a month for DSL, I will be putting $95 a month to more interesting stuff than the Internet.

Good point Norman! That is exactly the way I feel and how I handle my need for the internet.

The fact is that many folks here on DSLR are at the geekish end of the internet spectrum and that is simply not the large majority of customers today, I look at the internet as a utility and most ordinary users look at it just the same way. Sure I like technology and I am interested in it, but I am not going to pay through the nose for a utility.

Well, Comcast's 105 Mbps tier is only $49.99 at most on basic non bundled promo. If you get the special promo, it's only around $29.99-34.99. Plus, it's included in the basic TP if you opt into it for $10 more.

Just because a lot of people don't "need" the speed, doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice to get an occasional speed bump on all of the tiers.

On top of all of that, Pro by itself is $29.95 on promo.

Please. Try $60/mo for 100 mbps cable or $57/mo for 16 mbps DSL.

/M

I would not choose Comcrap unless they were absolutely the one and only choice.

Another difference between us is I don't spend my time in the Comcast forum talking shit about their crappy service or trying to convince everyone they made a horrible choice choosing Comcast.

I don't do "promos".

South S.F. Bay Area.

Comcast is showing me $115 for "Extreme 105". I am paying $19.97 for 13 Mbps ADSL2+.

     Description                                    Unit Price         Total
     -----------------------------------------------------------------------
     Fusion Broadband Information - STI-00xxxxx-0         0.00          0.00  
       Data $19.97 Voice $19.98
 

Actually you're paying 39.95+taxes for internet+phone. Sonic does not offer dry loop DSL, and AT&T wants around $55/mo (promo) for 16-17 mbps. I do not want or need or have phone and am paying $59.99 for 100 (soon to be 300) mbps from TWC.

/M

That's a completely ridiculous comparison. First of all, we can only get 6mbps from AT&T, which is completely and utterly pathetic, and wouldn't even support HD streaming video, much less 2 or 3 streams at a time, much less large downloads, etc. Secondly, DSL isn't $20/mo, the regular price is more like $40+/mo, for a connection that's far slower than a similarly priced Comcast connection. Comcast's normal internet pricing is somewhere around the $45/mo mark. We have a bundle for $80/mo for 2 years with HSI, XF Preferred, and HBO. Even after that, we'll be paying about $45/mo for internet, not including the $10/mo Blast upgrade. So basically the realistic options are Blast! or not Blast!, and for $10/mo, it's well worth it, although most users probably don't need that much speed, and would be just fine with the regular 50/10 package.

Yeah, that's much more realistic pricing.

Huh? I don't trash Comcast.

We have three ISPs, but our local cable company sucks even more than Comcast. They have worse of a channel lineup (quite the accomplishment when Comcast is running a 650mhz system that already has lost 40 HD's from their normal lineup), they don't support WatchESPN, their internet isn't as fast (only 55mbps vs. 105 on Comcast), and they don't support VOD on TiVo (although that sucks anyways, so I don't really care).

Well of course you can come up with ridiculous numbers if you look at the wrong package. I'm on Blast!, not Extreme 150. It looks like your area hasn't been upgraded yet, but either way, the Extreme package is way more expensive. Blast! is only $10/mo more than the normal package. I had Blast! before the upgrades came through, and I was getting 50/10 (57/11), now I get 105/10 (111/11).

Regular internet is about $45/mo when bundled with cable. It is $15/mo more if you have satellite for you TV provider, but that's part of the cost of having satellite instead of Comcast unfortunately. I probably would choose my local ISP if I got satellite, as they don't have nearly as steep of a debundling surcharge.

I stand corrected from my last post, the local overbuilder upgraded from 55mbps to 110mbps down, 20mbps up to beat Comcast. It's $60/mo unbundled or $70/mo with basic cable.

I don't have AT&T.Granted, mackey is right that Sonic.net Fusion is landline phone and Internet bundled, that is no different than bundling TV with Internet by the cable companies. The bill I posted from breaks it out by voice and Internet. Read it. "Data $19.97"!The original discussion was for the 100 Mbps service which, I believe, is a TWC offering; not available here; and most certainly not $45. Which is why I went with the Comcast "Extreme 105" plan for comparison.

Every Comcast package includes this disclaimer: "After 12 months, or if any service is cancelled(sic) or downgraded, regular rates apply." But those "regular rates" are not revealed.

I'll tell you what: If you will pay, I will play in your high speed sandbox. But Netflix HD plays just fine on my ADSL2+ line.

I am what you call a, "cord never". I see no point in paying for crap I rarely watch.

You should be lucky NormanS, if Sonic wasn't in your area you would be trying hard to get promotions. Without promos, literally everything is overpriced. How would you like to pay 46+7(or whatever the rental fee is) for 3/1?

Most Comcast tiers do state what they'll go up to(or a rough estimate):

Offer ends 01/31/15 and is limited to new residential customers. Not all services and features available in all areas. Limited to Performance Internet service to a single outlet. After first 12 months, monthly service charge goes to $54.99 for months 13-24. After 24 months, or if any service is cancelled or downgraded, regular charges apply. Comcast's current monthly service charge for Performance ranges from $42.95 to $66.95, and may vary depending on your area and other Comcast services subscribed to, if any. Equipment, installation and taxes extra. May not be combined with other offers. Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. Not all features, including Constant Guard® Protection Suite, are available with Macintosh systems. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee applies to one month's recurring service charge and standard installation up to $500. Call for restrictions and complete details. © 2014 Comcast. All rights reserved. Norton%u2122 is a trademark of Symantec Corporation. Constant Guard® and associated logos are trademarks or federally registered trademarks of Comcast Corporation

I'm only on U-verse internet at the moment because I had to take it to get a TV promo again. I used to have Comcast's Performance tier for $19.99 for a year and then the second year would be $34.99(the year I was maybe 3 months into when I went back to AT&T).

I'd probably be like my friend of forty+ years; bouncing from one to another provider every couple of years, getting the slowest, cheapest rotgut service available, and not really using the Internet for anything worthwhile.