AT&T U-verse → New House with Fiber?

Hello. I live in a brand new home in Cypress, Tx (Houston). I was told when I bought the house that it was pre-wired for U-Verse and I even had an AT&T salesmen come to my door after I moved in (I did not talk to him though). On the side of my house I have a blue and a white wire coming out of the brick that is hooked to nothing, just wrapped in a coil. When I went onto AT&T.com last week and signed up it let me pick Power internet (45mbs). So what do ya'll think? Do I have fiber in my house? If so will I be fiber to the VRAD? I only know these terms because I have been reading on this forum And will I really get 45mbs download? Right now I only get 30 with Comcast.

Also, how may HD streams do you think I will be able to have? Because I have 4 HD TV's.

Thanks!

Prewired for Uverse should mean cat5 Ethernet jacks to each room from a central wiring panel or closet. The exposed wire should also be a cat5e or cat 6 cable.

If newer neighborhood more likely to be fiber to the premise aka FTTP versus FTTN fiber to the node with balance on copper wire.

Uverse standard promotion packages are SD... 4 input streams.
if add HD fee for $10 per month the 32M and 55M profiles would allow 4HD while the 25M profile with best internet speed of Max Plus 18M would offer 3HD and 1SD inputs.

Pics?

I will take some tonight and try to post them. So where would the wiring panel be? I have never seen one nor have I seen cat5 ethernet jacks in my house...

Sorry about the double post. I forgot I had registered on here years ago.

Usually the builders down here in Texas will put the security panel and low voltage wiring panel in a laundry room or Master Bedroom closet. It is typically flush mounted in the wall and it may or may not be painted to blend in.


My ON-Q low voltage wiring panel

Well I will look around tonight but I have never seen a panel like that. I have an alarm panel in the master closet...Maybe it is in the attic?

Thanks for the info. I will post picks tonight if I find anything. Or at least I will post pics of the two wires coming out of the brick on the side of my house.

Oh, and I know for sure none of my wall jacks have an Ethernet port. They are all just coax.

The post I made 8 months ago about my then new house that might help. I live in Plano, TX (dallas area). There are a number of pictures in the post.

»Building new house, what is this box....

What you describe with blue and white wires coming out of the brick is what I had. Do you have a box in the ground near your sidewalk? That's what the first few pictures are.

I do have cat5 to every room came with my home though. So if they didn't install that then you might have to (or use wireless)

My panel says it is an alarm panel so I am betting your outside wires go to your alarm panel. Open it and see if the other end of the blue and white wires are there.

ssiard: Thank you for your post. I looked at your post and pic's. I have never seen any boxes like that around my house. I have an electric box and a Comcast box in my backyard, no at&t box or post. I looked in my alarm panel also. The blue and white wires are not in there but they are in the attic. It appears they go from outside the house to the attic to the garage. But I see no box in the garage where they come out. Also, none of my jacks has an Ethernet connection. Only coax. I am going to try and post a pick now. Oh, I think I may have said this already but when I signed up it did let me pick Power (45mb). So I assume that means I have FTTP?

Here is what the side of my house looks like.

Nope. Not necessarily. You are assuming too much. Power Tier is generally delivered over 2 pairs of copper. So you get 2 VDSL connections integrated on the same RJ-14 DSL jack. This configuration is called pair bonding. The RG just bonds the 2 connections together to appear as one virtual connection. Power Tier can be delivered over FTTP but isn't as prevalent yet.

I have the U-verse Power Tier over copper. I was the first in my neighborhood to be provisioned the first week of October this past Fall when they released it.

It all depends on the timing of your neighborhood infrastructure build by AT&T. I believe all new builds are now automatically fiber. But there was a number of years where the default was copper and only some neighborhoods were designated for fiber. It sounds like AT&T will be spending the next 10-15 years going back and retro-fitting many existing legacy copper neighborhoods with fiber, but all new builds should be fiber from now on.

You said you don't see any boxes or pedestals like the ones in the pictures. Did you look in adjacent yards 1-2 houses in either direction? Light green, shorter, cylinder shaped pedestals would be copper. The taller off-white pedestals with an AT&T marked handhole nearby and the dark boxed enclosure would be FTTP. If you don't have a nearby pedestal, good luck, especially if it is copper.

I don't know how near they place the pedestals for FTTP to each customer property. Potentially they can go much further but I doubt they want to tear up a lot of yards to bury fiber to your house from the pedestal either.

If it is copper and the pedestal is too far, the tech will be lucky to even get wire to the side of the house to connect the NID. They may throw it back to the I&R guys and then your order will get stuck in limbo. That can easily be another 2-4 week exercise in patience before you hear anything.

You are full of all kinds of good news. I don't like you

Thx for the help. I will walk the neighborhood tomorrow and look for the boxes. Let yall know. Thx again

I drove/walked the neighborhood. I saw a couple of at&t boxes and poles/post things like in his picture but they were on each end of the street. I am right in the middle. And they are pretty far apart. maybe 20 houses or so. Also, I see no VRADS anywhere. In the subdivision next to me there is one but it is about 3/4 mile away. So this is prob not good news?

My daughter streams a lot of Netflix, I am getting worried. Maybe I should stay with Comcast? Even though I HATE them....

This is what I have now. Do ya'll think I will get this with AT&T Power?

Norm for Power is about 46Mbps down, 5.xMbps up (rare exceptions), but VDSL2 ping would be more like 22-35ms (only FTTP would bring ping/latency down significantly).

Your ATT end-point is fine for Netflix if at least about 6Mbps per stream, so no problem with Power.

It's ATT's failure to upgrade internet transit links (peering beyond the ATT network) to handle the growth and peak demands of their user's traffic that leads to congestion-like slowdowns especially during prime time (noticable by me, whether on Power or earlier Max Turbo). Yet ATT denies it.

So basically I could have a T3 in my house and Netflix would still be in SD or pause all the time...Great...My daughter watches a lot of Netflix. Should I cancel?

Many are satisfied; I'm keeping my Power tier despite it.
You can try it and cancel within 1st 30 days, no ETF.

Yea I think I will..Hope it works out

I just found the vrads. I saw four of them. Other side of the neighborhood. There were 2 large at&t box vans backed up to them when I passed.

David, in the direct forum, just responded with this. My question was what can I get at my house and I gave my address.

"According to my information FTTP up to 55/6 currently available"

Is this good?

Look what is in my neighbors backyard, directly on the other side of my fence

It's not bad. It just means that the VRAD you're connected to is not yet enabled for GigaPower. However, at least you are not stuck with the older BPON setup that wouldn't even let you get 24Meg.

If I were you, I would be very happy. The infrastructure is in place to provide you up to 1Gbps speed tiers. It is just a matter of VRAD provisioning. You also won't be faced with all of the potential physical line anomalies that can cause unstable connections with copper. You should see rock solid service, assuming the RG firmware has gotten over its stability issues.

Hmmm that looks like a copper pedestal and not fiber. If David said you are eligible for FTTP, though, you should be in good shape. The info he has access to is usually pretty darn accurate.

I will ask the tech if I am getting fiber or copper to the house when he gets here. It is installed Tuesday.

One weird thing. I tracked down the blue and white wires on the side of my house. They go to my master bedroom closet. They were behind a blank wall plate next to the alarm panel. They are all bundled up with a bunch of other cables, coax etc. So if they go from the side of the house to the master closet how do they get to the TV's and the router? I looked inside a couple of my wall plates that have coax coming out, there are no other cables in there...

Here is what is in my master closet

So you were on a 45 tier but were only getting 27 down??

No.. internet speed is additive between both pairs. There is 55M available to the house, and is shared between all services. Priority is voice, TV, then internet. Internet speed is advertised at 45M, but typically provisioned a little higher to account for IP overhead. It used to suck trying to explain why speeds were lower than expected on perfectly healthy connections.

Oh wow. Well sweet. I am getting excited now. If my speeds are that good and Netflix works, I will probably keep it. The service (TV and Internet) is a lot cheaper than what I am paying now.