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Hayward0
K A R - 1 2 0 C
Premium Member
join:2000-07-13
Key West, FL

1 edit

Hayward0 to Wily_One

Premium Member

to Wily_One

Re: Why did you choose U-verse over traditional cable?

said by Wily_One:

said by Mr Matt:

Why did you choose U-verse over traditional cable?

Because I hate Comcast with their spotty reception, terrible customer service, and their overpriced (and up-til-that-time) monopoly.

Guess you haven't had to try and deal with ATT hell yet.

Butt as to just above had a morning of very crappy connection yet solid sync... came home later with no call needed and all is well.... first tie in at least 6 mo....and fixed same way just a little wait.

Darknessfall
Premium Member
join:2012-08-17
Motorola MG8725
Asus RT-N66

Darknessfall

Premium Member

said by Hayward0:

said by Wily_One:

said by Mr Matt:

Why did you choose U-verse over traditional cable?

Because I hate Comcast with their spotty reception, terrible customer service, and their overpriced (and up-til-that-time) monopoly.

Guess you haven't had to try and deal with ATT hell yet.

I've had more customer service problems with Comcast within a year than I had with AT&T with U-verse over 5 years.

Hayward0
K A R - 1 2 0 C
Premium Member
join:2000-07-13
Key West, FL

Hayward0

Premium Member

And I would agree... most often a bit of patience ATT fixes itself.... but if yo do have to deal with them can be hell too.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT
·Frontier FiberOp..
Asus RT-AC68

BiggA to brookeKrige

Premium Member

to brookeKrige
That sums it up pretty well. They started rolling out U-Verse in 2006. And they designed the system to beat what cable could do at the time. The problem is, no one bothered to look at how much bandwidth cable was sitting on and not really using (analog mostly, but plant upgrades, SDV, MPEG-4, etc), so by 2010-2012, cable had surpassed everything that U-Verse was capable of, and U-Verse has no way to fight back. U-Verse can't offer 150mbps internet and a 15-tuner DVR like Comcast can*.

*AT&T could do something like CV's RS-DVR at 15 tuners, but you'd never be able to bring in more than 4 streams at once into the house...

And while they innovated with IPTV, they don't even have a higher bitrate feed for channels when delivered over FTTH, crippled FTTH internet speeds, etc.

Darknessfall
Premium Member
join:2012-08-17
Motorola MG8725
Asus RT-N66

Darknessfall

Premium Member

said by BiggA:

and a 15-tuner DVR like Comcast can*.

It's not really a 15 tuner DVR. It's 3, 5 tuner DVRs that cost a ton of money.
brad152
join:2006-07-27
Chicago, IL

brad152 to BiggA

Member

to BiggA
said by BiggA:

That sums it up pretty well. They started rolling out U-Verse in 2006. And they designed the system to beat what cable could do at the time. The problem is, no one bothered to look at how much bandwidth cable was sitting on and not really using (analog mostly, but plant upgrades, SDV, MPEG-4, etc), so by 2010-2012, cable had surpassed everything that U-Verse was capable of, and U-Verse has no way to fight back. U-Verse can't offer 150mbps internet and a 15-tuner DVR like Comcast can*.

*AT&T could do something like CV's RS-DVR at 15 tuners, but you'd never be able to bring in more than 4 streams at once into the house...

And while they innovated with IPTV, they don't even have a higher bitrate feed for channels when delivered over FTTH, crippled FTTH internet speeds, etc.

Well the FTTH "crippled" is due to the node tech used in the neighborhood. All AT&T has to do is swap the node and all of a sudden the higher speeds are available.

If i move to an AT&T area, i'll get them as long as i'm capable of the Power Tier, or else i'll go with cable, as my 40Mbps CenturyLink connection has me spoiled, i will not go down to 20Mbps or less again.
xcrunner529
join:2010-08-05
Columbus, OH

xcrunner529 to Mr Matt

Member

to Mr Matt
Well, AT&T's FTTH is usually BPON, right? It is at my apartment complex, so we can't even get the Max Turbo or whatever it is. All they have to do is swap out the node...no changes to the wiring infrastructure to my apartment?
15444104 (banned)
join:2012-06-11

15444104 (banned) to Mr Matt

Member

to Mr Matt
FiOS is NOT dead, when the next CEO comes into play at Verizon I would bet that things will change again. I see FiOS only in a holding pattern until then.

Frankly I believe that eventually the gov't will actually force Verizon to replace and build out fiber to replace all existing copper lines, if the company is smart they will come to their senses and do the right thing which will keep them from being
heavily penalized in with large fines until they build out the entire system with fiber and FTTH/FTTB

maartena
Elmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA

1 recommendation

maartena to BiggA

Premium Member

to BiggA
said by BiggA:

That sums it up pretty well. They started rolling out U-Verse in 2006. And they designed the system to beat what cable could do at the time. The problem is, no one bothered to look at how much bandwidth cable was sitting on and not really using (analog mostly, but plant upgrades, SDV, MPEG-4, etc), so by 2010-2012, cable had surpassed everything that U-Verse was capable of, and U-Verse has no way to fight back. U-Verse can't offer 150mbps internet and a 15-tuner DVR like Comcast can*.

That's always what prevented me from getting U-Verse television (when i had TV service). The last 4 years I did have TV service it was DirecTV. I didn't have to worry about my 24/3 Internet speed taking a dive just because the DVR was recording 2 things at the same time, and a TV was on in another room on some other channel.

U-Verse was built on the limitations of copper, and AT&T doesn't want to upgrade it. They may eventually with new technology be able to offer speeds beyond the 45 Mbps, but it will always be only for customers that live within a certain distance of a VRAD. FIOS will be able to offer all speeds in the coverage area of FIOS, and cable offers all speeds to everyone in the coverage area of cable.

AT&T was satisfied with not all customers being able to get everything, based on VDSL distance, etc..... in lieu of cheaper investment cost. They went the way of short-term appeasing investors, but not looking at the long-term. AT&T will eventually have to upgrade their current U-Verse footprint to fiber, especially with 4k television looming, their cable competitors being able to easily offer 50 Mbps as the "cheap" plan, and 100, 200 Mbps as the next tiers with DOCSIS 3.0.

In the Los Angeles markets, the 45 Mbps plan was really JUST introduced in AT&T areas, and what does TWC do? They have started the DOCSIS 3.0 rollout, which is slated to be finished before the end of the year, with the STANDARD plan being bumped to 50/5, and the next up plans 100/10, 200/20, and 300/20.

AT&T simply doesn't have an answer. Right now, ALL of the Los Angeles area can already get 100/5, and about a quarter is upgraded to 300/20 for that plan, mine should happen at the end of the summer.

By the end of the year, AT&T will be left in the dust with "just" 45 Mbps, for the same price as the 200 or 300 Mbps plans from TWC. On top of that TWC is screwing everyone with their Sportsnet for Lakers and Dodgers, costing OTHER providers $4 each, making it VERY hard for AT&T to compete on television price, while still being limited to 3 or 4 HD streams.

Now the 12 tuner and 15 tuner DVR's are but of a gimmick of course, but both cable and FIOS do seem to offer 6 or more tuner DVR's, and you can still get more DVR's in your house, instead of limited to one.

What I have to think of ONE word, to describe the current state of U-Verse, it would be "Limited".

- Limited on distance.
- Limited on the speeds you can get.
- Limited on how many channels you can watch/record at the same time.
- Limited on how many DVR's you can get in your house.
- Its always limited in some way or another.

Fiber can break that limit. Especially on upload speeds internet side, because DOCSIS will remain a system with slower uploads then downloads.

If AT&T brought fiber here, and Gigapower speeds, I would consider switching again. But I doubt that AT&T can match my soon to be 300/20 connection with their copper network.

trparky
Premium Member
join:2000-05-24
Cleveland, OH
·AT&T U-Verse

trparky to 15444104

Premium Member

to 15444104
said by 15444104:

Frankly I believe that eventually the gov't will actually force Verizon to replace and build out fiber to replace all existing copper lines

How in the world do you see that happening?

Both AT&T and Verizon have been lobbying Washington to do the exact opposite. They have been spending boatloads of cash to lobby for telecom deregulation. If anything, the telecom deregulation is only going to allow for Verizon and AT&T the ability to completely walk away from all of this virtually scot-free and we, the citizens of this nation, will be able to do nothing about it.

Remember, in the eyes of both AT&T and Verizon... Wireless is the money maker. Wireline is the boat anchor.
trparky

trparky

Premium Member

Now before anyone says that I'm some kind of shill for cable and that I'm against AT&T and Verizon, let me just say that I'm a realist. Well, more like a cynical realist.

All you have to have been doing is reading what Karl Bode See Profile has been posting for the last two years on the front page of this very site to realize how and where the future of telecom is going. It's all there, spelled out in the articles that Karl writes.
15444104 (banned)
join:2012-06-11

1 edit

15444104 (banned) to trparky

Member

to trparky
They have been spending lots of money, but frankly in many ways the economic viability of the nation is at stake, now that these representatives are realizing the global picture they are really forced to act in a way that promotes national economic security and that includes forcing AT&T, Verizon and the others to rebuild their existing copper infrastructure with fiber.
Wireless cannot and will never support the capacity and reliability that a wire line network will. Not only that but the costs are so high that this alone will limit their profitability anyhow.

I think AT&T while publicly keeping quiet is actually building a LOT of new fiber out, but they don't want their numbskull, greedy shareholders to get wind of it. Like I said when a new CEO arrives at Verizon FiOS, building out new fiber to replace the existing copper will start up again.

trparky
Premium Member
join:2000-05-24
Cleveland, OH
·AT&T U-Verse

trparky

Premium Member

15444104 See Profile, I certainly hope that is the case and that we will eventually build a nationwide broadband network that is worthy of being installed in a first-world nation but I will certainly not be holding my breath here. I will believe it when I see it.

So far everything that I've been reading as of late on these very forums and from the articles that Karl writes, this will not happen. I certainly hope that I'm wrong but the cynic in me tells me that we all have less than a snowball's chance in hell of getting said 21st century network.
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw to BiggA

Member

to BiggA
My first residential Internet connection was cable, 6m. It was down more often than up, and the only reason we got it was because my roommate wanted TV, and at the time, with no better information about it, it looked better than DSL. (Qwest was still only offering 1.5 at that location. Joke's on me though, the 1.5M DSL would at least have worked.) The main reason we did that was we each had our own dedicated 10m ports on a university network with a 10-gig connection to the Internet, so 6M looked slightly less painful to us than 1.5M. (Little did we know, though.)

Three dead modems later and two truck rolls, it was finally almost stable, only went out twice each day rather than several times an hour. If I was going to stay in that apartment I would have canceled Internet altogether, or switched to DSL.

At my next house, 15 megabits was available and when it worked, it worked well, but, well, it didn't work. Years later, I bought those housemates a D3 modem and it's sort of better, but the cableco still has huge problems with that particular area of town. I ended up subscribing to Qwest/CL 20M DSL. It was night and day. I twas faster both up and down, it was more reliable, and so on.

I moved to an area where the cableco does actually provide service in a better way (all the same speed tiers, but apparently they actually work) and CL only has 1.5M DSL. So, it's *even more* location sensitive than just "most of the US."

That having been said, cable isn't really ideal in most situations for somebody whose primary focus is getting a good Internet connection. Like brad152 See Profile if I were moving to a new area, I'd almost certainly go with the telco. Of course, it helps (hurts?) that I have aesthetic preferences and priorities other than raw download speed. If raw download speed were my only priority, I'd have switched to the local cableco long ago, as they now offer 107 megabits in town. Only in a few places in each town does CL offer its 100/12 tier (and only to businesses at the moment, at least on DSL systems), and of course only in one city does AT&T offer anything above the 45 megabit Power tier.

They could likely double the speed of Power Tier to 90/12 megabits today for most people subscribed to it, and increase it again when profile 17 and vectoring come on board. (Though, the way U-Verse qualification works has the appearance of being literally insane, at least to me.)

Of course, I don't think you'll find anyone on the whole site, in any subforum, who would actively rather have DSL than fiber to the home, but you're likely to find a few with their own reasons and motivation for, say, disliking the cable company or even situations like U-Verse GigaPower and Google Fiber, where you're either implicitly allowing them to advertise to you, or in the case of Google, you're literally and explicitly buying a land-line Internet connection from an advertising company. At least with GigaPower, if you go up to its "retail" price of about $120/month, you can get it without TV and ads.
coryw

coryw to maartena

Member

to maartena
How quickly can they eliminate that analog spectrum use? 24-channel DOCSIS modems actually already exist, although in very very limited numbers, and DOCSIS doesn't technically limit the number of channels you can use. A motivated provider could do extremely close to a symmetric gigabit. A motivated provider who insists on control over the customer premises equipment could probably get a device with enough channels manufactured.

This is tangential to the actual discussion at hand, but.

In fact, it would be super interesting to see what U-Verse would look like deployed as DOCSIS over a coax system, instead of DSL over a twisted pair copper system. I imagine AT&T would just cram the whole thing full of DOCSIS channels and the data speeds on it would be something ridiculously high like 900/800 megabits. (there's no reason AT&T couldn't build or have the head end equpiment built, and no reason pace/2wire, Arris, etc couldn't build a gateway capable of such shenanigans.)

On one side of things, it would be a complete redeploy from what they had, but on the other side of things, the way cable nodes and signal amplifiers work suggests that they might have an easier time wiring up neighborhoods, apartments, and distant homes in a reasonable manner. And, co-ax and DOCSIS has existed since long before fiber was as ready for wide deployment as it is today.

Granted, given what happened in the real world (which is that AT&T had a phone system to work with, not a cable system) ADSL2+ and VDSL/VDSL2 are the sensical upgrades, even if they didn't upgrade every single area to VDSL2 and drop VRADs every 4000 feet, simply because there is a point at which it would likely have required that they re-engineer the copper wiring in a neighborhood to reduce distances, and at that point, they may as well just drop fiber in.

One of the other things I've long wondered, and I'll just have to do the research on this on my own at some point, is whether or not there's something preventing AT&T from spinning up video services in certain areas, such as getting around the insane franchise agreement that Charter has with, for example, Carson City, in Nevada, where any new entrant to the video market has to either match a $200,000 PEG grant for a public access cable station, or give Charter back some of the money they spent on that grant. (Which, aside from maybe some markets being easier to wire up with VDSL2, may be part of why AT&T hasn't entered some areas with its video product.)

Of course, that's a separate issue from their ultimately bringing an upgraded ADSL2+ product with speeds above 6 megabits to places where 3 or 6 is the top speed at the moment, and in a market like Carson City, NV they should be able to drop in "IRAD"s and sell NVG510s or NV5068s to the residents.

In fact, I sort of wonder if getting video franchises is part of what has prompted Verizon to stop deploying new FiOS. So far, Verizon hasn't (to my knowledge) been willing to lay fiber in an area where they won't be able to sell video over it. AT&T has been more willing to fragment "the product" in that manner, but users of AT&T's U-Verse in non-video areas still suffer from low data speeds.

Wily_One
Premium Member
join:2002-11-24
San Jose, CA

Wily_One to Hayward0

Premium Member

to Hayward0
said by Hayward0:

said by Wily_One:

said by Mr Matt:

Why did you choose U-verse over traditional cable?

Because I hate Comcast with their spotty reception, terrible customer service, and their overpriced (and up-til-that-time) monopoly.

Guess you haven't had to try and deal with ATT hell yet.

Wrong again. I've had good service from AT&T.

Overall Internet has been rock solid since I got U-verse in 2008. The few times there have been issues, it was rectified and customer service has been responsive.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT
·Frontier FiberOp..
Asus RT-AC68

BiggA to Darknessfall

Premium Member

to Darknessfall
said by Darknessfall:

It's not really a 15 tuner DVR. It's 3, 5 tuner DVRs that cost a ton of money.

This is true. But my point is that AT&T can't get 15 streams into the house at once. Comcast, or any other cable provider, can support a virtually unlimited number of tuners.
said by brad152:

Well the FTTH "crippled" is due to the node tech used in the neighborhood. All AT&T has to do is swap the node and all of a sudden the higher speeds are available.

It's crippled in software. Even the BPON areas are capable realistically of 150mbps speeds, since there's 622mbps total on the line. Verizon is doing 150mbps over BPON. AT&T crippled them in software to match the FTTN systems, which are crippled in the first place due to the fact that they are using copper.
said by maartena:

What I have to think of ONE word, to describe the current state of U-Verse, it would be "Limited".

You're spot on. Limited is a good way to put it. Cable seems to be having fun torturing AT&T, since they know how limited AT&T's system is. Cable can realistically do 20mbps uploads, which for the next 3-5 years will be plenty for most people. Unless you're uploading large files for work or something, 20mbps is plenty, even with heavy torrent, online backup, Slingbox/TiVo/whatever streaming and YouTube uploading.
said by trparky:

...

Unfortunately, that's true. What the government should "give" the telcos is a 1:1 copper to fiber replacement, so that the telcos would see an advantage to rolling out more fiber, in that they could thin out/ eliminate their copper plants.
said by 15444104:

...

This is part of a larger issue of infrastructure. This is part of the private infrastructure, unlike part of the rail system, the entire road system (excepting small residential or commercial private roads), part of the airline/airport system, which is public. However, both telecom and transportation have seen a lack of investment, planning, and improvement. And that's not the mention the electric grid, which has improved a bit, but not in the ways that it needs to.
said by 15444104:

I think AT&T while publicly keeping quiet is actually building a LOT of new fiber out, but they don't want their numbskull, greedy shareholders to get wind of it. Like I said when a new CEO arrives at Verizon FiOS, building out new fiber to replace the existing copper will start up again.

Hopefully that's the case. I'm not too optimistic though.
said by coryw:

I moved to an area where the cableco does actually provide service in a better way (all the same speed tiers, but apparently they actually work) and CL only has 1.5M DSL. So, it's *even more* location sensitive than just "most of the US."

Yes, it's location dependent, and yes, there are horror stories out there, but in most places, it works just fine and virtually never goes out. Cable can be very reliable. DSL can also be horrible, and many ATM-fed DSLAMs are still seeing huge speed slowdowns, since they have very little bandwidth available in the first place. Joke is on DSL, and it's "dedicated" bandwidth. Yeah right.
said by coryw:

How quickly can they eliminate that analog spectrum use? 24-channel DOCSIS modems actually already exist, although in very very limited numbers, and DOCSIS doesn't technically limit the number of channels you can use. A motivated provider could do extremely close to a symmetric gigabit. A motivated provider who insists on control over the customer premises equipment could probably get a device with enough channels manufactured.

Comcast got rid of analog a few years ago. On some systems that haven't been rebuilt, like the 650mhz system I'm on, they are absolutely flat out of capacity, even with no analog and tri-muxing HDs. We are missing a lot of channels, as well as the extra 10mbps of Upload on Blast! that rebuilt markets have.
said by coryw:

In fact, it would be super interesting to see what U-Verse would look like deployed as DOCSIS over a coax system, instead of DSL over a twisted pair copper system. I imagine AT&T would just cram the whole thing full of DOCSIS channels and the data speeds on it would be something ridiculously high like 900/800 megabits. (there's no reason AT&T couldn't build or have the head end equpiment built, and no reason pace/2wire, Arris, etc couldn't build a gateway capable of such shenanigans.)

It wouldn't make any sense to build an HFC system out at this point. It makes more sense to go to fiber. U-Verse running on Coax would likely offer far better internet speeds, offer more HD streams at once, and still have much of the system empty.

The HFC systems of today are very, very different from the cable systems that were built in the late '70s and '80s. Those were one-way, all-analog systems based on generating an RF signal and amplifying it over and over. Today's systems have physical coax for the last "mile", which is usually less than a physical mile, and actually can push fiber farther out into the field than U-Verse in some cases, but the rest of the network is entirely fiber.

FIOS and U-Verse still have to have local franshise agreements. If you're going to go and build out any sort of "cable" system, be it an actual cable system, cable running over fiber to the home like FIOS, or IPTV like U-Verse, $200k is a drop in the bucket compared with the cost of the physical plant, equipment, marketing, and rolling trucks to get people hooked up to your system.

The existing U-Verse system would work fine without TV, but they wouldn't get as good market penetration or make as much money, as they wouldn't have as many services to amortize the cost of the physical plant over. These days, if you're going to build any sort of wireline service, it has to be triple play.

AFAIK, U-Verse VDSL doesn't exist outside of video franchised market, only the "fake U-Verse" rebranded ADSL2+ with an IP-DSLAM. FIOS has done fiber in some places where they didn't have a video franchise, and I think in most cases, they came back later and got one. Without triple play, it doesn't make sense to put FIOS in.
wbynum
join:2013-06-08

2 recommendations

wbynum to Wily_One

Member

to Wily_One
Just switched from Comcast to U-Verse yesterday. Main reason for switching was my year was about up with Comcast so I needed another promo deal. So far, everything is great. Comparison of the two so far:

Account Setup and Installation:

Comcast: In the two years of being in Houston I had Comcast setup at two addresses. Both were nightmares. First installation took a week and 3 installer visits for them to figure out where the correct out side "hub" was. Second installation they showed up with a non-DVR box. They over-nighted me a DVR box but the account was screwed up after that. Had to call them to get the proper credits after returning the non-DVR box. Comcast installer at second address was a deaf mute. Got two words out of him.

ATT UVerse: The installer showed up with the correct equipment and was pretty friendly. Install was easy for him as my current house is already wired. Just had to replace the outside NID, install the battery backup/power supply and add ethernet ends to the cat 5 wires in my wiring closet (they had been used for phone connections). No issues with the installation. Small complaint is the installer didn't clean up any of his mess. Left cable ends and what not on the floor including the copper scraps in carpet. Not a big deal for me but I could see a wife with kids being annoyed.

Equipment:

Comcast: Their DVR was horrible. Moment I saw a 1/4th of the guide real estate was taken up by advertisements that one could not disable I knew it was not for me. I quickly ordered a cable card tuner and replaced the DVR box with a cable card from Comcast and a WMC PC. Lost the free DVR promo because of that and had to pay $7.50 + Comcast fees for the cable card per month.

Cable modem connection for Comcast at all addresses has been fine. Always used my own cable modem. Comcast phone tech guy even let me use an old modem not in their approved list when my original cable modem died. That was appreciated.

ATT UVerse: DVR is decently nice. No on screen advertisements. Quick channel change. DVR has a nice small footprint. Like the Comcast DVR/Cable Card the ATT unit shows the unsubscribed channels. Also, the HD is in a different block than the SD channels. Why ATT and cable companies can not fix these two things when Dish was doing it 6 years ago or more is beyond me.

The UVerse gateway seems fine. Connection seems stable, etc. Only had it for a day though.

Customer Service:

Comcast: Another nightmare. I made the mistake of going to the Comcast retail location on a Saturday to return the non-DVR. Literally was over an hour wait just to hand the CSR the box. All chairs were taken, people were sitting all over the floor, etc. Looked like the local DMV office. Tomorrow I have to return the cable card. Not an experience I am looking forward to.

ATT UVerse: No experience with the CSR's beyond the installer as I scheduled the install online.

Anyways, that's my experience with both services.

Wily_One
Premium Member
join:2002-11-24
San Jose, CA

Wily_One

Premium Member

When you do need any Support, make use of the »AT&T Direct forum. The techs will shepherd your issue until resolution and escalate when needed. Support has gone above and beyond when I've needed them.
Wily_One

Wily_One to wbynum

Premium Member

to wbynum
Yes my mom still has Comcrap for TV. I too don't like the "ads" on their Guide screen. And when you are trying to browse through the Guide, the PIP doesn't show you what's on the channel you're browsing, it shows you the channel you're already on, which is ass backwards. I much prefer how the U-verse Guide does it.

And yes she's had a few TV service outages. Calling their support is useless, you just have to wait until they get it fixed. Last few days I've also noticed the sound randomly cuts out for a few seconds during some shows.
Wily_One

Wily_One to wbynum

Premium Member

to wbynum
One more thing, you do have the ability to "hide" unsubscribed and other unwanted channels. It's somewhat of a pain but it can be done.

Go to the Menu... Options... Channel Options... Hide channels.
wbynum
join:2013-06-08

wbynum

Member

Yep, thanks for the info. Piss poor implementation though.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT
·Frontier FiberOp..
Asus RT-AC68

BiggA to wbynum

Premium Member

to wbynum
said by wbynum:

Equipment:

Those are interesting comparison, however, U-Verse is at a HUGE disadvantage when you look at the whole picture.

1. Comcast has X1 now, which is supposed to be less sucky than their previous crappy DVRs.

2. With Comcast, their equipment is kind of irrelevant, since they support TiVo through CableCard. This puts any cable solution (including FIOS) way above any non-cable solution, with the exception of DirecTV, since Genie is a pretty good second to TiVo.

3. With U-Verse, you have to use their RG. With Comcast, as you mentioned, you own your own modem and router.

Even FIOS can support your own router and TiVos, even though the process for using your own router is more complicated than on cable...
wbynum
join:2013-06-08

wbynum

Member

Thoughts:

1. Agreed on the X1 deal. No idea how much better it is than their standard DVR's. When I signed up with Comcast a year ago I was not offered it as part of the promotion. I'm guessing it is still an add on fee to have the X1 DVR over a standard one.

2. Some people like Tivo, some do not. One Tivo box with lifetime sub will cost you $500 - $700 for the base model plus another $7.50 + fees for the cable card. Then you start adding $250 for each mini with lifetime sub. To pricey for me. Of course I do realize you get most of your money back if you sell it because of the lifetime sub. Cost is why I went with WMC under Comcast instead of Tivo. Admittedly I am not a heavy DVR user so the standard UVerse DVR seems fine to me.

3. Not a huge deal. You can always use your own router behind the UVerse RG.

It all comes down to cost with me. After rebate cards UVerse will cost me ~$100 + taxes/fees per month for one DVR, 45mbps internet and the U450 package. After the year commitment is up and they try to raise the price I'll go to whatever provider is cheaper for what I want.
Matt7
join:2001-01-02
Columbus, OH

Matt7 to xcrunner529

Member

to xcrunner529
said by xcrunner529:

Well, AT&T's FTTH is usually BPON, right? It is at my apartment complex, so we can't even get the Max Turbo or whatever it is. All they have to do is swap out the node...no changes to the wiring infrastructure to my apartment?

AT&T is doing ONT installs in some parts of Columbus? That's interesting I didn't know they did anything besides VRAD installs with FTTP and then Copper to home..

If you do indeed have an ONT and are FTTH they would have to swap your ONT and then they would have to make changes at their end to switch to GPON to offer higher speeds.
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BiggA

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said by Matt7:

If you do indeed have an ONT and are FTTH they would have to swap your ONT and then they would have to make changes at their end to switch to GPON to offer higher speeds.

Are they refusing to offer the 45 meg package over BPON? There is nothing technically stopping them from doing 45mbps or even more over BPON. Verizon is doing 150mbps over BPON. Granted they have much less IPTV than U-Verse (only VOD), but still, 45mbps would be easy...
BiggA

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to wbynum
said by wbynum:

Thoughts:

1. Yes, I think there is some additional cost, although I'm not sure how that plays out over multiple boxes, or if that fee is waived as part of an "X1 Triple Play". They may very well be offering it for little or no cost as part of the Triple Play, since those packages have the highest margins in the first place, and boost sub numbers across all three services...

2. TiVo is the best DVR out there, hands down. Before the Mini, MCE was a LOT cheaper, now with the Minis, they are about the same, and TiVo is a far superior DVR experience, although MCE offers some other functionality, in theory anyways (I had MCE briefly, and it was a DISASTER). Either system is far cheaper than renting DVRs if you keep them for a while, with a break-even point in the 30-48 month range for most systems. In the whole scheme of MSO DVRs, the U-Verse DVR isn't THAT bad, but it's still a generic blah platform, versus TiVo, the king of DVRs. And, of course, it's crippled by the lack of bandwidth that U-Verse has. TiVo can easily scale from 6 tuners to 12 to 18 or more if needed. We are OK with 4, but next time around, I'm definitely going to with 6, 10, or 12, and it's nice knowing that we can add tuners either through additional TiVos or Comcast equipment if we need to do so.

3. Yes, you can, but that's kind of a kludge, and the RG is still in the way. At least with FIOS, you can connect via Ethernet directly to the ONT, which has no router functionality in it, it's just doing a fiber to ethernet handoff.

rolande
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rolande to Matt7

MVM,

to Matt7
said by Matt7:

That's interesting I didn't know they did anything besides VRAD installs with FTTP and then Copper to home..

I believe you meant to say FTTN and not FTTP. FTTP (or FTTH) is Fiber To The Premises (Home) which is fiber delivered to each residence with an ONT on the side of the house. FTTN is Fiber To The Node which is what the typical VRAD install currently is with copper F2 pairs running from the cross-box next to the VRAD to each residence.
rolande

rolande to BiggA

MVM,

to BiggA
said by BiggA:

There is nothing technically stopping them from doing 45mbps or even more over BPON.

Technically, you are correct. However, from an engineering standpoint that may not be true. They won't launch new profiles or tiers of service on an existing infrastructure unless the capacity plan and subscription ratio model is approved by engineering.

So, yes, I'm sure they could easily issue a few commands on the VRAD and they could technically supply that service. But, they won't do it until engineering has dotted the i's and crossed the t's with respect to the capacity model and subscriber ratios to ensure the oversubscription rate is properly capped per physical interface.
rolande

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rolande to BiggA

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to BiggA
said by BiggA:

3. Yes, you can, but that's kind of a kludge, and the RG is still in the way.

Define what you mean by "kludge" and the RG is still "in the way".

MAC destination rewriting is what the RG does in IP Passthrough mode. It is done all the time and in very high volume with policy routing, dispatch mode load balancing and reverse proxy scenarios that pretty much any large content platform makes use of. The functionality and the technology supporting it are quite well matured and definitely not a kludge in the general sense like it is duct taped together or something.

FiOS gets away without requiring their own gateway devices because they de-mux or separate the services out at the ONT at Layer 1. AT&T's services are truly converged on a single logical IP connection. So, they require their own device to control the L3-L7 termination and handoff to ensure they can effectively queue the data to meet customer expectations for voice and video delivery. Hence, why they require an 802.1x device certificate on each RG to authenticate before being allowed access to the network.

The design choice is not unreasonable given the choice they made to consolidate all services on a single converged IP network. The price the customer pays is that the 1 publicly registered IP assigned to their account must be assigned to the RG to support U-verse voice termination, as well as support IGMP to access the multicast video feeds and it makes it impossible to provide a true bridge mode.

With respect to IP Passthrough or DMZ+ mode being a kludge, it is no more a kludge than NAT is. As far as the RG being still "in the way", if you disable all the security services on the RG, the only thing in the way is the destination MAC rewrite process. That process is 100% transparent and automated. The only limitation is that you are still bound by a memory limit that caps the simultaneous connection count at 8,192 on the NVG589. For the vast majority of customers this is significantly more than they will ever see at a time, unless they are running a LAN party with 12-24 of their closest friends all running P2P clients at the same time.

I've done my fair share of P2P and I haven't seen more than a couple hundred connections at a time. I think the peak connections I've seen being tracked was in the 850 range. So, there is plenty of headroom, given that I have about 20 devices on my network at any point with 2 overactive video downloading daughters, 4 regular Netflix watchers, myself working from home all the time, and my wife who can definitely give the browser a multi-tabbed workout.