It may be a little later than our leaked launch schedule indicated, but it looks like AT&T has launched its U-Verse IPTV & VDSL service in portions of Akron and Cleveland, Ohio. As with other markets, deployment is selective.

Service around Cleveland is initially available in just parts of Bay Village, Berea, Broadview Heights, Brooklyn, Euclid, Fairview Park, Lakewood, Lyndhurst, Mayfield Heights, Mentor, North Royalton, Orange, Solon, South Euclid, Warrensville Heights, Westlake, Willoughby Hills and Willowick.

Service in the Akron area is initially available in just parts of Cuyahoga Falls, Fairlawn, Kent, Munroe Falls, Silver Lake and Stow.


AT&T's U-Verse offers VDSL broadband service in three flavors:

•Elite: Downstream up to 6.0 Mbps, upstream up to 1.0 Mbps•Pro: Downstream up to 3.0 Mbps, upstream up to 1.0 Mbps•Express: Downstream up to 1.5 Mbps, upstream up to 1.0 Mbps.

AT&T is offering two free months of TV to new users, and they're offering a year's worth of free HD service (as previously mentioned) to users who bundle. AT&T offers TV packages alone, priced out as such:

•U-Family: 50 channels, $44•U100: 100 channels, $44•U200: 190 channels, $59•U300: 240 channels, 34 premium channels, $79•U400: 300 channels, 49 premium channels, $99

The company currently offers 27 HDTV channels. Here are the TV prices when bundled with broadband VDSL service (Express/Pro/Elite per month):

•U-family: $59/$64/$74•U100: $59/$64/$74•U200: $74/$79/$89•U300: $94/$99/$100•U400: $114/$119/$129

Additional detail on DVR rentals, their channel lineup and AT&T's qualification tool are, of course, available at the U-Verse website. As always, your questions can be answered by the helpful folks in our U-Verse forum.