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Why AT&T's U-Verse Expansion Will Be Much Smaller Than You Think
Company Tap Dances Around Hard Numbers for 'Radical' Expansion

While AT&T is promising that 250 million potential customers will be covered by the 4G technology by the end of the year, the company remains intentionally vague about U-Verse build out goals. AT&T recently announced a significant network expansion for both U-Verse and LTE, though as we noted at the time the company used some flaky math to make the U-Verse portion of that expansion seem much larger than it actually is.

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AT&T insisted they'd be expanding U-Verse's footprint from 24.5 million homes to 33 million, suggesting an additional 8.5 million new users. However, looking closer, an individual might note that AT&T is on the record saying they had some time ago already reached 30 million homes.

That means AT&T's U-Verse expansion will be closer to 3 million -- and most of those users are in markets AT&T was already planning to expand. Like San Francisco, for example, where AT&T was sidetracked due to a battle with locals over street cabinet placement. San Francisco and Indianapolis will be where the majority of that 3 million expansion occurs.

So in other words what AT&T is claiming to be a U-Verse "expansion" is really just AT&T finishing up long-ago planned for U-Verse builds that had just been held up for one reason or another. It was rather amusing trying to watch AT&T wiggle around this fact when pressed for hard numbers on the U-Verse expansion during last week's earning's call:
quote:
Questioned by analysts, the CEO was a bit more opaque on the timing for U-Verse build-outs. AT&T has previously said that its wired IP broadband network will expand to 75 percent of residential customer locations in its 22-state wireline service area by the end of 2015. "You can think about it as a kind of radical build schedule going forward," offered Stephenson, while not actually disclosing any targets.
And of course by "radical," AT&T actually means not radical or remarkable in any way. AT&T, like Verizon, is going to let tens of millions of un-upgraded DSL users either sign up for more expensive LTE, or just leave to cable. There's little to no interest in upgrading huge swaths of their networks in the United States, which will result in a hugely powerful fixed line cable broadband monopoly. Both telcos keep downplaying this fact in the hopes nobody is going to notice, and judging from press coverage so far -- they're succeeding.
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Bill Neilson
Premium Member
join:2009-07-08
Alexandria, VA

Bill Neilson

Premium Member

I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

tech but I am stuck in an area where we have at MOST 18Mbit/s down.

It has been this way for awhile now and even Cox and others around me (and by 'around' I mean in cities hours away so I can't get use them myself) have increased speeds 2-3 times total the last few years.

Now, I believe I have seen people state that distance does matter for UVerse speeds so.....should people like me expect to see increased speeds soon under UVerse technology? Or is UVerse technology going to be one of the last ones able to really keep pushing up their speeds?
UverseTech2
join:2012-08-04

UverseTech2

Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

Hey Van you already know that I am not a tech now, but I have many friends still in the field that are. They all say nothing is going to happen until their contract is negotiated sometime around april/may timeframe. In the St louis area alone there were approx 20-40, depending who you ask, new VRADS sitting idle waiting on this as well. This was in the summer of 2012. I know I have ben a harsh critic but numbersa don't lie only people do, especially the marketing and legal weasels which are directed by upper management. They have to do a significant amout of further upgrades to their backend, as well as clean up a good amout of crossboxes in service now,to compete with the current cable offerings in regards to internet speeds, I do not think they will, and so do many of the current employees.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT

BiggA

Premium Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

U-Verse can't compete. As soon as they get more people up to the 24mbps package, cable will do 50. Or 100. Cable can deliver several hundred mbps, and next year, there will probably be another version of DOCSIS.
elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA

elray

Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

said by BiggA:

U-Verse can't compete. As soon as they get more people up to the 24mbps package, cable will do 50. Or 100. Cable can deliver several hundred mbps, and next year, there will probably be another version of DOCSIS.

The bundle price and feature set is what matters. Despite the lower-quality product, AT&T has demonstrated that they can sell triple-play U-verse by padding the video lineup and pitching the "one bill" concept to their cellular customers.

They can certainly compete.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT
·Frontier FiberOp..
Asus RT-AC68

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BiggA

Premium Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

The problem is that AT&T built their system to barely keep up what cable is today. Add node splits, SDV, 1ghz plants, the next DOCSIS standard, etc, etc, and U-Verse will look just like DSL does today. The only way that AT&T can compete in the long run is FTTH, and that's what they should be looking to do.
tanzam75
join:2012-07-19

tanzam75

Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

said by BiggA:

The problem is that AT&T built their system to barely keep up what cable is today. Add node splits, SDV, 1ghz plants, the next DOCSIS standard, etc, etc, and U-Verse will look just like DSL does today. The only way that AT&T can compete in the long run is FTTH, and that's what they should be looking to do.

The reason that AT&T didn't adopt FTTH is the same reason that Verizon gave up on FiOS expansion. It just costs too much, relative to the take rate. The headroom of coax gives the cable companies a cost advantage over phone companies moving to FTTP. The cable companies can survive any price war that they choose to fight against FiOS.

Verizon has to pay all of the cost upfront. Before the first customer pays a penny, they have to have the entire neighborhood wired up with fiber. Then, each new subscriber requires a truck roll, to install the customer drop. Truck rolls are expensive.

The cable companies, by contrast, can pay for the upgrades incrementally, as they're needed. Move to DOCSIS 3.1? Mail the customer a new modem. Node split? Transparent to the customer.
davidhoffman
Premium Member
join:2009-11-19
Warner Robins, GA

davidhoffman

Premium Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

What if Verizon had used its rights as a utility provider, where they already provided "regulated" POTS, to take the fiber-optic cable to all the premises on a city block during one short period of time? They could have rolled a few trucks and gotten all the premises on several city blocks in one day. They would have only been going to the exterior wall, and probably could have terminated the fiber-optic cable at or very near the existing NID. That would have reduced the final connection and installation costs for those who signed up for actual service.
elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA

elray

Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

said by davidhoffman:

What if Verizon had used its rights as a utility provider, where they already provided "regulated" POTS, to take the fiber-optic cable to all the premises on a city block during one short period of time? They could have rolled a few trucks and gotten all the premises on several city blocks in one day. They would have only been going to the exterior wall, and probably could have terminated the fiber-optic cable at or very near the existing NID. That would have reduced the final connection and installation costs for those who signed up for actual service.

It doesn't happen in "one short period of time".
It doesn't involve "a few" trucks.
It is a massive event.

And that's just to wire to the premise.
Wiring the building is another massive undertaking.

Why should they go through all the effort and expense, if in the end, the customers aren't willing to buy the service?
davidhoffman
Premium Member
join:2009-11-19
Warner Robins, GA

davidhoffman

Premium Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

My bad. After your comment I did the math based on a standard Chicago city block from my childhood. There are approximately 8 blocks per mile with 50 houses per block. A 8 block segment would comprise 400 houses. The alley between the houses holds the telephone poles. I only need to take the fiber from the alley to the exterior wall. The fiber between the alley poles is already done. Assuming 6 hours per shift per day of actual wiring time, that leaves one house wired per minute for one wiring crew. Obviously not enough time. Increase that to a more reasonable 30 minutes, and you need about 32 wiring crews to do 400 houses. That would be 4 crews per block. My statement of a few trucks was inaccurate.

I still think it would be worth it to have a capped off fiber optic cable at every premises or house. If a request for service came in, the technicians would not have to do the big labor of running the fiber from the alley. In its most basic form for telephone and internet, the technician could install the Uverse NID and then connect into the existing telephone line infrastructure of the house. VDSL2 technology should then allow for 100Mbps symmetrical service over the typically under 300 meter in house wiring runs.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT

BiggA

Premium Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

If they wanted to, they could do what Verizon did and use MoCA. MoCA is fast enough to support IPTV over coax, so they would have a gentle upgrade path. However, to get to gigabit in-house speeds, you need CAT 5.
BiggA

1 recommendation

BiggA to tanzam75

Premium Member

to tanzam75
The reason they didn't do it is because they have impatient, technologically stupid investors who don't understand that in the long run, AT&T will go FTTH, or they will die. At least the landline division. Aside from the stock market, the rational business decision would be FTTH coverage nearly everywhere, and strategically building FTTH into markets with other telcos that haven't upgraded to fiber.

Yes, cable companies have a much easier upgrade path, but the telcos, in the long run, can't afford not to upgrade. The problem is, they have management and investors who just don't get it.

The longer AT&T waits, the more costly it will be in the long run to go to FTTH.

Cable could easily compete with FTTH if they decide they want to, but copper telephone lines will never compete.
elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA

elray

Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

That's simply inaccurate.
AT&T does just fine without upgrading to FTTH, and according to the peanut gallery and Dane Jasper and Google, the cost has come down dramatically, so AT&T is proven quite wise to wait.

It may turn out that indeed, they can choose to never upgrade, especially if the customer base continues to refuse to pay the price for higher speeds. Management and investors do "get it". Insulting their intelligence doesn't change the math.

Mind you, I think AT&T is a horrible company that does nothing right by their customers, and I take great pleasure in permanently disconnecting them at every turn. But the business case is pretty clear, and they're not a charity.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT
·Frontier FiberOp..
Asus RT-AC68

BiggA

Premium Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

The guys at Verizon who did FIOS get it. AT&T doesn't. They can't stay stagnant forever, and what they did is create a system that will be forever stagnant. Cable will keep upgrading with D3.1, small nodes, 8-channel bonding, etc, and U-Verse will have nowhere to go. The investors are driving AT&T into the ground with short-term thinking. They need leadership who actually has balls to go in there and do what's right for the company (lay as much fiber down as they physically can until they can serve nearly everyone) in the long term, not just for this quarter or next quarter, or the next 10 quarters, but for the long haul. When consumers realize how much U-Verse sucks, they'll switch back to cable or satellite, and AT&T will have to upgrade again, after having wasted millions on the kludge that is U-Verse.

AT&T should just cut their losses now, and wire their territory with GPON FTTH with IPTV, and then right-size the copper plant by reducing it's size and complexity significantly, scrapping a significant amount of the wiring out there, making as much of it as passive as possible, and using ADSL2+ to serve customers still on copper, as well as extremely rural customers with RDSLAMs where FTTH wouldn't pan out. They could differentiate their fiber and generate more profit by hitting the $70/1gbps price point, as opposed to bottom scraping like they sort of are now.

What would be even bolder is if they built an HSPA+/LTE microcell and public WIFI router into every home router, giving them a huge advantage in the wireless space.

Instead, they are throwing money down the drain by upgrading their copper system and making an already kludgy and overcomplicated system even worse.

The business is clear if you look at a couple of years. It's also very clear that FTTH is the right move for the long term business model.

OTOH, the government should allow them to start dismantling their copper plant in exchange for offering gigabit fiber service to each and every customer in each municipality where they want to dismantle copper.
elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA

elray

Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

Consumers aren't going to realize how much AT&T sucks and switch.
They don't care as much as you or I do. AT&T's speed, services and gizmos are more than adequate.

The "leadership" you refer to doesn't assure profitability, only a race to the bottom with cable, and it ain't gonna happen so long as they are publicly traded.

$70 FTTH doesn't sell.
tanzam75
join:2012-07-19

tanzam75 to BiggA

Member

to BiggA
said by BiggA:

... AT&T will go FTTH, or they will die. At least the landline division.

Business is about maximizing your returns. Sometimes this means strategic retreat from an area where you cannot be competitive. In AT&T's case, this means opting for FTTN and choosing to keep only the customers without high bandwidth requirements.

If the landline division has to shrink, then that might be a better outcome for AT&T than pouring money into it and getting only negligible returns.

The problem is that the cable companies have an unassailable cost advantage all the way up to the 10 Gbps capacity of the coax. Until that point comes, the telcos cannot compete on equal terms with the cable companies.

If you do what Verizon did, then you find yourself paying off an expensive new physical plant, while the cablecos only have to maintain their already-paid-for coax. The cablecos can therefore afford to run customer-retention promotions, which limits your take rate, which makes it even harder to pay for the fiber.
said by BiggA:

The longer AT&T waits, the more costly it will be in the long run to go to FTTH.

The longer they wait, the less costly it will be. First, because the equipment will cost less. Second, because a dollar in the future is worth less than a dollar today.

There will be a window of opportunity that opens up in another decade or so, when the cable companies max out the bandwidth of the coax. At that point, the cablecos will also have to deploy FTTP. And it'll be an even playing field.

AT&T landline will be a smaller division then, because they'll have shed customers. But they will still have the right-of-way to build upon. And there's no real advantage to incumbency -- you're really competing for customers all over again when you deploy fiber. Verizon, Cincinnati Bell, etc. are getting roughly the same take rate for fiber as any cable overbuilder would.

tschmidt
MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
·Consolidated Com..
·Republic Wireless
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tschmidt

MVM

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

said by tanzam75:

The problem is that the cable companies have an unassailable cost advantage all the way up to the 10 Gbps capacity of the coax. Until that point comes, the telcos cannot compete on equal terms with the cable companies.

During the early days of residential broadband I though DSL would win since the cost of rolling it out was lower than what the MSOs had to do to modify HFC cable plant.

However DOCSIS advances have far outstripped DSL. Being copper, both have first-mile have distance limits, but it is much cheaper to add another cable node then a VRAD to improve performance. As mentioned DOCSIS channel bonding, while a kludge from an architectural perspective, is a cost effective way to add capacity. Throw in switching rather than broadcast to conserves cable bandwidth and Cable has a massive advantage over DSL today.

I’m a DSL subscriber about 13,000 feet with 6Mbps service. Unless there is some wonderful new physics/DSP magic that is the end of the line for DSL. That speed works fine for my family today but I’m sure in a few years it will be woefully inadequate.
said by tanzam75:


The longer they wait, the less costly it will be. First, because the equipment will cost less. Second, because a dollar in the future is worth less than a dollar today.

Fiber construction cost is decreasing but the bulk of the cost to roll out FTTP is labor. Waiting does not really help. The problem is first-mile CAPEX is high so ROI takes a long time, which is why it has been such a contentious issue all these years. As long as the Cablecos are able to offer ever increasing speed there is very little marketing advantage for a second player, too much risk and too little payback.

I was excited when Verizon aggressively rolled out FIOS. They could offer a compelling advantage and FIOS OPEX is much lower than copper reducing long term cost. But they, like most other publicly traded companies, seem to have gotten caught up in the profitability of the quarter club and walked away from wired networks all together. That may be good business for Verizon but bad for the rest of us. Long term wired fiber networks are a great investment, but one needs a reasonable time horizon.

Personality I'd love to see a wholesale first-mile network, sort of like what has happened in the electric utilities, but that is unlikely to happen.

/tom
elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA

elray to BiggA

Member

to BiggA
I agree that CableCo has done a better job at investing in plant, and they usually do a better job at virtually all aspects of the last-mile compared to AT&T.

But speed isn't the consumer's primary or sole concern.
Google should already know this, but then again, they've proven before that the smartest guys in the room can be pretty dumb.

AT&T can compete without delivering cable speeds.
There is no application yet that requires them - until 4K/8K UHD happens, and that's a long time off.
c4junk
Premium Member
join:2004-05-08
Orlando, FL

1 edit

c4junk to BiggA

Premium Member

to BiggA
Fiber is expensive in large part due to the labor of splicing but I don't see why Telco could not run coax down property line on the pole from the RT (VRAD), it is easy , in my younger lineman days 2-3 guys could/did pull and hang a few blocks in a day of 50-100 pair copper ca. If they ran coax (lighter than copper ca.) you could put in a run and feed just the houses that had or could be sold VOIP, TV etc and leave the copper POTS alone for now.
As homes went VOIP they would not be allowed back on copper (after a period of trial time) like Verizon did with FTTH.

DocGizmo
join:2012-02-18
Indianapolis, IN

DocGizmo to BiggA

Member

to BiggA
Ya but do you realize Cable is a shared Construct. Uverse Is Point to Point Bandwith thats them to you. Think of comcast and the cable companys as a bus Route.. it has stops... in a Loop.. At@t is more like a direct line one you have the connection + or - u should be close to what you get... With cable the Signal goes down and the Power amps get Going ....LOL

Doc
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT
·Frontier FiberOp..
Asus RT-AC68

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BiggA

Premium Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

I understand that. However, that goes back to the whole cable slowing down thing. If cable is properly set up, it doesn't have any shared bandwidth problems, and it is far faster than DSL-based products. The other factor is that U-Verse is shared at the node, DSL is shared at the CO... ultimately it's all shared at some point, it's just a matter of where. And either system can be poorly implemented. So basically, the whole shared thing doesn't matter. Cable at 860mhz is bringing 4,484mbps of data into your house, not including upstream, while U-Verse is LUCKY to be provisioned at 32/5. Also, in terms of being shared, U-Verse shares bandwidth between TV and internet, where cable doesn't.

Ultibeam
join:2008-05-27
USA

Ultibeam to Bill Neilson

Member

to Bill Neilson
U-Verse is using an antiquated copper network to get from at&t's fiber network to your home. Though there are fiber to the home U-Verse installs, in new housing developments, it's still restricted to the same speeds. That is probably due to cheaper costs. Twisted pair copper was meant for voice instead of data. It's like running water through a straw while cable internet is a hose.

Distance matters because twisted pair copper isn't as well shielded as coax so the signal leaks. Getting higher speeds would be tricky.

RadioDoc

join:2000-05-11
La Grange, IL

1 recommendation

RadioDoc

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

said by Ultibeam:

Twisted pair copper was meant for voice instead of data. It's like running water through a straw while cable internet is a hose.

So I guess Gigabit Ethernet over twisted pairs is magic?

Copper isn't dead, but U-Verse expansion certainly is.
said by Ultibeam:

Distance matters because twisted pair copper isn't as well shielded as coax so the signal leaks. Getting higher speeds would be tricky.

Ya might want to open a book once in awhile. Balanced twisted pair wiring doesn't "leak". That's unbalanced coaxial cable's malady...in fact leakage limits are about all that's left of cable regulation. What does happen to UTP is attenuation, which is why there are transmission distance limits on BOTH coax and UTP.

elios
join:2005-11-15
Springfield, MO

elios

Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

said by RadioDoc:

said by Ultibeam:

Twisted pair copper was meant for voice instead of data. It's like running water through a straw while cable internet is a hose.

So I guess Gigabit Ethernet over twisted pairs is magic?

Copper isn't dead, but U-Verse expansion certainly is.
said by Ultibeam:

Distance matters because twisted pair copper isn't as well shielded as coax so the signal leaks. Getting higher speeds would be tricky.

Ya might want to open a book once in awhile. Balanced twisted pair wiring doesn't "leak". That's unbalanced coaxial cable's malady...in fact leakage limits are about all that's left of cable regulation. What does happen to UTP is attenuation, which is why there are transmission distance limits on BOTH coax and UTP.

not the same thing
the magic in Giga-E is the number of twists and quaitly of the copper
both of which are awful in copper lines on poles now
short of them ripping out the 40+ year old copper on the poles now and replacing it with effectively ethernet cable which btw would cost MORE then installing fiber to home
its not going to happen
Gib4500
join:2003-12-08
Sardis, OH

Gib4500

Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

if you think at&t and u-verse is dead in the water now... wait till cable gets their docsis 3.1 going in a year or 2.
tanzam75
join:2012-07-19

tanzam75

Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

said by Gib4500:

if you think at&t and u-verse is dead in the water now... wait till cable gets their docsis 3.1 going in a year or 2.

DOCSIS 3.1 only increases the spectral efficiency by 50%. Speeds will be 1.5x what they are on DOCSIS 3.0, given the same frequency allocation. That's not revolutionary, merely evolutionary.

The real order-of-magnitude gains came from channel-bonding. And you can do that already on DOCSIS 3.0. Today, a cable company might bond 4 channels for 152 Mbps, or 8 channels for 304 Mbps. But there are over 150 channels on coax!
Gib4500
join:2003-12-08
Sardis, OH

Gib4500

Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

The Docsis 3.1 platform is aiming to support capacities of at least 10Gbit/s downstream and 1Gbit/s upstream. The new specs will do away with 6 MHz and 8 MHz wide channel spacing and instead use smaller (20KHz-to-50KHz-wide) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) subcarriers; these can be bonded inside a block spectrum that could end up being about 200 MHz wide.
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS
tanzam75
join:2012-07-19

1 edit

tanzam75

Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

said by Gib4500:

The Docsis 3.1 platform is aiming to support capacities of at least 10Gbit/s downstream and 1Gbit/s upstream.

You can already push about 6 Gbps over a 1 GHz cable plant. DOCSIS 3.0 gives you 38 Mbps of actual bandwidth per 6 MHz channel.

DOCSIS 3.1 gives you about 10 Gbps over the same 1 Ghz cable plant. That's a significant improvement, but not the game-changer that DOCSIS 3.0 was, with channel bonding.

It's essentially equivalent to a node split, except cheaper. You just mail modems to your customers, instead of stringing new fiber. That's why they're calling it 3.1 and not 4.0. It's evolutionary, not revolutionary.
contsole
Premium Member
join:2003-12-30
Newington, CT

contsole to RadioDoc

Premium Member

to RadioDoc
said by RadioDoc:

So I guess Gigabit Ethernet over twisted pairs is magic?

4 pair and 100 meter limit.

DataRiker
Premium Member
join:2002-05-19
00000

DataRiker to Ultibeam

Premium Member

to Ultibeam
said by Ultibeam:

Distance matters because twisted pair copper isn't as well shielded as coax so the signal leaks. Getting higher speeds would be tricky.

Unless you count the twisting, they are not shielded at all.

ATT's plant craps out at 8 Mhz, while coax can carry 860 Mhz readily. (often 1000+ Mhz)
davidhoffman
Premium Member
join:2009-11-19
Warner Robins, GA

davidhoffman to Bill Neilson

Premium Member

to Bill Neilson
No, you will not see increased speeds soon. AT&T will most likely look at anyone with more than 3Mbps down as having good enough internet service to satisfy the FCC's watered down definition of adequate internet access. Since UVerse service starts at or above 3.0 Mbps, they will not do any upgrades soon. DSL customers may see speed increases if they are close enough to the CO or DSLAM. AT&T only has to UNLEASH their ADSL2+ system and they can deliver close to 24Mbps down and 3.5Mbps up to some customers who are very close to the DSLAM. Most of the existing customer ADSL2+ modems and gateways should handle the increased speed adequately. They could create a 12, 18, and 24 Mbps speed tier for pricing.

j1349705
Premium Member
join:2006-04-15
Holly Springs, NC

j1349705 to Bill Neilson

Premium Member

to Bill Neilson
Speeds will be a big problem for U-verse at some point. They use pair bonding for some customers who are a bit too far from the VRAD, and there are rumors that they will eventually use the same technology to boost speeds for customers who are closer to the VRAD. This is far from a perfect solution... it will require a truck roll to upgrade customers (and replace hardware), and the fact of the matter is that today's cable standards (DOCSIS 3) can beat tomorrow's VDSL2 pair bonding.

To make matters worse, the handful of customers who are truly on fiber to the home are restricted to *slower speeds* than customers on old copper and are very close to the VRAD.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT

BiggA

Premium Member

Re: I am not the most up-to-date on upgrading UVerse

Exactly. It will beat cable for a month or two while they split some more nodes to light up even faster speeds.
BiggA

BiggA to Bill Neilson

Premium Member

to Bill Neilson
elray, Customers won't know the technical details, but when their internet slows down while watching TV harkens back to the days that you need two phone lines to talk on the phone and use the internet at the same time, or they can only get 2 or 3 HD streams into the house at once, they will start to notice how much U-Verse sucks. Especially when cable rolls out 6-tuner 4+ room DVRs that run on MoCA, and AT&T ran out of bandwidth at 4. Pair bonding can only get them so far. They are bandwidth starved, and they need to go to FTTH.

Unfortunately, it will take a few years for AT&T to either have U-Verse stagnate or start bleeding customers, or have very high churn, and THEN, after they've dumped millions more into an archaic copper plant before they are finally forced to go fiber. The other problem that they have is that U-Verse only gets some of the customers on a CO, whereas fiber, as long as you can get into MDUs, is 100%, as you can just keep running the fiber until you hit all the customers, since it's not distance sensitive at that scale.

tanzam75, Verizon knew what was right, and rolled out FIOS until their leadership got really stupid and stopped expanding it. AT&T CAN be fully competitive with cable over their entire territory. GPON fiber can get them there. They should shrink the capacity of their copper plant to reduce ongoing maintenance costs, instead of building more capacity into it with shoestrings and bubble gum to handle U-Verse.

Telcos surely can compete with coax. It's called GPON. It's faster than what cable has, and puts them at a slight advantage, and at worst case, causes the cable providers to burn through some money splitting nodes, rolling out SDV, and the like just to keep up with fiber.

In the long run, Verizon will do just fine with FIOS. It is a telling sign how stupid customers are though, as if customers understood anything about anything FIOS would have a 100% take rate and cable would have to adapt to dual-channeling with SDV and faster internet speeds to compete.

For AT&T it will be MORE expensive. They are losing customers who would otherwise sign up for a service, and they are DUMPING money into U-Verse for plant upgrades with limited benefit. The cost of maintaining a complicated FTTN network with so much active gear out in the field is significant. Verizon doesn't have active equipment out in the field, they have two passive networks that are passive from the CO to the customer.

tschmidt, There is definitely room for a second provider in most markets, especially with triple-play. Verizon needs to get better at marketing their service, especially in regards to upload speeds and HD quality. I can think of all sorts of funny ads they could create that visually show what Comcast is doing by triple-channeling their QAM.

Right, the time horizon is the issue. Long-term, U-Verse will be far less profitable than two right-sized passive plants, GPON and POTS, but U-Verse is cheap to install now.

I doubt we'd see a wholesale last-mile network, who would want to build it? The profit is in the content and phone services, not providing raw pipes. The other issue is that you'd need one fiber cable per customer, and not multiplex 32:1 like Verizon does with GPON.

youguys
@50.58.248.x

youguys

Anon

Bandwidth

In 10 years you guys will findally get 50Mbps where everyone else is at 2Gbps /per second
etaadmin
join:2002-01-17
united state

etaadmin

Member

Re: Bandwidth

said by youguys :

In 10 years you guys will findally get 50Mbps where everyone else is at 2Gbps /per second

LOL. Only if they are very close to the box

For the rest its 3 Mbps.

TheKirkster
@comcast.net

TheKirkster to youguys

Anon

to youguys
said by youguys :

In 10 years you guys will findally get 50Mbps where everyone else is at 2Gbps /per second

"What are you going to do with twenty megabits?"

»Illinois Muni-Foes Come Together

Shadow01
Premium Member
join:2003-10-24
Wasteland

Shadow01

Premium Member

lte

If ya ain't figured out that LTE is the only future att will offer, then you may be the one I am looking for to sell this bridge I have. You can stay were you are, move to another provider or move to att LTE and like it. Start figuring out where you want to go... T will play a big song and dance about their 2nd wind at build out, but anyone that believes them is a fool. Once they get out from under "provider of last resort" rules, watch out. I would bet that areas will start to go dark when that happens.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT

BiggA

Premium Member

Re: lte

They won't get rid of DSL, but it's not like they're investing anything in it either, other than IP-DSLAMs, which are largely just to reduce cost, and push the slow speeds out a tiny bit farther.

WHT
join:2010-03-26
Rosston, TX

WHT

Member

Slow DSL Is Now uVerse

Friend of mien in Oklahoma said he signed up for uVerse - in an area he knew AT&T didn't offer it.

Had him check his download speed - at 1.5 Mbps. Had him check the pairs used in his NID/DMARC box outside - only one pair used.

Appears that AT&T's differentiation of uVerse to be a high-speed, triple-play advertising concept...it's really now just another name for slow DSL.

••••
tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Brooklyn, NY

tmc8080

Member

wireline future...

here's one possible future.. AT&T will spin off the wireline residential & business markets and they will file for bankruptcy-- just thousands of times worse than the micro sliver baby bells spawned form Verizon: Frontier & Fairpoint.

this is if the federal government doesn't start reading these telcos the riot act about getting all that free cable-tv video franchises granted access to in the 1996 telecom reform act.

RadioDoc

join:2000-05-11
La Grange, IL

3 recommendations

RadioDoc

Re: wireline future...

That'll never happen. They've already separated the wireless business unit from the wireline unit. At some point they just turn off the lights and walk away whilst sucking madly at the plump, tasty wireless tit.

tschmidt
MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
·Consolidated Com..
·Republic Wireless
·Hollis Hosting

tschmidt

MVM

Re: wireline future...

said by RadioDoc:

At some point they just turn off the lights and walk away

I certainly hope not but I fear you are correct.

I just signed up with a CLEC and am getting much better ADSL speed at a lower price. However they are dependant on UNE since they have to rent copper pair from the incumbent and collocate DSLAMs at each Central Office. If copper goes away I'm dead in the water.

/tom

technologiq
EU2251
join:2000-08-08
Reno, NV

technologiq

Member

Why?

It kills me that I have FTTP from AT&T yet I have to subscribe to Charter to get 100Mbit service while the fiber is stuck at a whopping 18Mbit.

AT&T, you suck.

••••••
decifal7
join:2007-03-10
Bon Aqua, TN

decifal7

Member

too bad

yeah, too bad they won't build to areas overlooked for whatever made up reason... I don't buy the no profit bs.. Theres just too many house's here with neither service... I've seen areas much much lesser populated with both cable and dsl/uverse...

Seriously, what kinda drugs do these teleco's take?

technologiq
EU2251
join:2000-08-08
Reno, NV

technologiq

Member

x

delete
Gib4500
join:2003-12-08
Sardis, OH

Gib4500

Member

fastest they offer me is 1.5mb

They have their so called u-verse dsl in my area. they are about a joke. they don't seem interested in offering faster than 1.5mb in my area. cable offers 15mb here and we are soon getting a new provider in the area thanks to the connect ohio project that will offer 10mb down speeds over fixed 4g wimax with no caps i might add!!!

•••••

CylonRed
MVM
join:2000-07-06
Bloom County

CylonRed

MVM

I guess that means that....

My house won't getg U-Verse even though it is available 500 feet away.

Jeff2
@sbcglobal.net

Jeff2

Anon

Re: I guess that means that....

Depends on the route of the phone line. I'm 200 feet away from the VRAD but the way the phone lines are aligned in my neighborhood. It had to go around the block to reach to my house. Now i'm 2400 feet after going around the block.
djnrg787
join:2009-06-10
Saint Louis, MO

djnrg787

Member

Expansion

I think its funny my dads house is connected to a active vrad 3 blocks away maybe 1000 ft with new wires and he wont qualify. Sounds like they are just adding existing users already able to get it to the green light list. I know they are going to start using vectoring to get up to 75mbps which will compete with unreliable flaky cable. Shielded coax may be "shielded" but how many times is it daisy chained together... every single house has a block in its yard. how much signal loss is that? Uverse has the advantage of having your very own existing working for decades pair of wires. I love my IPTV.

•••••
moonpie23
join:2003-09-17
Cary, NC

moonpie23

Member

uverse vs twc

i had uverse for about 3 years. as with ALL isps, they only give you about about 80% of the tier service that the sell you.
I started out with the 12m and got only 10. They said they "just couldn't deliver the full 12 and reminded me of the two most hated stipulations in US internet service!!

1 - "GET'S UP TO"
2. "WE DON'T GUARANTEE SPEED!"

well, they don't guarantee it, but they sure sell it. I moved up to the 18 tier and got about 15, moved to the 24 and got about 21. I finally got so mad i kicked them to the curb and ordered time warner's SUPER WIDE BAND 50/5. Now i get the full 35 that comes with the 50 for a little less than the u verse 24.

on a good day, using ethernet directly to the TWC modem, i get 50 down and 5 up.....

WHT
join:2010-03-26
Rosston, TX

WHT

Member

AT&T Is Pretty Much 100% uVerse Now

AT&T is pretty much 100% uVerse now.

Splitting hairs on the technology, speed and pricing tiers, and short-term investor's returns are good for media talking points.

ATTGuy
@sbcglobal.net

ATTGuy

Anon

Re: AT&T Is Pretty Much 100% uVerse Now

I'll just say that the original article, and half the posts in the comments section, are completely off base:

The reason AT&T isn't openly talking about the U-verse build-out is multi-pronged:

1) They're actively using pricing structures and promotions to target 100% copper customers into changing to the U-verse network, and the U-verse network doesn't constitute Fiber and Coax only, and actually utilizes parts of the existing copper infrastructure, and when those parts of copper are switched to U-verse, the remaining copper becomes copper AT&T doesn't have to maintain

2) Openly just saying "U-verse will be available in such-and-such specific areas by such-and-such time, and will have future availability in so-and-so other areas" is a corporate no-no right now. Wanna know why? It constitutes the elimination of Union labor as copper infrastructure disappears.

The next reason is that, the longer they keep a lid on things, the less tip-off they give to the FCC before regulations are passed to put the same government regulations on the infrastructure that currently exists on the copper. Nobody at AT&T with a brain thinks that it will escape federal regulation, but bean-counters are tasked with estimating how long the company has until regulation attempts begin, and how long they can stall those attempts before they actually come to fruition.

Still another reason is that AT&T's initial U-verse marketing was heavy on getting your advertised speed rating, talking up the fiber involved, and selling the television service. They also made the mistake of using the word "fiber" anywhere around a discussion of the speed of the service. The speed depends on whether or not copper is involved, and the loop-distance of the copper (it's just DSL, with a change in infrastructure somewhere back up the line from you).

I can tell you that, I stare at U-verse accounts all day, or am alerted that a customer's address qualifies for U-verse service. I can tell you factually that 3 out of 4 times, it's IPDSL. While IPDSL can reach 18mbps download speeds, that kind of service availability is the exception. In fact, a huge amount shows speeds available that aren't rated any higher than the DSL that is or was in the same place.

But with the IPDSL, where it is available for an existing DSL customer, it is in every single case cheaper than DSL service rated at the same speed. Business customers can migrate to U-verse and pay zero for equipment, get a month of service free (not a rebate, they literally never get charged), free tech install, term pricing cheaper than the cheapest possible for price for the DSL they are dumping, and no ETF for cancelling before term expiration.

Next, I can tell you that U-verse VOIP telephone has previously not even been offered to business customers. It still isn't, but at the beginning of this year, the U-verse ordering tool started giving a "yes/no" on VOIP ability at businesses addresses.

AT&T is, factually, trying to move it's entire telephone base over to the U-verse VOIP system. The fact that it's showing available on IPDSL or VDSL either one, when speed is sufficient, is tell-tale of this. The pricing of the service compared to DSL is another tip-off.

Further tip-off is the HUGE amount of sales commission the company is paying to sales reps for getting a customer to sign up for a service with no ETF, in my department, it's about 2.5 times more than any other product that can be sold, despite the fact that the actual monthly payment the customer makes is, even in the case of 24mb, less than the price of the mobility service I sell. On top of that, sales contests are run during the week that assign a set dollar value to each U-verse sale. 5

Multiply the number of U-verse connections you sell, regardless of speed and for either DSL migrations or new service or for moving existing service, times the per unit dollar amount, and that's what AT&T loads onto your company issued pre-paid Visa. It's basically instant cash.

Still further tip-off is that U-verse has the ability to go up to the 4G LTE network strictly for purposes of moving data. (The speed of LTE has no bearing on the speed of the landline connection). AT&T doesn't have to charge you for data, and they are purposefully warehousing bandwidth on the cell towers now.

People are misinterpreting this in all kinds of ways, complete with the "forcing people to LTE" babble in this thread. AT&T is actually doing one thing, they effetively gave people who reallllllly want to use LTE the ability to put one mobile device onto a shared data plan, as the only device on the account. Want a 20gb data plan with unlimited talk and text for your phone? You can do it. You will pay for it, but it's there.

But, further to the point, is that the more they integrate their IP services that go over wires with their mobile data connections, the less landline infrastructure they have to maintain (and the less wireline labor they have to compensate), and the more complicated regulating the service gets for the Feds.

Frankly, while I'm sure they're aware that bouncing voice communication from copper to fiber to wireless and back again is not subject to the same regulation as 100% copper, it will get regulated. Bean counters are probably tasked with running an estimate of how much time the company has before the FCC starts trying to get involved, and they probably are also tasked with estimating how long the process can be muddled by the change in how things work.

I can tell you now that they aren't stupid enough to believe they can simply prevent it, or that it's cost-effective to try preventing past a certain point.

Still further evidence:

AT&T is selling tp large companies that have huge PBX trunk phone systems or VOIP systems - the integration of mobile devices into the PBX trunk system, and smartphones that are on the VOIP network via their LTE data connection. All of it works just like a phone on the wired systems, but you can pick it up, walk out of the office, drive home, and have your desk phone with you the whole time.

Again, getting back to copper customers being switched to VOIP, the initial goal when this goes to the masses is that home telephone service and cell service is all on the same VOIP network that utilizes a blend of wireline infrastructure (that has had it's footprint reduced to a tiny fraction of what it once was) and the mobile data infrastructure (again, VOIP service running through 4G LTE and wireline service doesn't merit a discussion about the speed of 4G LTE or the speed of wireline -it's a matter of whether or not AT&T can move the nation to VOIP). Troubleshooting and ensuring continuity of voice service that is entirely on IP-based protocol, whether it's going through wires or the air, has been argued within the company to be easier or less costly than present.

I will say one thing about U-verse on coax: It is 100% confirmed that 44mb U-verse is coming. It's confirmed to the point that a manager at the level of management that involves running the primary call center for AT&T Southwest and West business customers is saying "no info on date or pricing, yet", and with her language that means the date is probably related to the pricing that has been submitted to tarrif (read: Service ready, marketing assigning monthly recurring charge and various promos associated with getting the service).

The last indicator is that AT&T is making the pricing on 100% copper long distance service prohibitively expensive for wireline customers, unless it is bundled with broadband or mobile service. Even when bundled, you get exactly one year, and then the price increases 200% and immediately locks you into a new term commitment with an ETF that is now 200% increased.

Basically, AT&T structured long distance pricing for copper in a way that the only way the service seems reasonably priced is if you are purchasing something that would be a component of the new wireline/wireless hybrid voice network (it would also be able to move data, but speed would vary wildly with how you were moving it, which AT&T has probably got some plan in place for, as well)

They aren't actively eliminating wireline customers. I can tell you right now from looking at pricing patterns on wireline services for the last 3 years, primarily pricing that either affects brand-new or long-time customers: The system has been rigged to keep people on 1.5 mbps or 3.0 mbps DSL with AT&T (one of those is the broadband speed requirement associated with VOIP service when you qualify an address in the U-verse tool).

One other oddity: Price increase on DSL - VERY SPECIFIC TO AVAILABLE TERM PROMOS - makes it less attractive to either new subscribers or people who have DSL but no U-verse IPDSL available, but where U-verse migration is available.

It is also factual that expiring DSL promo prices on customer accounts appear to have had their rates increased in an amount that makes U-verse an attractive buy (the MRC on the U-verse is cheaper than the MRC the customer paid for DSL prior to expire) for DSL customers. It's working so well that it appears that AT&T has availability of IPDSL in particular areas scheduled in accordance with promo expirations on DSL.

So let me spell it out for you, and this is specific to IPDSL service: When you look at promo prices on DSL, when they expire, and what the new rate is - the end result is that the customers price for switching to U-verse is ALWAYS cheaper than the DSL.

My guess is corporate approved these promos for DSL at a particular speed tier that on IPDSL would constitute availability of VOIP, started marking a map with locations of customers who purchased the service, which probably required a bunlded copper phone line, and then started converting the areas to IPDSL based on expiration dates of promos.

Additional promos were put in to get customer's pricing into a state where changing to IPDSL made sence, and will next make even more sense if they get IPDSL and change their copper telephone number to VOIP.

The only way out is to add either new broadband or new mobility so you can get the previous price back (if you already have both, you can't the previous price back in any circumstance).

There is, waaaaaaaaay out in the future, probably the desire to entirely do away with wires in the AT&T infrastructure and put everyone on a network that has no wires except the one that charges the battery on your wireless devices. The savings in infrastructure and labor to maintain it are incomprehensibly huge.

The logical step is that AT&T micro-manages the migration of it's voice customer base first partially off of copper and onto IPDSL (or in more limited cases, VDSL), and then further migrate them over to a blend of U-verse and the mobility network, and then migrate them off of U-verse entirely onto the mobility networ, while maintaining the VOIP telephone network that went into place with U_verse and now just uses a different method of data transmission.

It will take years to get done, and won't even be possible in some areas, but it will happen.