AT&T U-Verse

[Chris Padilla]

Okay good folks of SMC, chime in here.

Who has this? Did you get a bundle package? I know it isn't fiber all the way to the house so I fear worse picture quality (i.e. compression) but it appears I can save roughly $50-100/month by combining.

I currently have Dish Network and we like it just fine. $107/month, 2 DVRs (our 2-yr committment is up so I'm free to switch or wheel 'n deal)

I have AT&T landline that I wish I could just dump altogether at around $25/month.

I have Comcast Internet (cable modem) that also works just fine at $58/month (Company paid for this for many years...now I'm footing the bill)

Finally, we have AT&T family plan for our cell phones (nothing fancy, basic stuff, we don't use our phone all that much and I still use a phone to make PHONE calls ) at $57/month.

Add all that up and we're at about $250/month!

U-Verse's "max" plan is $150/month but it is a "cell phone OR landline" along with TV and Internet. I don't know what kind of break, if any, I get trying to bundle all 4 of these puppies. I also don't know what happens to the price after 1 year.


So who likes U-Verse? Who regrets the switch? Info me up.

Cheers,

Chris

[Andy Haney]

...and let us know how it turns out. I wanted to bundle DSL with TV. The bundle offer "is not available to me because I'm already their customer for DSL". I'm considering NOT being their customer any more.

Andy Haney
Ottawa, KS

[John Coloccia]

I tried to switch to U-Verse. Two or three times, in fact. They always say it's available, they sign me up, and then they say it's not. My one recommendation is whatever you do, do not cancel ANYTHING until it's in your house and working 100% with the proper performance.

Funny AT&T story, though. Years ago, I tried to get DSL at my house. I placed the order and the same thing happened: "Oh, we goofed. Hee Hee! It's not really available". OK, fine.

A month or so later, I started getting recorded phone messages from James Earl Jones. "Your DSL line is on it's way. Prepare to experience the speed of DSL", or some nonsense like that. I figured it was a marketing call of some kind.

A couple of weeks later, Jimmy (we were tight...I call him Jimmy) calls back and gives me a date that the service would be hooked up. Sure enough, a package arrives a few days before the scheduled date. It was my DSL self install kit. Hmmmm. This is getting serious now!

I hook it all up, wait for the date, and wouldn't you know it that I have DSL coming to my house. The performance was PITIFUL compared to cable so I didn't want it anyhow, but somehow I got hooked up with DSL after they told me that DSL is impossible at my house.

I call up AT&T and explain what happened. The rep started laughing. "Oh yeah. Ha Ha Ha...very funny. You're not even in our system. Have a nice day." *CLICK*. Hmmmm. A couple of calls later, I got a manager on the phone and he decided to dig a bit deeper than their billing system. Turns out that their service calls center is different than their billing center, and somehow my order was cancelled in the billing center but was NOT cancelled in their service center. Somehow, my order just hung around, and eventually an order went out to hook up my area, Jimmy baby started calling (I can call him Jimmy Baby....we're tight, you know), and voila.

End of the mess? Not nearly. To cancel the service, they had to sign me up for service, charge me for a month, activation etc, cancel the service, credit my account and cut me a check for a full refund. THANKS.

I think what happened is that some computer, somewhere (I call her Betty) took pity on me and started sending all these little orders out to folks all over the world. Little things: "Turn this switch on that street." "Run a wire to this street". Betty coordinated hundreds of people to get my DSL turned on. If I had wanted, I could have kept it more or less forever since they had basically no record of my service except for the actual mistaken activation (which no one would have ever noticed).

OK, I'll shutup now

[Jerome Hanby]

I think that ATT&T Universe contains the replacement for their Callvantage voip that they killed off. If so and it has at least the same quality, take the cell, drop the land line, and use the voip. Voip is especially convienient if your house phones are cordless, just plug your base station into the pots port.

[Scott Brihn]

I've had U-Verse for a number of years. We were early adopters. Having had a dish when HD was still novel; I would say U-Verse picture quality is not as good as the dish but acceptable.

Our installation and experience over the years with AT&T has been good. They are generally very responsive in my area.

[Chris Padilla]

I'll have call and chat with 'em and get more details. The key could be what happens after 1 year.

[Garrett Ellis]

i have had u-verse for about a month now, dsl and tv. Can't really comment on the picture quality, i have HD so everything looks perfect

however, the other day i was having some serious lag/freezing issues with the tv. it the picture/audio would freeze for 5-10 seconds, ever 5 or 10 seconds. while it was happening i looked up the problem online but could not find a clear cut answer. it stopped doing it after 5-10 minutes so i didnt pursue it anymore.

internet is fine... i don't use it all that much since i can get online with my phone. the dsl modem/router does have built in wifi, a perk i guess.

i'm paying around right at $100/mo for the smallest TV package, HD, and lowest speed internet.

[Jeff Yates]

We've had UVerse for about 2 years now, and have loved it.

I spend a little over $200 a month for cable and internet (I don't think there is a cable package we don't have...and I've got a 12G connection).

When it was new, we had problems with connecting via HDMI, but that hasn't been an issue in the last 12 months.

I haven't had a single day of outage...outside of Hurricane Ike that is...then it was only down for 5 days.

In direct comparison to DirecTV I can say DirecTV has better quality HD, but not enough for me to want to change.

The only negative I could give is going to be the same with all of the big boy cable/internet packages...finding a competent customer service rep is challenging...

If I had Verizon available here I might try it...but I'm sold on UVerse...

[Jeff Yates]

i have had u-verse for about a month now, dsl and tv. Can't really comment on the picture quality, i have HD so everything looks perfect

however, the other day i was having some serious lag/freezing issues with the tv. it the picture/audio would freeze for 5-10 seconds, ever 5 or 10 seconds. while it was happening i looked up the problem online but could not find a clear cut answer. it stopped doing it after 5-10 minutes so i didnt pursue it anymore.

internet is fine... i don't use it all that much since i can get online with my phone. the dsl modem/router does have built in wifi, a perk i guess.

i'm paying around right at $100/mo for the smallest TV package, HD, and lowest speed internet.

We had this problem as well...see my other post about HDMI Cables...

Try switching over to RGB and see if it keeps happening.

We no longer have the problem...but then again, thinking about it...I've upgraded both of those TV's to newer ones...

[glenn bradley]

I have U-verse for internet only. $35/mo for 1 meg up, 6 meg down. The user experience is about the same as at work where we run multiple 10 gig links to the California backbone so, very acceptable for the price. My Time Warner was out once a week, at least. U-verse has not been down since it went in. The optical to electrical B-box or "hut" is right on my street ;-). Mine comes in on cable but I was offered coax or 2-wire entrance facilities; made no difference to them.

[Bryan Morgan]

So who likes U-Verse? Who regrets the switch? Info me up.

Cheers,

Chris

Whatever you get, check with your neighbors to make sure it actually works right. We set a couple people up at work with U-Verse so they could work remotely. It would work ok for a day or two then crap out on both users, in different areas. They switched to whatever their local cable provider is and its been fine since.

I was really stoked when I found out Uverse is going to be available where I live. But, working with networks for a living I was smart enough to wait and let others suffer the growing pains. Glad I did. After waiting over a year I talked to some neighbors that have it. It is not reliable in this neighborhood either. I had AT&T DSL for years but that ultra reliable 2 meg connection is just not fast enough for what I need... luckily we also have Time Warner cable available so I went with that. The Uverse tops out around here at ~20 meg. My roadrunner cruises between 25-35 all day long, for the same price. I've had it for a few months now and it (knock on wood, then build something nice out of it ) hasn't gone down once.

I can't comment on the phone or TV because we just use cell phones and I've been very happy with DirecTV (plus they give me free stuff because I've been a customer forever...)

[Bill Huber]

I have had U-Verse for about 2 years and have no problems.

It is much better then the cable I had and also better then the Dish Network.
The cable was always going out and every time we had a big storm the dish was gone.

Any digital feed should give you the same picture quality, it is digital, its there or its not. With digital if there is a problem it will be in pixelation. I see this maybe once a month for a second or two.

I have over 3800 MP3 files on my PC that I serve over my U-Verse network which is very nice. I can also view on the big screen some 40,000 images I have on the PC.

If there is something I don't like it is their menu system, it could be much better. Setting up your channels is some what of a pain to remove a channel from you favorites. The DVR could have a larger hard drive and a better way to see how much space you have left on it.

I also really like and use a lot the ability to set the DVR from the internet. It is so nice to be at work and someone tell you about a show that's going to be on and I can jump on the net and record it.

I do not have the phone, I use Vontage for that, $17 a month for 500 min. which we never use, we have cell phones that are used a lot.

My cost for the upgraded internet and their 200 package is around $130 after all the taxes and things are added.

.

[Van Huskey]

Tried U-verse but being a AV junkie I was not happy with the HD feed. The difference was pretty much a non-issue at 42" and below, with a 48" display is was becoming clear and at 60+ inches it was quite clear. I went back to Dish. DirectTV has arguably an even better picture but I prefer the DVRs from Dish and they mesh with my whole house system much better. I am not a bundle guy even though I could save money I pick and choose. ATT for the Iphones, Dish for the TV and a local fiber to the house provider for internet. I pay more but each of these is important to us and I feel it is worth paying for the best provider (for us) for each service.

[Alan Bienlein]

We have had u-verse for over a year now. We have had the occasional growing problem in the area but that has been corrected. The internet connection works just fine for us and I love the fact that I can record and play back anything in any room in the house with only one dvr. I honestly can't tell the difference in picture quality. The other good thing is when we needed a service rep most of them sounded as if they lived in the USA verses living over seas.

[Neal Clayton]

i've had it for about a year.

internet is rock solid. i've had downtime longer than 5 minutes once in that year. and when i called to report it the person on the phone knew what the problem was and gave me an ETA. good luck getting that from comcast.

the HD picture quality isn't as good as cable. on the flip side you typically get more HD channels than cable. depends on how much you value picture quality in every day TV. personally i watch any movie worth watching on bluray and just use the TV service for watching weekly/daily shows. if you watch more TV and poor broadcast HD quality bothers you, probably should look elsewhere.

for me having all channels + HD, it's about 30 a month cheaper than comcast for just the TV portion.