</H2>source: http://blogs.mysanantonio.com/weblogs/sbc/archives/2006/11/
I replied to Scotts thread about this but i decided to make an official thread about this.
List of cities AT&T U-VERSE will be coming to soon.
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I replied to Scotts thread about this but i decided to make an official thread about this.
I think the plan was 15 cities by the end of 2006. They don't even have 15 communities yet, much less 15 metropolitan areas. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for U-verse to reach the OKC suburbs.
It will be interesting to see if they handle this like they did when AT&T (SBC) started to roll out DSL service. Yea, they were fairly agressive in the cities themselves but when it came to the burbs they really dragged their feet. The Chicago burb I lived in, 30,000+ population didn't see DSL arrive in any numbers until 2003.
I wonder what their plans will be with Mergers. For instance I live in Asheville NC where we have bellsouth and AT&T is merging with Bellsouth. I guess it depends on how long the transition takes to "switch" to AT&T and the existing ifrastructure.
I got one better....Down here in Miami, not ONLY is it Bellsouth territory, but they are one of the few cities that offers Bellsouth CABLE/Entertainment. I was HOPING that since they(Bellsouth) offered the entertainment package, they would be offering U-Verse here before any other city in the state...but I have a strange feeling that that was only wishful thinking......
PLEASE someone correct me and state I am wrong and they will offer U-Verse.......
salsadancer: I read somewhere that they plan to introduce U-Verse to the areas that are covered by the merger by some time in late 2007/early 2008. This would be a significant reduction in price considering my Dish/Fastaccess/Phone bill which would probably save me well over 100 bucks and give me faster internet plus every premium channel!
So yeah, as a fellow South Floridian, I'd like to see them deliver this pretty quickly. More $$$ in my pocket, faster internet, more quality programming (minus Voom, which I will miss). Bellsouth is/was a total rip-off. Dish tacked on BS charges too. I'm ready for U-Verse, but it isn't ready for me.
So yeah, as a fellow South Floridian, I'd like to see them deliver this pretty quickly. More $$$ in my pocket, faster internet, more quality programming (minus Voom, which I will miss). Bellsouth is/was a total rip-off. Dish tacked on BS charges too. I'm ready for U-Verse, but it isn't ready for me.
From YOUR MOUTH to AT&T ears.....!!! Question though, I am seriouly considering moving to the Orlando area...IS Bellsouth the main telephone company there or is that Verizon territory(FiOS)?
AP
AT&T Resumes Rollout for Cable TV
Wednesday February 28, 1:54 am ET
By Bruce Meyerson, AP Business Writer
AT&T Resumes Rollout, Marketing for Cable TV Service After Addressing Technological Hiccups
NEW YORK (AP) -- AT&T Inc.'s push into cable TV is ramping back up after a pause prompted by glitches that the company says have been resolved with key network software upgrades.
Over the past two weeks, AT&T resumed direct mailings and distribution of promotional "door hangers" for the new U-verse television service, the first marketing activities since those efforts were suspended starting in October.
AT&T also plans to announce on Wednesday it is introducing U-verse in parts of Milwaukee and Racine, Wis., immediately, followed by the Dallas-Fort Worth market in early March and then Kansas City later that month. Those four launches, bringing the total to 15 markets, are the first since nine cities were added at the end of December.
U-verse, delivered over a high-speed Internet connection, is crucial to AT&T's strategy to fend off cable companies now selling telephone service. The San Antonio-based company aims to keep and win customers with next-generation features melding TV sets, cell phones and computers.
To provide such robust capabilities over the plain copper phone wires connected to most homes, AT&T is using relatively unproven technology known as IPTV, short for Internet Protocol TV. That approach has enabled AT&T to spend only a fraction of the $23 billion Verizon Communications Inc. is investing to rewire half its local phone network with fiber-optic lines all the way to each home.
But because the software, provided largely by Microsoft Corp., has never been deployed on such a large scale, assorted glitches have forced AT&T to repeatedly delay and scale back the service rollout even though the required network upgrade remains on pace.
"We have had our fits and starts, but right now we feel we're in a pretty good place," John Stankey, AT&T's group president for operations support, said in an interview. The deployment of the latest software for the system was completed in early February, he said, stressing that the upgrade addressed many "small annoyances" rather than any one big problem.
The systems are now operating smoothly enough that, "We're ready to play the game and put numbers on the board," he said.
Microsoft, which has encountered multiple bumps in its early dominance of the IPTV software market, is "very pleased with the progress we've made with AT&T on its software platform" to enable the wider-scale rollout, said spokesman Jim Brady. "These challenges are absolutely behind us."
The renewed marketing efforts also include a new tactic: door-to-door sales calls, with agents deployed in every neighborhood, began earlier this month.
With the return to more active marketing, sales volume has already risen 138 percent in February as compared with December. Stankey projected "that number will probably be three times that level by the end of March based on the last few weeks of work."
With all the delays, there are now roughly 7,000 U-verse subscribers, up from 3,000 at the close of 2006, even though AT&T's network was U-verse-ready in areas with 2.2 million homes at year's end. By contrast, Verizon had signed up 217,000 homes for FiOS TV by the end of last year, and cable companies lured away hundreds of thousands of AT&T's phone customers during 2006.
A full U-verse launch was originally slated to begin in late 2005. It took until mid-2006 to bring the service to just one market, the company's hometown of San Antonio, and even then with availability to just 5,000 homes and without promised capabilities such as high-definition TV.
The company also backtracked multiple times on a pledge to introduce the service in 15 to 20 markets during 2006, first saying those launches wouldn't be market-wide, then trimming the goal to 15 markets. The second launch -- Houston -- came in November, but it took until three days before the end of 2006 to introduce U-verse to another nine markets, for a year-end total of only 11.
Possibly owing to lessons learned about making predictions, AT&T hasn't made any public projections for the number of markets or customers it expects to be served by U-verse by the end of 2007 -- though the company does say its network upgrade will cover 8 million homes by then.
Stankey said the company expects at least one U-verse launch this year within the nine-state region served by BellSouth, which AT&T acquired at the end of 2006.
Despite the recent system improvements, AT&T is sticking with its phased approach to introducing and expanding the U-verse service area rather than launching across entire markets.
Stankey said the recent software upgrades resolved assorted glitches such as stabilizing the picture quality of high-definition channels to avoid spurts of "tiling" or pixilation. Another problem addressed was that the audio would be louder on one channel than another.
"It's not any one big thing. It's fixing a large number of small annoyances," said Stankey, estimating he was working on 18 to 20 such issues over the past few months. "None in themselves were cataclysmic."
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070228/at_t_tv.html?.v=2
Thanks to killa_milla for posting this at UverseUsers.com
AT&T Resumes Rollout for Cable TV
Wednesday February 28, 1:54 am ET
By Bruce Meyerson, AP Business Writer
AT&T Resumes Rollout, Marketing for Cable TV Service After Addressing Technological Hiccups
NEW YORK (AP) -- AT&T Inc.'s push into cable TV is ramping back up after a pause prompted by glitches that the company says have been resolved with key network software upgrades.
Over the past two weeks, AT&T resumed direct mailings and distribution of promotional "door hangers" for the new U-verse television service, the first marketing activities since those efforts were suspended starting in October.
AT&T also plans to announce on Wednesday it is introducing U-verse in parts of Milwaukee and Racine, Wis., immediately, followed by the Dallas-Fort Worth market in early March and then Kansas City later that month. Those four launches, bringing the total to 15 markets, are the first since nine cities were added at the end of December.
U-verse, delivered over a high-speed Internet connection, is crucial to AT&T's strategy to fend off cable companies now selling telephone service. The San Antonio-based company aims to keep and win customers with next-generation features melding TV sets, cell phones and computers.
To provide such robust capabilities over the plain copper phone wires connected to most homes, AT&T is using relatively unproven technology known as IPTV, short for Internet Protocol TV. That approach has enabled AT&T to spend only a fraction of the $23 billion Verizon Communications Inc. is investing to rewire half its local phone network with fiber-optic lines all the way to each home.
But because the software, provided largely by Microsoft Corp., has never been deployed on such a large scale, assorted glitches have forced AT&T to repeatedly delay and scale back the service rollout even though the required network upgrade remains on pace.
"We have had our fits and starts, but right now we feel we're in a pretty good place," John Stankey, AT&T's group president for operations support, said in an interview. The deployment of the latest software for the system was completed in early February, he said, stressing that the upgrade addressed many "small annoyances" rather than any one big problem.
The systems are now operating smoothly enough that, "We're ready to play the game and put numbers on the board," he said.
Microsoft, which has encountered multiple bumps in its early dominance of the IPTV software market, is "very pleased with the progress we've made with AT&T on its software platform" to enable the wider-scale rollout, said spokesman Jim Brady. "These challenges are absolutely behind us."
The renewed marketing efforts also include a new tactic: door-to-door sales calls, with agents deployed in every neighborhood, began earlier this month.
With the return to more active marketing, sales volume has already risen 138 percent in February as compared with December. Stankey projected "that number will probably be three times that level by the end of March based on the last few weeks of work."
With all the delays, there are now roughly 7,000 U-verse subscribers, up from 3,000 at the close of 2006, even though AT&T's network was U-verse-ready in areas with 2.2 million homes at year's end. By contrast, Verizon had signed up 217,000 homes for FiOS TV by the end of last year, and cable companies lured away hundreds of thousands of AT&T's phone customers during 2006.
A full U-verse launch was originally slated to begin in late 2005. It took until mid-2006 to bring the service to just one market, the company's hometown of San Antonio, and even then with availability to just 5,000 homes and without promised capabilities such as high-definition TV.
The company also backtracked multiple times on a pledge to introduce the service in 15 to 20 markets during 2006, first saying those launches wouldn't be market-wide, then trimming the goal to 15 markets. The second launch -- Houston -- came in November, but it took until three days before the end of 2006 to introduce U-verse to another nine markets, for a year-end total of only 11.
Possibly owing to lessons learned about making predictions, AT&T hasn't made any public projections for the number of markets or customers it expects to be served by U-verse by the end of 2007 -- though the company does say its network upgrade will cover 8 million homes by then.
Stankey said the company expects at least one U-verse launch this year within the nine-state region served by BellSouth, which AT&T acquired at the end of 2006.
Despite the recent system improvements, AT&T is sticking with its phased approach to introducing and expanding the U-verse service area rather than launching across entire markets.
Stankey said the recent software upgrades resolved assorted glitches such as stabilizing the picture quality of high-definition channels to avoid spurts of "tiling" or pixilation. Another problem addressed was that the audio would be louder on one channel than another.
"It's not any one big thing. It's fixing a large number of small annoyances," said Stankey, estimating he was working on 18 to 20 such issues over the past few months. "None in themselves were cataclysmic."
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070228/at_t_tv.html?.v=2
Thanks to killa_milla for posting this at UverseUsers.com
From what I learned, Embarq is the primary phone service provider in Orlando. I am not sure of any plans Embarq has for TV service.
If you're waiting, you might have to wait a bit longer.
Reports that AT&T is cutting back on their planned rollout, http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20...eedreleasegoals;_ylt=A9G_Rw3Y1OZFzfoAhhYjtBAF
"AT&T (T) won't reach 18 million homes this year with its "Lightspeed" broadband network, after all. Instead, it will reach less than half the original target: 8 million.
AT&T unveiled its latest 2007 target in an unusually quiet manner: It was offered up to Wall Street analysts on an earnings call on Jan. 25. The 8 million figure later showed up in a few investor notes, where it did not attract much attention.
Fletcher Cook, an AT&T spokesman, says the company decided there was no need to issue a press release to highlight the change."
Reports that AT&T is cutting back on their planned rollout, http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20...eedreleasegoals;_ylt=A9G_Rw3Y1OZFzfoAhhYjtBAF
"AT&T (T) won't reach 18 million homes this year with its "Lightspeed" broadband network, after all. Instead, it will reach less than half the original target: 8 million.
AT&T unveiled its latest 2007 target in an unusually quiet manner: It was offered up to Wall Street analysts on an earnings call on Jan. 25. The 8 million figure later showed up in a few investor notes, where it did not attract much attention.
Fletcher Cook, an AT&T spokesman, says the company decided there was no need to issue a press release to highlight the change."
I spoke too soon. That figures. I hope I'm included in the 8 mil. Been seeing lots of new tan cabnets popping up all over town. I hope they are VRADS.
I put those there just to get you excited. Since AT&T got Bellsouth, there has been a lot of activity in my area but I'm not on or near anyone's list however, I'm suppose to get some kind of upgrade by the end of May but nobody will tell me anything.
It was announced last year that a few locations in Arkansas will be getting U-verse. My town is one of them. I would just be happy to get DSL. Still on dial up. I see AT&T in different locations digging and running some type of cable. The activity has increased over they last week. I noticed today they were doing some work about a mile from my house. What's the max line feet distance to be able to recieve U-verse?
Ok. So it's just over a half mile. So that means that to cover a whole town, they would need a butt load of vrads right? Any word if that distance would increase in the future?
Maybe when at&t converts to ADSL the distance will increase. Basically they need a Vrad at every major cross box. Locally they are hitting my area hard. They made a deal with the state to provide it to all customers of at&t by the end of 2008. They haven't hit my cross box yet but the other three that are close are all powered up. Knowing my luck they wont put one by mine.
