I just recently came from uverse and Want to share my experience.
INSTALL
U verse lured me in with a 250 instant cash back rebate, which I never saw. I placed my order and had ATT techs out here within a week. Once installed with TV, I had the phone and internet done too.
Quickly after having internet installed I noticed that my TV would often Freeze for a 1/2 second every 2 to 5 min. It got really annoying. ATT rolled their trucks out here 5 different times and even replaced my drop wich was found to be bad as it wasn't bonded right. They even chalked it up to my slingbox saying that it drew too much data from the network and that sling boxes interfere with uverse. IT wasn't until I went and purchased my own router off of another suggestion from a user over at utalk.att.com that I noticed my freezing issue go away. This is uverse flaw number 1. The residential gateway they designed cant handle high traffic without degrading other services. Once a certain threshold of data is pushed through it, the gateway degrades other services. The fix was to bring my network over to its own router to handle local Ethernet traffic (which worked out for me as I upgraded to gigabit anyhow) and pull from the gateway as internet traffic was needed.
What's Good
Uverse does a few thing's great. They have a great channel line up like dish, and even offer HDRSN's in full time, where as dish doesn't. Their vod selection isnt bad, and the interactive applications are great. Once you get past this, the polishing starts wearing off real quick. I often found my self questening att and the fiber to the node decision. All of ATT's problems could be solved with more bandwidth.
HDTV ON UVERSE
The HD quality of some channels are great! others not so. WHy? Bandwidth. Channels such as DiscoveryHD draw less bandwidth than HDNFL. Often during sports you would see micro bocking, even in anything in fast movement you would see various micro bocking in dark scenes. Over all when I switched back to dish I noticed that dish's picture was just more crisper and clearer. While Uveres's pq has made leaps and bounds from what it was when it first rolled out in my area, the lack of bandwidth allocated is noticeable and causes the experience to be downgraded from other providers such as directv. Also Comments on a recent earnings call from ATT's CEO wanting to provide less bandwidth even more for HDTV streams, we might see more complaints in the future about this!
The Network
Uvers's main flaw is the fact that there are stream limitations on how much you can physically watch. I often found myself recording a show in HD, while watching another, and my wife in the other bedroom would yell because she would get blacked out of her program as the HD stream limit would be exceeded. 2 HD streams was one of the main factors on why I chucked uverse. With other providers you can bring as many streams as needed and not have to worry about getting blacked out when someone else watched a TV show. Uverse needs to address this problem and are trying to banaid it with VDSL2. I don't see VDSL2 working as there was no noticeable increase in the bandwidth that the line could handle on the users side. While ATT could up the profile to match what the lines can handle, with comcast offering faster speeds than what VDSL 2 outputs. ATT is going to be in a world of hurt!
In my case I was 1500 feet from the vrad, I could obtain a max of 58 mbps on my line, and was hooked up with the standard profile. Upping the profiles would band aid enough but fiber is the only way to future proof and compete.
See here for my statistics 3800HG Statistics
Internet speeds
ATT's dsl speeds are slow and over priced! ATT's top teir max 18 has 18 down and 1.5 up. When compared to Comcast which is 10 bucks cheaper you get 20 down and 5 up. The quality of the internet was great as I got the speeds I payed for, but this once again goes back to the network ATT built and refuses to upgrade to fiber to the home as comast is now pushing docsis 3.0 50 meg speeds and is wanting to go further with 100+ meg teirs. If a user's line can max out at 56 megs at 1500 feet, that's 100 percent of my internet connection through comast now! The difference from being at 1500 feet and being at 0 feet from the vrad is 4 houses and three streets as my vrad is three blocks from me! and the closer you are to the Vrad, the faster your connection.
Phone
It is what it is. It worked. I didnt have any issues with it!
Customer service!
Coustomer service is non existant at ATT. I ordered a movie on demand and was told that I couldn't order a 50 dollar ppv because I had excided my ppv limit. Even though my bill was paid, and I had'nt been late, ATT refused to turn on the ppv and let me enjoy the programming I wanted! That was the last straw that broke the camels back. With other providers if you are past your ppv limit you can call them and have the ppv authorized. ATT refused to do this.
I found my self often calling customer service to find that it was closed. Customer service is open at limited times M-F 9-6 Sat 9-3 pm ish. In my view customer service should be open 24/7 minus holidays. When I tried to order the pay per view on sunday the call was routed to the collections department wich is open and the customer service reps were rude. They made you feel like you were a deadbeat instead of a customer. Also if you go over to Utalk.att.com and even question the service or try to help improve the service by asking questions, I often found myself being scrutinized by fanboys who think the service is perfect. Think of it as the DBSTALK of Uverse.
My recommendations
If you have a one HDTV and dont plan on upgrading, give it a shot. You might like it.
If you have multiple HDTV's or plan on upgrading to more than one set, stick with directv or dish.
If att would take their network seriously and roll out fiber, they would have one kick ass service. Unfortunately that's not how att rolls and were stuck with a mildly grate service that works bass akwards. I found myself wanting to keep the service because the amount of HDTV channels offered is 2nd to none, but the downfalls of the service just kept me shaking my head! I really want uverse to work out, but the way ATT is going, Who knows if they will be around in a few years.
INSTALL
U verse lured me in with a 250 instant cash back rebate, which I never saw. I placed my order and had ATT techs out here within a week. Once installed with TV, I had the phone and internet done too.
Quickly after having internet installed I noticed that my TV would often Freeze for a 1/2 second every 2 to 5 min. It got really annoying. ATT rolled their trucks out here 5 different times and even replaced my drop wich was found to be bad as it wasn't bonded right. They even chalked it up to my slingbox saying that it drew too much data from the network and that sling boxes interfere with uverse. IT wasn't until I went and purchased my own router off of another suggestion from a user over at utalk.att.com that I noticed my freezing issue go away. This is uverse flaw number 1. The residential gateway they designed cant handle high traffic without degrading other services. Once a certain threshold of data is pushed through it, the gateway degrades other services. The fix was to bring my network over to its own router to handle local Ethernet traffic (which worked out for me as I upgraded to gigabit anyhow) and pull from the gateway as internet traffic was needed.
What's Good
Uverse does a few thing's great. They have a great channel line up like dish, and even offer HDRSN's in full time, where as dish doesn't. Their vod selection isnt bad, and the interactive applications are great. Once you get past this, the polishing starts wearing off real quick. I often found my self questening att and the fiber to the node decision. All of ATT's problems could be solved with more bandwidth.
HDTV ON UVERSE
The HD quality of some channels are great! others not so. WHy? Bandwidth. Channels such as DiscoveryHD draw less bandwidth than HDNFL. Often during sports you would see micro bocking, even in anything in fast movement you would see various micro bocking in dark scenes. Over all when I switched back to dish I noticed that dish's picture was just more crisper and clearer. While Uveres's pq has made leaps and bounds from what it was when it first rolled out in my area, the lack of bandwidth allocated is noticeable and causes the experience to be downgraded from other providers such as directv. Also Comments on a recent earnings call from ATT's CEO wanting to provide less bandwidth even more for HDTV streams, we might see more complaints in the future about this!
The Network
Uvers's main flaw is the fact that there are stream limitations on how much you can physically watch. I often found myself recording a show in HD, while watching another, and my wife in the other bedroom would yell because she would get blacked out of her program as the HD stream limit would be exceeded. 2 HD streams was one of the main factors on why I chucked uverse. With other providers you can bring as many streams as needed and not have to worry about getting blacked out when someone else watched a TV show. Uverse needs to address this problem and are trying to banaid it with VDSL2. I don't see VDSL2 working as there was no noticeable increase in the bandwidth that the line could handle on the users side. While ATT could up the profile to match what the lines can handle, with comcast offering faster speeds than what VDSL 2 outputs. ATT is going to be in a world of hurt!
In my case I was 1500 feet from the vrad, I could obtain a max of 58 mbps on my line, and was hooked up with the standard profile. Upping the profiles would band aid enough but fiber is the only way to future proof and compete.
See here for my statistics 3800HG Statistics
Internet speeds
ATT's dsl speeds are slow and over priced! ATT's top teir max 18 has 18 down and 1.5 up. When compared to Comcast which is 10 bucks cheaper you get 20 down and 5 up. The quality of the internet was great as I got the speeds I payed for, but this once again goes back to the network ATT built and refuses to upgrade to fiber to the home as comast is now pushing docsis 3.0 50 meg speeds and is wanting to go further with 100+ meg teirs. If a user's line can max out at 56 megs at 1500 feet, that's 100 percent of my internet connection through comast now! The difference from being at 1500 feet and being at 0 feet from the vrad is 4 houses and three streets as my vrad is three blocks from me! and the closer you are to the Vrad, the faster your connection.
Phone
It is what it is. It worked. I didnt have any issues with it!
Customer service!
Coustomer service is non existant at ATT. I ordered a movie on demand and was told that I couldn't order a 50 dollar ppv because I had excided my ppv limit. Even though my bill was paid, and I had'nt been late, ATT refused to turn on the ppv and let me enjoy the programming I wanted! That was the last straw that broke the camels back. With other providers if you are past your ppv limit you can call them and have the ppv authorized. ATT refused to do this.
I found my self often calling customer service to find that it was closed. Customer service is open at limited times M-F 9-6 Sat 9-3 pm ish. In my view customer service should be open 24/7 minus holidays. When I tried to order the pay per view on sunday the call was routed to the collections department wich is open and the customer service reps were rude. They made you feel like you were a deadbeat instead of a customer. Also if you go over to Utalk.att.com and even question the service or try to help improve the service by asking questions, I often found myself being scrutinized by fanboys who think the service is perfect. Think of it as the DBSTALK of Uverse.
My recommendations
If you have a one HDTV and dont plan on upgrading, give it a shot. You might like it.
If you have multiple HDTV's or plan on upgrading to more than one set, stick with directv or dish.
If att would take their network seriously and roll out fiber, they would have one kick ass service. Unfortunately that's not how att rolls and were stuck with a mildly grate service that works bass akwards. I found myself wanting to keep the service because the amount of HDTV channels offered is 2nd to none, but the downfalls of the service just kept me shaking my head! I really want uverse to work out, but the way ATT is going, Who knows if they will be around in a few years.
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My U-verse experiance:
