Review of AT&T U-VerseAll reviews of |  about |
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Man was I in for a treat! State4-6 hours for install of Uverse internet and TV.... it was just a tad over 2 hours!! I was impressed and saddened to see 3 ATT&T vans in my driveway within that same period...... had to put in a ticket and that was one of the services at&tgot to little ole me in around 2 hours awesome instal, no issues that I could tell I upgraded from ADSL to VDSL yummy speed, will let you know as time goes on Tech gave number so I could call him direct instead of contacting INDIA!! Comcast who? Followup comments:
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I've had the service over 6 months now. I don't miss Comcast at all. I did have a weird TV issue and spend way to long on the phone with Level 1 in India and the VoIP connection was down right painful. Fortunately after 60+ minute with Level 1 I got bumped to Level 2 and the problem was resolved in minutes. I had one issue with massive DSL correctable errors. Two truck rolls later and supreme intervention from Level 2 got my home run replaced with CAT5 and the errors were eliminated. That whole process took 2 weeks because I'm limited to Saturdays. I recently upgraded from Elite to Max 10 which promptly was upgraded to Max 12 at no additional cost plus they gave me $10/mo off as a promo and $40 in the form of a rebate check. Not to bad IMHO. Original: Zero wait time for order placement. After they accepted my order things didn't go so well. Computer was down so they placed a paper order but did follow up to say the order was "in the system". I needed a weekend install so the install date was 3 weeks from date of order. That seemed a tad long but I took it. No confirming email was received but I did get a letter and postcard in the mail so I figured (silly me) all was good. Just to be on the safe side I sent a note to the teriffic folks at ATT Direct and they confirmed they could see an order for my BAN (U-verse speak for customer number?) in the system. That was a good thing. The morning of my install date I called ATT to confirm things were still good to go. The rep read back my install time, contact numbers etc. and all was 100% correct and assured me the install would happen that day. Well, and hour and a half into my install window no call to confirm but maybe ATT doesn't confirm things like Comcast does. I decided to call support again and they said I should have heard from the installer but the rep would contact dispatch and get back to me "right away" with an update. 30 minutes later not call back. Now my install window was officially over. I called support again and got another rep who said basically " I should have realized since I didn't receive a confirming email my order wasn't completely processed". Nevermind the confirming letter and postcard. "No email no install". He said he would have dispatch contact me directly. Dispatch did call in about 15 minutes to say my order never made it to dispatch so they appologized and would like to reschedule the install. I offered to let them come over anytime as late as they wanted even the next day but the best weekend date was three weeks from today but it was early morning slot so I took it. Minutes later I got an email confirmation so this looks better. Looking at the fine print it seems ATT's free install might cost me $55/$75 per TV if they need to run new cable. Since I am keeping Comcast minimal service so I can keep my current Comcast HSI pricing I hope this isn't really true. No new free cabling, no deal. Time will tell. So at this time my experience with ATT U-Verse has been subpar but I am giving them one more try to make things good. I really don't have a "warm fuzzy" about it but the JD Power Survey says they're the best. JD Power couldn't be wrong could they?  Circle November 15th on your calendar for an update to this review. November 15 is my newly rescheduled install date. FIngers firmly crossed too. Update: 11/15/08 as promised. The install went off today without a hitch. The Tech arrived 15 minutes early. I laid out my ideas and concerns which he answered. The install took a total of 3.5 hours for 3 TVs and DSL. The U-Verse TV menuing system is different than Comcast so there will be a learning curve. I don't know if it's better or worse than Comcast but it is different. I am close enough to the VRAD so my sync speeds are pretty much the maximum to be expected which is good if ATT ever offers higher speed profiles. So at this early time in my U-Verse exploration I give ATT U-Verse a conditional "Thumbs Up" and Cudos to my installer (who goes by the name of Justin). My wife was really caught off guard by his rather unusual earrings. Followup comments:
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Decided to make the switch from Comcast, to AT&T U-verse. I can say I was happy with the decision. Getting the same channels(U200 package), if not a few more than what Comcast offered. My other option for internet would have been ADSL and going back to DirecTV, which worked great when we did have it for TV. Ordered the Max internet(10down/1.5up) Getting within 500k of advertised speeds, not bad being about 1500 feet from the VRAD. I noticed the connection seems a little bit more snappy off the line, sort of speak than Comcast was. Pings times are very similar to my old cable connection too. Install process was scheduled for 2 weeks from the day I placed the order was due to available install date, and my own schedule between work, and a weekend trip I had already planned. The install took about 2.5 hours. Had to rewire the main phone line in the NID, after the installer spent about 15-20mins at the VRAD making his connections. Reused the 2 year old Comcast installed RG6 coax to 2 of the 3 TV's in the house and to the modem/router or Residential Gateway(RG). I assisted the installer in cleanly running the third coax to the third TV, which was no big deal. The RG is 2wire, and each TV box including the DVR are Motorola boxes. Never had a DVR with Comcast, so this was a major deciding factor in switching to U-verse, besides the 10/1.5 internet. The only downside that cable fanatics will tear on right away is that U-verse currently can run 4 SD-TV's or 2 HD-TV's all at once. No big deal for us, since all our TV's are standard def, and we only have three. In all, everything is working well. My Vonage line is working great with U-verse too(Linksys PAP2 v2 adapter). Only today there was a brief hiccup with the service, lasted less than a minute and the RG reconnected without having to be power cycled like a cable modem would of have to been. Had no need to call tech support, I can usually handle most of my issues on my end without any problems. And U-verse is not bundled or locks you into any contract. Which is A+ in my book.  9/21/08 Been having intermittent service interruptions that last under a minute each time. Only happens at most a couple times a day. Gets annoying while watching TV. I believe it to be a issue with the gateway. Need to get a tech out to swap it out. Besides that, things are going well. Still debating whether or not to keep the TV after the first month. 9/30/08 Tech came out a last Thursday and ran his battery of tests on my end. Still finds no issues. I showed the tech the stats in the gateway. After he calls his tech support line, he swaps out the gateway for another. That seemed to fix the issue mostly. Still getting the random DSL Link Retrain. I"m about ready to schedule another tech visit and show them the detailed system log I found in the gateway after the last tech visit. Still willing to get the bugs worked out, because I refuse to go back to Comcast and deal with their slow capped and crippled service. On the bright side, the Total Home DVR is now available to me, since last Friday 9/26. It works quite well, no need to fight over the TV with the DVR to watch our recordings.  10/20/08 Finally got a line tech, 2 actually in one day, to come out and check out the lines. The first noticed 3 minor things that could have been causing a problem. He cleaned that all up. So far so good. My RG's stats page is looking much better than before. I think it's all ironed out this time. Both line techs noted that I'm getting a very strong signal. The second line tech thinks I should have the RG connected by Cat5 instead of RG6. But from reading on the forums, and reviews here either works fine. The techs were happy to see that I was willing to work with them to get the issues fixed, because there was no way in heck I was going back to Comcast. I updated the monthly cost. It's a dollar less than what we were paying with Comcast. but we have a third TV hooked up, a DVR, faster internet(was on 6/1.5 w/Comcast), and total home DVR for nearly the same price. Plus got the first month free, and $200 bucks cash back. Still a great deal. 11/4/08 Everything still running great, TV and internet. No further issues with the service randomly dropping out. Decided not to switch to U-voice. Still keeping our current VOIP service for the time being. 12/24/08 It's been a while and I'd figured it was time for an update. Everything still running solid ever since the line tech paid a visit. Have found no reason to upgrade to the Max18 internet speed tier. Max10 is working great, still consistent speed wise. Ping times are still similar to what I saw with Comcast. U200 for the TV is been plenty for us. THDVR is very nice. All in all still pleased with U-verse. The only downside is the bandwidth caps they want to slap on the service. At this time they are only testing it in 2 markets. Thankfully not mine, yet. Once again still keeping our current VOIP service for the time being. 2/19/09 New year, new update! Everything still going great. I think the ping times have gotten a little lower then since when I originally signed up. Not leaps and bounds but easily below 50ms on 2 MI speedtest.net servers. Still on 10/1.5 tier and U200 Also enjoying the Weather On Demand service. Great for former Comcast customers that were used to Weatherscan. Still rockin the Vonage VOIP too. Additional STB fees recently raised from 5 to 7 bucks. So I updated my approximate monthly cost. 4/11/09 Still going strong. No issues, no outages. Rock solid service! Figured I'd post a brief update with a speed test result. Ping times are looking good too. 5/24/09 AT&T bumped up the download speed of the Max10 tier to 12megs. Still the lowly 1.5 upload. Would like to see the upload double to 3megs, but the 1.5 has been a workhorse when needed. On the TV side, still on the U200 package. Nothing on the TV side to worry about. Still a solid service. Finally I uploaded the latest speed test result. Enjoy. 7/1/09 Just got the update to the TH-DVR, now can manage and record shows to the DVR from any STB in the house. The interface has been improved too. Seems a little faster that before, but that was to big deal, IMO. The 12meg internet has been solid, seeing 11.5 down on speed tests. I'll have to post up the latest speedtest.net result later. Attachments:  Followup comments:
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Extremely professional installer, they work for AT&T and aren't contractors like TWC & Satellite seem to send out. He did as I requested on ordering, installed Cat5/6 throughout the house rather than RG; mutiple threads in the forums here indicated that works best. So he was under the house in the crawl space doing lots of work (wouldn't want that job but he was very pleasant about it). They also made it clear they want to make everything work, he wasn't hesitant about handing me an ethernet switch since there aren't enough ports if the TVs use the Cat 5 ports. I have and old laptop without wireless and he handed me both a wireless card and USB wireless device. So far I can't comment enough about how professional and courteous everyone has been with AT&T; very refreshing. I haven't had to contact Tech Support. All the contract language was provided, and they hand you a booklet with all the different numbers you need. The internet speed works almost at the numbers promised, which is much better than TWC, where I was getting better upload speed than download, even though I was set for 6MB/1MB. We'll have to see what happens during weeknights in prime time, my guess is UVerse will win. My #1 complaint is the lack of a favorites button similar to TWC that switches between your favorites channels without having to access a guide. Between this and the loss of the Music Choice channels including soundscapes (new age) could spell the end of UVerse in our household; that jury is still out. The music channels offered on UVerse sound kind of jinky/tinnie like they don't have enough bandwidth. I noticed while having both TWC & UVerse that the channels on TWC are lighter, but the TV can adjust. TWC HD channels are definately not as good as the UVerse in one day of comparing services. CNN was extremely choppy on TWC, while simultaneously being clear on UVerse. Other times HD channels on UVerse were appearing as 1080i while the same HD Channel program on TWC the TV was indicating was only receiving as 780i. The most noticable difference is the time between switching channels. With TWC with its latest software update, it was taking as much as 3-5 seconds to get a picture in HD for each channel. With UVerse, its instantaneous channels switching even on HD, even while recording 4 other programs. I was able to record 4 and watch a 5th channel last night, contrary to what has been mentioned in some other threads. Also, contrary to other threads, likely as a result of UVerse version 2 releasing last week, I can setup to record on other STBs, although its much slower than on the main unit. The web based DVR programming is fantastic. My complaint there is that the descriptions don't include any actors or year of the films. That makes it next to impossible to guess which movie you're recording if there have been multiple remakes. If recording a series 'shown anytime', it doesn't seem to be possible to stop recording if the same episode shows multiple times throughout the day (seems it would recognize the same title & description). Now to see if I get any of that cash back promised. So far I'm impressed, though I really had nothing much bad to say about TWC; they're doing an all out best attempt to compete with ATT. I'm still having problems with my VOIP, Sunrocket Innomedia device with VoiceStick, even in the DMZ. I've read elsewhere that people haven't been able to make the Innomeda device work. Fortunately I have a regular ATT line with GoogleVoice for most of my voice traffic. I've got some other ATAs to try if Innomedia can't be made to work. First I have to get the rest of the household comfortable with the change. I hope to investigate the potential for a 1.5TB drive once I get to where I'm reaching capacity on the one in the Motorola, and yes I know what the contract says. They need to allow external USB drives; hopefully they get that message. It is a much larger drive than what TWC offers with the HD technology option. Followup comments:
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Had prewired NID->RG and RG->TV with CAT5E - install took less than 90 minutes. No issues with install - DSL stats are great (20 uncorrected blocks over the last week) Negatives: HD channels show compression artifacts (macroblocking, etc), but only barely worse than cable (came from Charter), well-known issue of audio drop-outs with DD5.1 over TOSLINK is very annoying, first-hop latency went from 8ms (DSL 6M/768k) to 22 ms. Great plus is that you can still get support via the AT&T direct forum here ... EDIT (6/28/2009) - Recent software update fixed TOSLINK DD5.1 dropouts, so that is no longer an issue. Followup comments:
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So buyers beware. Followup comments:
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Didn't want to go with cable, I have RoadRunner here in my city and they are still running on the old Adelphia network and haven't made any plans on upgrading the systems in the area. Overall, good quality TV. Could use a bit more quality in the HD department but other than that it's fine for me. [b]Update[/b] Had some issues a week after the installation that I got some help resolving from some of the guys here in the AT&T Direct forum. Followup comments:
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Speed: 3megs, will upgrade to 6megs. It's quite fast and the line we're using only has 42% saturation. Order process: Great, all online. Install process: Tech took forever, was smelly (no deodorant & smoker), was dirty (no shoe booties) and the install took forever. Equipment: Motorola DVR and STBs. Initially one of the STBs were defective and the dirty/smelly tech kept telling us it was the problem with the TV. The TV worked clearly before the move to U-Verse. Finally conceded that it was the STB that was defective when him and another tech came back. Box was switched and the new one works great. Followup comments:
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AT&T U-Verse
(53)
(28)
(20)
Columbus,Bartholomew,IN
$40 per month
about 1 days
"6 mbs down 1 mbs up for 35 bucks!"
"3 techs were at my house, bulky residetial gateway"
"worth thetime and effort..now how to setup my ipod touch"
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For some reason I thought that was just a branding name Motorola was using for the gateway.
How do the connections work?
). Will I have the same restriction on location using ATT?
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