Review of AT&T U-VerseAll reviews of |  about |
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Tech arrived, expecting the worst I stopped him and said "If I am on the low profile cancel the order I can't live with 1 HD stream." Tech: "You are on the low profile but lets get it hooked up and test it, you never know." 20 mins later, Tech :"Uh .. the plans for your neighborhood must be SERIOUSLY wrong, you are syncing at 63 meg when I expected 20-24." When he called in to get me upgraded to the normal profile they made him retest 3 times as they didnt believe I could have that good of signal .. yeah for something going right ! The rest of the install was largely cake, 2 of the rooms I already had RG 6 to, my kids bedroom needed a new run, we couldnt find any cold air ducts directly to the basement so he went into the attic and spliced into my bedroom RG6. End result, he left at noon with all 3 TVs and internet working flawlessly. I upgraded to 12 meg internet about an hour later and it was live 5 minutes later (wow !) I've had it for 2 days so far. No complaints, no hiccups, no freezes, nno lockups, nothing. Perfection. Wish I could get more then 2HD since I can sync much much faster then I am but i'll live with it for now I hear a 32meg 3HD profile is coming down the pipe soon for those that can sync to it. Followup comments:
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With the new ATT U-Verse, you get the 2Wire 3800HGV-B gateway SW version 5.4.x.x, which is not without problems: Even if you have two physically separate landline going into your demarcation zone (tie box), ATT will NOT allow you to have TWO separate DSL lines (one U-Verse and one SBC Yahoo DSL) because their accounting department (get this) simply CANNOT handle it. This is important because we have a mother-in-law quarter and we have different needs. I've been told (by another DSL engineer) that two DSL line is perfectly possible (despite touted but non-existant separate wire DSL crosstalk issues). TV was nice. DirectTV and DishNetwork have better 'FAVORITE' channel surfing. DishNetwork has up to five personalized FAVORITE channel listing so that five different member in the family can surf. U-Verse only has one and is NOT defaulted to FAVORITE, but ALL channel which causes griefs in going through MANY unsubscribed channels. U-Family came with PVR receiver, but when we tried to switch U-Family with U-100 (same price), our overall cost went up 7.00 (apparently the PVR was a 'deal', just not sure why its tied to the U-Family package.) We asked for 'unlisted directory' and got a wierd charge of 'Listed Directory' of $1.50. You won't be able to use ATT UVerse Chat to resolve this, they say they only do tech support and told me to call Sales at 800 288 2020. Phone was crisp and functional-rich. We ordered two VOIP phone lines, so if you have an alarm company feed, it will get disconnected (and getting that 2nd land line back was a workout in itsellf). It took three installers over 4 hours to find the original Efficient Network 5800 DSL router/bridge modem. I was out of town, Mother-in-law was no help. During that time, they proceeded to installing all new wiring (outside) where I had JUST 'tuck' in the wire into my attic space from outside (just to avoid the uglies wiring). Once I arrive home, I merely showed the installer by opening the broom closet where the all house wiring panel for Ethernet, Telephone and Cable (sigh). I've lost my personal website server, my personal mail server, my personal H.323 gateway server (I have multiple video conference within each room of the house); lost my personal Jabber server and denied the use of my own (but better) firewall settings. I am a bandwidth sipper (not a hog). The 3800 RG's NAT algorithm needs some serious additional works. The 2Wire 3800HGV-B residential gateway (RG) will NOT let you disable the firewall, period. Try what you will, but latency remains high because of the crappy firewall. What the RG will let you do is disable on a per host-basis (that has been identified by its own DHCP protocol). You will find that it is not easy to perform VNC from one home machine to another home machine within the same home, without exposing the VNC port to the RG and its outside world. There are some new gaming protocols that just flat out won't work. You will find that you no longer be able to host your webserver router at the Internet edge with this RG. This breaks several HTML referrer (and cripples virtual host web servers). DMZ option doesn't help to completely disable the firewall option when using a 2nd router. Firewall remains active even if you take the 'double-router via DMZ' approach. Further more, the new H.323 protocol NAT is not yet polished to support multiple receivers on the inside NAT in the 2Wire SW version 5.4.x to handle video conferencing provided to the Deaf community (Purple, CDSVRS, Sorenson). My router does handle H.323 gateway correctly. Also, you will NOT be able to BITTORRENT to more than one computer on the inside UNLESS you use non-standard port numbers. Whereas, I had my own BiTTORRENT gateway to handle any number of computers on the inside NAT. So, you have been warned. I only wish that ATT pre-Sales were smart enough to ask (do you have video conferencing equipments or are you a deaf household) before torturing us with a inordinate long downtime of having no Deaf video telephone service that has been Federally-mandated that ISP should provide. Followup comments:
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I started out with the U200 service with TV, phone and broadband The initial install went smoothly (the tech was on time and only took a couple of hours to get everything working). I upgraded to the U300 service with HDTV at about six months. The the upgrade went smoothly - no tech was needed for it (the upgrade took about five days to take effect). I recently (three or four weeks ago) had an issue with the phone service (it stopped working) and when I called Tech Support they scheduled a tech to come out to fix the problem. The tech was a "no-show" (twice). The third time he showed up and fixed the problem (replaced the RG). Yesterday (8/16/09 - a Sunday), I decided to add the HBO package and did it on-line. It only took about twenty minutes for the new package to activate (a big improvement over the last upgrade I had requested). Overall I am happy with the service in spite of the tech no-shows for the phone problem. The phone problem happened on a Saturday and was fixed by Tuesday afternoon so the no-shows did not delay the fix for very long. Followup comments:
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They have sent techs out again and again, and the last time we had a supervisor, which was promised the time before but never showed up. They have finally gotten the service to work pretty much as promised. Most of the techs seem new and clueless. I had a tech on installation that thought a wireless device was a flash drive... I am still fighting the billing. They set us up on paperless billing, with an email address we didn't know about and didn't have a password for, so all we got was disconnect notices, which tended to irritate the better half a great deal. I finally got ahold of someone, after 6 months, that had a clue as to what was going on, and we got the email address changed, and the paperless billing removed, supposedly, But now I am getting emails... wonder if I will really get a paper bill. And since I had a past due, due to the fact I didn't get a bill, they were bugging the hell out of us. Now, two days after the payment has cleared my bank, they are still bugging the hell out of us, because they are still apparently clueless and have a crappy billing system. I should have stayed with Time Warner, as bad as they are. Update... Still bad service. The TV is working okay, part of the time, better than it was. But last night I lost internet. But it was so late, I didn't feel like going through the misery you have to go through to deal with repair. The online Yahoo games on the TV don't work anymore. And none of the remotes work on the TVs anymore, just with the cable boxes. And I saw a TV commercial for Verizon that they have the all house DVR feature now that we were promised 9 months ago. All in all, AT&T still stinks. The only saving grace is that the telephone still works. Update... still spotty service. The HD box in the living room comes on when it decides to. And it's still a pain in the rear end not being able to watch more than 4 tv's at a time. Update... Got so frustrated, I finally had Uverse disconnected. Then the stab in the back from AT&T. If you disconnect your TV portion of Uverse, you have to change your internet service to "Max" and your price for internet goes up to 60 bucks a month. In order to get a cheaper price, I had to go back to internet via copper. No problem, right? Wrong. They disconnected the Uverse internet, but didn't turn up the regular DSL, so now I have no internet. May be time to go back to Time Warner. At least they were dependable and the customer service is a hundred times better. Followup comments:
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I did a lot of Google searches and read various reviews which were a little dated and figured it has been a while so U-verse might have gotten better so I decided why not try it, there is no contract so if I don't like it I can cancel and go back to Dish. As I said I did my research and knew I was less than 1000ft from the VRAD so that would allow me to get the best profile they currently offer. On July 2nd I placed my order online and also opened up a chat session where the sales rep offered me an extra $100 cash back ($325 total!) to sign up. I did and got the U200 package with HD, extra receiver and Internet (Pro). I got a confirmation email with an install date of July 15th between 12pm - 2pm. So now I wait 2 weeks for the install. Fast forward to the 15th and here is how it went. 7-15-09 Install tech calls at 12:11pm to say he is on his way. 12:23pm tech shows up and surveys my setup and makes a plan with me on what he needs to do to install U-verse. 12:36pm he heads out to the vrad. 12:40pm our dsl and phone are out. 12:58pm he is back working on the phone box on the side of the house. 1:20pm he informs me that he is getting a lot of errors on the line and had to put in a ticket to the support team (forgot the name) to work on the lines. More then likely they will work on the line tomorrow. Once that is done they will schedule another install date. The dsl and phone are back on. 3:50pm to my surprise the second guy shows up to condition the line. Dsl and phone is back off. 4:15pm all done! He says the line is stronger than ever and is turning the dsl and phone back on now I just need to reschedule a new install. 4:25pm I called to reschedule and the earliest is in 2 weeks July 29th between 8am -10am. They also made a note on the account to give me a service credit on my first bill for my lack of install. Round 2 7-29-09 8:10am call to tell me he's on his way. 8:20am he has arrived and going over the setup such as where the RG will go and the STB's. 8:25am going over to the VRAD to set things up. Dsl is down. 8:45am he is back and working on the NID on the side of the house and testing signal and speed. All good! He's amazed says that the signal is as fast as at the VRAD. He is going to run cable and start the install. 12:15pm ALL DONE! The install basically took 3.5 hours. It involved running cat5e from the NID to the RG in the house and then connecting coax from the RG to existing coax in the house for the STB's. Setting up the RG and updating the STB's. Running speed tests and diagnostic tests. And finally giving me a rundown on how things work. The coax was originally done by Dish 3 years ago when I had a 625 and now I have a 722 so that left some lines open for use. The U-verse tech tested them and signal was good. So those were used. He did say some people request cat5e to everything but for some reason when they get service calls the people with cat5e are the ones with the most picture problems. I guess it's a hit or miss thing. I was already an AT&T phone service and DSL customer so my info and emails migrated over to U-verse without a problem. Only issue was port 25 for my SMTP emails got blocked again but they unblocked it automatically for me. First Impressions A lot of people don't like the quality of the picture and HD. Since I still have Dish I can say that the HD on U-verse is just as good if not the same as Dish. I will say that there are only a couple of HD channels that do not look as good on U-verse then they do on Dish. The UI is nice I like the features that U-verse has such as the U-Bar, Flickr, VOD, and weather on demand. The DVR is ok and gets some getting used to. The DVR schedule and recorded tv menu is great! I like it better then Dish. You can only pause, rew, ff live tv on the main box, but you can record, schedule and play from any STB in the house. The channel selection is excellent and also the HD channels. I have classic silver 200 with HD on Dish and I actually have a comparable package with U-verse and get more channels with them (U-verse)! Only bad part is I am missing CBS College Sports on U-verse. I do get all my locals in HD including PBS and some other ones! I also get basic TW cable which gives me some HD channels and I would rank them as U-verse and Dish tied at #1 and TW #2/3 5.1 Dolby Digital is available from the HD channels and they come as 1080i which is what the STB outputs similar to Dish. The STB is about half the size of a VIP 722 and is lighter and runs A LOT cooler. I have only had it for 24hrs but I have played with it enough to see what I like and don't like and so far so good. I will still keep Dish till the end of my billing cycle and then put Dish on pause just in case. I also have to take in consideration the price with U-verse I am paying almost $20 more then I pay with Dish. On a side note I originally called to cancel Dish and the loyalty dept. ended giving me a good deal all with out signing a new contract so I will have both services for the time being. Well this was my short to the point review and install experience. Hope it gives some of you insight on what to expect with current installs. Edit: On Aug 10, 2009 upgraded to Max18! Followup comments:
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Price includes U100+HD, as well as 6Mb internet service. Followup comments:
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U-Verse Internet: Max 12Mb/1.5Mb U-verse voice unlimited U-verse TV: U100 no DVR I've been watching U-verse since it was first announced as "Project Lightspeed" several years ago. U-verse has been available in my neighborhood for some time, but after reading about some of the nightmares in other areas I decided to wait for a bit and let AT&T get over some of its growing pains. When they upped the "Max" tier from 10Mb to 12 recently I felt the time had come to take the plunge. I could get the Max 12 tier and VOIP for roughly the same price I was paying for POTS and 6Mb ADSL. I was not interested in TV as I am very happy with my satellite provider. However I did order the basic TV package as that got me the free install. The $50 rebate I got for ordering online paid for the TV's first and only month. I ordered online and requested a Saturday install so I didn't have to miss any work. The first hiccup came during the online ordering (a bad omen). I wanted to port my existing AT&T POTS line to VOIP, but was told by the website it wasn't possible. I got on the online chat and was told that happens and that the quickest resolution would be to process the order with a new number and call the U-Verse Sales team a few days later. It was a slight annoyance, but when I called there was no issue. Then the next day I get a call from AT&T telling me my order is on hold because my POTS number has a block on it and can't be ported. I had to call a different number and remove the block. Fortunately I did not lose my install time and to AT&T's credit every time I spoke with the Sales team they confirmed my order details and install time. They also tried to up-sell my TV package every time, but that's almost to be expected. The day of the install all started well. The tech was right on time. My house has Cat5e wired from a central location to all rooms and the NID so the install was a snap for the tech. I did have to help him with my 110 punch block for the voice, but otherwise the install was painless. The internet was up quickly and at the full speed I ordered. I only got minimal instruction on the TV. Apparently non-DVR users are of some lower class and don't get much instruction. I was told "There's not much to it since there's no DVR". He showed me the on-screen guide then handed me the remote and paper channel guide. That completed the TV portion. The VOIP was a bit frustrating. I was told by the tech that they don't do number porting on the weekends. He was able to get me outbound calling, but I was told inbound would have to wait until Monday. I wish I had been told that before ordering. The entire install lasted about 2.5 hours. Overall the install tech did a good job and was very pleasant to work with. Problems started about 2hrs after he left. I was happily enjoying my new bandwidth when suddenly everything stopped. No internet, VOIP or TV. The RG had a red light. I called AT&T on my cell and was told by the tech that this occasionally happens on an install day and that it would sort itself out by the morning. With little faith I accepted his response and went to bed. I was unsurprised when I awoke the next morning and had no service. I called back -rather frustrated - to check on the issue. I got the usual scripted apologies and was told they'd get a tech back to the house - the next day. Now I was just flat-out angry. I explained that was unacceptable and demanded my situation be escalated. I got a supervisor, who actually seemed to care. He did some investigation and determined that when they'd canceled my DSL account the previous day they'd also canceled my U-Verse account. He accepted the blame and got some help and within 30 minutes everything was restored. I was again reminded that the VOIP wouldn't be up until tomorrow. The next day (2-days after install) about mid-day I called home from work to see if my phone was working. Big surprise - it wasn't! I called AT&T again got the apology and was told there was some kind of hold on the order. The guy on the phone got the port finished in less than 30 minutes. OK - now everything is working! I got home that night and checked the RG to make sure it wall all still green and realized I didn't get my battery backup (UPS) since I ordered VOIP. I began furiously kicking myself because I knew this would require a call to AT&T The next day I called and got one more scripted apology. I was hoping they could just ship it to me and let me install myself. (I am an IT Manager by trade and have over 12 years of experience with enterprise IT systems). No dice. They needed to send a tech. The slap in the face was that the window for "repair" was 4 hrs, but the window for install was only 2! Now I had just about had it. I'd previously had ADSL for 6 years and needed to call for issues only twice! I blew my top and requested I be connected to their retention department because I was on the verge of canceling. I'm sure I sounded like an irate jerk to the retention rep who listened to my lengthy tale of woe. Afterwards she acknowledged I had a rough time and offered a $100 credit for my trouble. She said there was no way to allow me to self install - regardless of my IT credentials  - and got me a tech scheduled. The tech arrived a few days later, installed the UPS in about 6 minutes, and at long last my install was done - 9 days after it began.Since then the service has been rock solid. The internet speed has remained consistent across test sites and real-world usage. My wife and I have been playing with the VOIP features. I won't really review the TV as we've only casually looked at. I will say that again AT&T frustrated because I found out that I am on a "Low Profile" connection meaning that because of my distance from the VRAD I cannot get the full bandwidth possible. As a result I can only receive 1 HD and 3 SD feeds at a time, which is inadequate for me. In the final analysis AT&T did recover from every misstep, but there were far too many and the recovery required too much prodding for me. I think the product itself is excellent and I plan on keeping the internet and VOIP. I just think AT&T needs to work on making the install process smoother. I would recommend the product to anyone, but I'd also warn them to do as much research as possible before installing. I will also say that all the reading I did in the forums here at DSL reports had me well prepared for my install. Many thanks to all the posters. I will try to pay it forward. Followup comments:
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AT&T U-Verse
(64)
(41)
(16)
Macomb,Macomb,MI
$127 per month
about 5 days
"Install was painless, technician was excellent even did an attic run. TV has been flawless no drops/freezes, same with internet"
"Hrm. I really wish we had fiber to the home so this 2HD limit would go away. I can sync to the note at 63meg but am limited"
"LOVE IT ! Bye comcast !"
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