
AT&T is phasing out the U-verse TV service - esaym
http://adage.com/article/digital/t-takes-u-turn-u-verse-pushes-users-directv/302689/
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simplicio
I'm pretty sure AT&T has spent more money over the last year trying to get me
to sign up for Uverse then I would've sent them to pay for a year of the
service. I got a mailer every three or four days, and had salespeople knock on
the door every few weeks. Plus a random scattering of inserts, stuff hung on
the door etc.

I can't think of another marketing campaign that's been quite so aggressive.

~~~
ewmailing
AT&T kept trying to get me to sign up for years, and I would have done so,
except every time they kept finding out they had not built the service into my
zone.

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shmerl
All that money which they spent on buying Direct TV ($48.5 billion, and with
debt estimated as $67.1 billion!) they could spend on building out fiber optic
networks and upgrading their inferior DSL and U-verse to proper fiber to the
house technology. But no, it's AT&T for you. They have money to buy obsolete
TV technology, but they don't have any money to actually upgrade their network
to something up to date.

~~~
cwilkes
Went into an ATT store to upgrade an iPhone and they were pushing directtv
pretty hard. CenturyLink Prism fiber just became available here as well.

It was amusing as I didn't know att bought directtv and I keep up on tech
events. I probably filed it under "dinosaurs mating" and ignored it.

I can't imagine directtv internet access being that fast and it probably
suffers from a lot of latency.

~~~
spike021
Yeah. My parents went to deal with a phone at an AT&T location a couple weeks
ago. They walked in with U-verse and apparently walked out with DirectTV.

I wasn't there but I'm going to assume they're pushing it hard.

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droopybuns
I don't think anyone in power really recognizes the day of reckoning that's on
the horizon w/r/t the copper in America's soil.

The telcos are in a managed descent on all of the wiring that could easily
deliver Internet. It is too fucking expensive to maintain. So the telcos are
instead focusing on acquiring spectrum and hoping to deliver broadband over
wireless.

But companies like Google, MSFT & others are interfering with all of the
spectrum moves of the carriers because they are (reasonably) concerned about
WIFI interference that affects their product strategies.

So how will this play out? Carriers will need the spectrum to deliver the
Internet people want, but non-carriers are going to fight to prevent them from
acquiring that spectrum.

I think we have a problem where the conflict over spectrum peaks specifically
because of the rotting copper plant. It is a very slowly percolating crisis.

~~~
yborg
I don't understand this issue of "rotting copper plant". My home has original
Illinois Bell wiring. It is 40 years old. My phones (and DSL, when I had it)
work fine. One of the things my ever-increasing phone bill is supposed to go
to is maintenance on the plant in the ground. The fact that AT&T or Verizon
would rather spend this maintenance money on new wireless hardware doesn't
automatically make it "too fucking expensive to maintain". This is the line of
b.s. used to justify _letting_ the copper plant decay.

~~~
esaym
To really rub it in, after Hurricane Sandy hit the north east 3 or 4 years
ago, ATT said it wasn't realistic to replace the damaged copper[1].

They instead handed out wireless gsm devices that could be plugged into your
household phone lines and supply "land line" service. This of course (since
GSM is lossy), meant fax machines and many other land line data devices
stopped working. ATT didn't care.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/22/technology/verizon-
wireless-...](http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/22/technology/verizon-wireless-
sandy/)

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diogenescynic
How strange. My parents just signed a 2-year agreement with U-Verse about a
week ago. It's can't be that dead if they're still signing up customers.

~~~
dsmithatx
Is it installed yet? Either they got on last minute or as typical AT&T didn't
mention that they are getting DSL and DirectTV. Trust me I have U-verse. Was
told we were getting 1 Gig fiber. It's a 17 mb/s DSL line which routes
internet and 3 cable boxes through one DSL.

~~~
diogenescynic
It's installed. They even got a new cable box with it. Really odd strategy at
AT&T.

------
bachmeier
> U-verse subscribers fell 4%, the worst loss ever, as 240,000 customers
> canceled service

I was one of them. I cancelled my U-verse TV service a few months ago. They
did all they could to lose my business. I had a price quote _in writing_ and
they refused to honor it. I've dealt with some bad companies in the past,
including several pre-reform credit card companies, but I've never encountered
one that was so in-your-face about it. Even when I called to cancel, when they
tried to keep me as a customer, they weren't willing to say "Yeah, we quoted
you a price in writing, so we'll refund the overcharge."

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DrScump
Having already built the infrastructure, it's odd that they would just abandon
all of those users who cannot use DirecTV either because they're in a multi-
unit dwelling or otherwise lack clear view to their satellite slots.

~~~
bloaf
Its not clear from the article what they're doing for internet access going
forward. It sounds like the may actually be increasing the bandwidth, since
they no longer have to deliver TV channels on the same line as the internet.

What really surprised me, though, was that DirecTV was actually growing. I
thought there was a trend towards watching TV shows via the internet and away
from traditional cable/satellite.

~~~
dragonwriter
> What really surprised me, though, was that DirecTV was actually growing. I
> thought there was a trend towards watching TV shows via the internet and
> away from traditional cable/satellite.

DirecTV is probably largely cannibalizing other traditional cable/satellite
(AT&T has been _very_ heavily promoting it and offering big incentives since
they purchased it); there's nothing inconsistent between DirecTV growing while
the overall cable/satellite market is shrinking.

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jeffdubin
With the DirecTV acquisition, AT&T's greater leverage over the networks and
studios would allow them to better negotiate for true, Internet-based IPTV
distribution, ala Dish's SlingTV. They've got the infrastructure in U-Verse
video, already an IPTV product. Not much would prevent them from opening the
firewalls and allowing subscribers from outside the AT&T network. Who needs
STBs? Just have subscribers purchase a Roku-type device.

They're throwing away a ton of potential here. Satellite TV, in its current
form, is not the answer.

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tptacek
Wow.

We pay for U-Verse TV, but solely as an account login for online streaming
services. I haven't turned on the DVR in over 6 months.

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pgrote
Will Verizon stick with FIOS?

Verizon installs FIOS (fiber to the house) and rips out your copper network.
ATT runs fiber to the pole and leaves your copper network.

If ATT can't make it with the copper as the last step, I wonder if Verizon
will continue to invest in fiber?

~~~
rayiner
Verizon has stopped building out FiOS to new areas beyond those it already has
commitments to. They may never make their money back on it.

~~~
jseliger
_Verizon has stopped building out FiOS to new areas beyond those it already
has commitments to. They may never make their money back on it._

Given some of the deals they're offering, I see why. I live in a FiOS area and
was eager to get it... until I realized that RCN offered 330 Mbs down for
substantially less: [http://www.rcn.com/330](http://www.rcn.com/330). FiOS is
symmetrical, which is nice, but RCN is about $50 per month cheaper compared to
FiOS, and upload speeds are not of critical importance to me. FiOS also has
lower latency, but, again, the price delta is large.

My impression is also that Verizon makes money off FiOS, just not as much as
it would like, but some searching hasn't brought up any good data on it.

~~~
untog
I had the opposite - FIOS is cheaper than Time Warner for me.

