Review of AT&T U-VerseAll reviews of |  about |
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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. 7/5/09 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. Weather On Demand, and the Ubar loads and displays faster than before. The 12meg internet has been solid, seeing 11.5 down on speed tests. Posted the latest speedtest.net results. See attachment. 9/4/09 Nearly a year later, still like the service. Just recently got the Mediashare feature which in nice. Been experiencing momentary TV freezes. A little fed-up with the techs on the phone and the in home techs thinking it's something wrong inside the house. Now got the RG running on RJ-11 which I'm not 100% convinced that it's better than running it on RG6. Need to get a tech to call out a line tech to go through the outside line thoroughly. I'm looking forward to getting that fixed. Also recently upgraded to the U300 TV package for 1 extra dollar month for 6 months. 10/17/09 The TV freezing issue continued for more than a month since the last update. A little rant about it in a thread in the Uverse forum here seemed to have got something done. The thousands of corrected blocks in the gateway stats and the tv freezing has stopped for the past 20+ hours. The service still has been good otherwise. Nothing has changed. Ping tests look good too. See attachment. Attachments:   Followup comments:
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So the decision was made to switch over to AT&T U-Verse, We selected the U450 package with the 12MB internet and the Unlimited phone service. When we ordered the package we where informed that it would take approximately 2 weeks for install because of porting from Comcast etc. On the day of the install the U-Verse tech arrived exactly at 9am (Install was set for 8am-10am. He was a very nice gentleman, wore booties on his shoes and promptly started his work after I gave him a tour of the house. In our home we used to have a security alarm system that caused some confusion by the Tech as to whether or not we were going to continue the alarm or not, in addition to that, the phone lines where in the tech's words "extremely messed up" most likely due to the install of the Alarm. Our coax was not in the best condition either as Comcast, had split the coax 12 ways from sunday when we added the CDV service. Further issues in install arose when the U-Verse tech went to our attic to wire the 3 bedrooms that will have the boxes. The tech and god bless him went up and down from the attic to the basement(where the RG was placed) at least 40 times. Anyway after nearly 4 hours of rewiring the upstairs attic, now came time for the RG to be placed in the basement. This was a very unnerving experience for the tech as he attempted several times to sync up the RG with the network. After about 3 hours of attempting to sync up the RG and talking to tier 2 support 3 times and going back out to the VRAD, the Tech gave the wiring another once over to see if that was the problem. Sure enough there was a wire crossed in the attic. By now it was going on close to 5pm and the tech had to call another U-Verse tech out for help. The second tech arrived and went to work installing the boxes in the rooms and setting up the TVs etc. Finally after about 9 hours of install the services where up and running! I really dont fault the tech for the install problem, it was a simple mistake and it was found and fixed, In fact I personally called the supervisor for the tech to commend him on an excellent job. The service has worked exceptionally well, the HD quality is in my opinion as good as with Comcast, the channel line-up suit our family very very well and the internet speed and phone services have been top notch. Not to say that Comcast HSI/CDV werent good either, they where however since moving back to Plainfield (There was a Comcast review of mine for Chicago Ridge) There have been a multitude of problems with the Video service. The AT&T experience has been a very good one. We enjoy the features and channels that are offered to us with the notable exception of not having the MLB Network. When I had it with Comcast, id literally watch that channel at least 6 hours a day during the baseball season. But, hopefully AT&T will add this soon! Nevertheless we are very glad we made the switch to U-Verse and I have recommended U-Verse to a few of my friends that also have Comcast and they too are switching there services over as well. Followup comments:
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Just recently added TV to my bundle. The channels provided on the lower tiers are adequate, the channels provided on the higher tiers more than most. The service as a whole is better than expected, considering previous ATT service (cellphone), regardless of company ownership. Ordered product: MAX internet (10Mbps) Current product: Max 18 internet (18Mbps), U450 TV (includes all premium channels and HD) Followup comments:
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So far the service has worked flawlessly. Some pixellation now and then and some slow response in channel changing . Also the remote has issues some times due to my having plasma and the interference from it which causes the remote to do things differently like when hitting last channel it changes to a totally different channel. But other than that Internet works great at 6 meg service.. VOIP is clear and I love the ability to get voicemail on the internet. Great overall. Followup comments:
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Install was quick and painless. I mentioned to the installer that I planned on adding a 1000Mb switch for all the wired lines, and he said that the gateway was a 1000Mb switch. This is not true it is 100Mb, not a big deal but you would think if anyone knew the equipment specs it would be the installers. I'm in a new development area so the connection is FTTH, this makes for great pings. Just wish they offered some symmetrical packages. Overall I'm very happy, just moved to Austin from Salt Lake City. And I am getting 18Mb down 1.5Mb up for about the same price I was paying Qwest for 1.5Mb down 1.0Mb up. Followup comments:
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We also added a specialty channel for an additional $25/mo. Everything, including 3.0mb/s broadband is running about $105/mo. Throw in the ooma savings (which I hope last), and we are saving over the old POTS line, cable TV, and DSL we had before. The DVR is well made, works easily, and can stream to 4 rooms or record 4 shows at the same time. It is reliable and works 99.99% of the time. I would say the HD compression is noticeable, and lots of motion will cause artifacts. I was a bit bummed at first, but have grown accustom to the condition. It is slightly worse than my old TWC HD. OTA HD is a lot better - than both. The system has been reliable. Down times have been minutes, and I can only recall once where it was more than a few moments. Updates occur automatically, but can leave a box hanging, requiring a re-boot. A bit annoying to wait 3-4 minutes for the unit to get up and running, but this is rare. We are very happy with all our U-Verse service. Followup comments:
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- I have never experienced any latency from my u-verse connection. Infact I have only lost connection 1 time in the 3-4 months that I had this service and that was because I accidently unplugged the modem. Even when a storm knocks out the power for a moment I still didnt lose connection to the internet (I have power backup). When I had road runner (time warner) every storm would knock out my internet for hours. - People tend to say u-verse has higher ping times. While its true my ping goes up like 18ms or so after the first hop the network is far superior to road runners. In my experience this had lead to equal or better ping times to the games I play. Followup comments:
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Install went without a hitch.The tech was extremely professional, and super neat in doing his job. He called ahead of time, said when he would be here, and he was ontime. He followed up well after his quitting time to make sure everything was going fine with the service. I ordered a second line and the second tech was great as well. I had to work when he came over, both my wife and son commented on how good he was. He worked hard to eliminate every tiny bit of line noise possible on the phone lines. The issues being rooted in my existing phone wires and cordless phone. They are perfect now! I was able to keep my Bellsouth email account which is big plus for me. Download and upload speed are within 95% of the advertised speed 18/1.5. I'd like to see AT&T offer at least double the upload speed. I use both wired and wireless networking, they work equally well. I was able to easily change the Uverse RG to use the name and password of my old Linksys router so that I had to make no changes to the wireless pc's. I do some gaming and my pings are roughly the same as my DSL that preceded Uverse. I work from home a couple days a week and the Cisco VPN software my employer uses works fine with Uverse. I did not get the Uverse TV portion, I have DirecTV and I'm very happy with my DirecTV. I watch and record a lot HD. Until Uverse can do at least 4 simultaneous HD streams, I'll stick with DirecTV. Followup comments:
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AT&T U-Verse
(64)
(41)
(16)
Rochester,Oakland,MI
$130 per month
about 16 days
"Fast Internet, Great SD-TV Picture, TH-DVR, Affordable, Feature Rich, And not a bundled price!"
"None to count the service out compared to cable."
"Great alternative to the cable giants, and no contract!"
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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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Business customer