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Just came across an article covering Boing Boing’s very own Joel Johnson’s interview on AT&T’s Hugh Thompson Show. While this show was supposed to be Joel talking about gadgets, Joel had an agenda to instead talk about AT&T’s Copyright Plan.

The following is an unedited clip of this interview. As you can imagine, Joel’s interview was edited:

This one is just so good, I’ll quote from pvrblog:

It seems when AT&T offers multi-room packages, they only provide one DVR, but they will give you additional (identical) boxes with the DVR functionality removed. It only took a couple weeks before someone popped open the back of a unit to see the internal differences between the DVR and the set-top-box w/o DVR.”

This is such a silly thing to do, and if it works, why wouldn’t AT&T allow/promote it? Giving customer’s the ability to have multiple DVRs in their home system seems like added value to the U-verse package.  I would love to have been at the meeting when this was decided, did some exec really suggest unplugging the hard drive in the extra DVRs? Just proves that AT&T really doesn’t seem to have it together with this Uverse rollout.

The story seems to been removed from UverseUsers.com since all the links from PVRblog and others are broken.  I wonder who wanted that story taken down?

More problems with U-Verse sports — this time with sports game blackouts. Apparently, when you subscribe to the U-Verse sports package, you’re getting a lot of commentary, but not actual games. For the actual games, you have to purchase a separate package or packages. This is frustrating, and dish and cable make customers do similar things. What is different between U-Verse and dish or cable is that certain game packages are not available at all through U-Verse. U-Verse offers ESPN Full Court and Gameplan, but not packages for other sports such as baseball and hockey. So baseball or hockey fans, plan on visiting your neighbors a lot.

Some customers have even had problems with blackouts on sports games that should pass the distribution blackout policies. One frustrated customer even got a U-Verse support rep to admit that U-Verse was in a “network contract dispute”:

“…Past experience and common sense has shown that blackouts for team coverage are only done when televised on a nationwide channel….U-Verse makes no sense of this at all!!!! I just spent another hour on the phone with customer service and technical support at U-Verse….I finally found a competent and considerate person to help me get to the bottom of this problem…..here is their final answer in a NUTSHELL: (and I quote)

“U-Verse is having a NETWORK CONTRACT DISPUTE with the sports channels and YES, they all are blacked out for games and some will allow for AUDIO ONLY during the games” (such as ESPN2 last for last night’s game)……”

“SOOOOOOO…….Now I have to go crawling back to TIME WARNER to get my service back and subscribe to MLB Extra Innings, as I have been for years……..still better than no games at all…….”

“It’s really a shame though……the picture quality on U-Verse does seeming much better than Time Warner….and so far their internet speed does seem faster and more consistent than Road Runner, so I am going to still give U-Verse a try on the internet…….”

“Good luck out there…..if you are currently expecting to watch sports on U-Verse…..call to disconnect now, and save yourself DAYS OF AGGRAVATION AND FRUSTRATION!!!!!”

Another customer programmed his DVR to record a game, then found that the DVR only recorded a black screen. So, customers can’t watch games with the U-Verse sports package, are limited when trying to upgrade to a better package that actually has games, and the DVR doesn’t even know which games are available and which ones aren’t?

It looks like our good friend U-verse is once again depriving people of an HD viewing experience. This time they are not offering Cleveland Indians games in HD. According to Ohio.com the Ohio sports channel, Sports Time Ohio, is now broadcasting exclusively in HD, but good ole’ U-verse doesn’t have the room (read: bandwidth) to broadcast STO in HD. Fans can still watch in regular definition, but come on, once you go HD you can’t go back to watching regular def sports.

If anyone is out there is from Ohio, you know how important sports are to Ohioians from Buckeyes to Indians to Reds. There have been others with similar issues where U-verse fails to deliver local sports programming appropriately. You would think since U-verse has been infecting communities state by state (to avoid regulatory issues, but that’s another post!) they would be sensitive to the viewing needs of local communities, but they seemed to have really missed the boat on this one.

I know HD sports has been one of the true joys of having an HDTV, and how aggravating it can be when you can’t find your local team (for me it’s the Cubs) in HD. Anyone else get peaved when this happens?

Sunday October 21, 2007 U-verse users were denied television for most of the day according to multichannel.com, leaving U-verse users without football, or any other type of television all day long.

While AT&T corrected the problem, and hasn’t experienced an outage this large since, there are tons of user reports of temporary outages, and other general service issues, according to user posts on www.uverseusers.com.

This reliability issue seems to be a trend with U-verse, and is probably a result of their recent entry into the television market. With little experience in the service of TV delivery the learning curve is bound to be steep for AT&T. Considering AT&T ended 2007 with 231,000 Uverse subscribers, according to engadget (well short of their original estimate of 1 million) we have to wonder are these services outages partly to blame for the drastic shortfall in Uverse subscriptions?

This brings up a common question with new technology products, if the early adopters aren’t satisfied with the technology, how long will U-verse be around?

Since AT&T is offering a free U-verse 14 day trial with a 60 day money back guarantee as part of its promotions for U-verse (including installation and setup), I’ve been reading reviews from customers of other cable service providers like Time Warner and Comcast who have wanted to “test the waters” with AT&T’s U-verse equipment, while keeping their current provider. In my opinion, this comparison seems like a viable way for these users to do a fair comparison of services, and to really figure out if U-verse is right for them.

I have to admit that taking on U-verse with my current Comcast is an idea that has definitely crossed my mind. After all, I would be able to see the service provided from the customer point of view and really experience all of the product’s product offerings, and any of its limitations that you really only seem to get at a first-hand level. However, being that I often work over 12 hour days I just don’t time for the installation for it at this point in time (and that’s not a direct stab at U-verse installation times…:-).
So unfortunately for now I can only get these reviews from my U-verse reading, which has actually brought to my attention the stories of customers who are either experimenting with U-verse while keeping their current service, or those who have made the leap straight in. It seems that in both cases users have experienced a disconnect in the information that they have received at the sales level versus the information at the installation level. So I thought I would share the following comments from an article entitled, “Is U-verse Doomed?” from the VOIP and Gadgets blog, which recorded the following experiences:

“When ordering, I mentioned to the sales lady that I already have high speed internet from Time Warner, and TV reception from Dish, and am quite satisfied with both. I will be willing to try their services as long as it does not interfere with my existing ones……. However when the technician came to my home for installation, he said that he will have to disconnect my existing internet and dish connections to install U-verse, if I want both then I will have to pay $75.00 per outlet (that is $225 for three connections I was offered for free installation). This was never communicated to me at the time when I placed the order, nor does it mention any where in the promotional post card.”

and another user’s experience, who decided to cancel the service:

“We had him (the technician) cancel the service. They called back almost immediately with the cancellation info, but WE are going to have to return their equipment to them as they did not disconnect the gateway, or the router for the comptuer. Consequently, the computer did not work, would not go back to my regular DSL, they had CUT the wires to my Dish, cut the antenna wire to my local channel antenna (completely off), and I now have to pay someone to come rehook my antenna. “Very polite” lady on the phone said, “we don’t re-hook up any equipment you had previously connected.”

Have you held a double-service comparison, or have tried U-verse and underwent cancellation? I’d love to hear your experiences in installations (as far as how U-verse is installed if you are keeping existing provider) and also any product comparison findings you may have uncovered.

Although users like SomeJoe like to deny that U-verse utility boxes are giant neighborhood controversies - I’d like to present to you the story of Kerrilyn Scott.

Kerrilyn, a resident of Santa Rosa, was shocked when she arrived home back in November to see a 13 ft. size construction pit in her front yard and a brand new retaining wall to go with it. According to an article in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Scott noted, ” When I saw the hole, I actually got a bit tearful,”.

Evidently Scott was informed last June of the installation planned for her front yard, but was not informed of the specific details this implementation would include. While AT&T did send her an illustration of a refrigerator-sized utility box (also known as a VRAD), Scott said that she was “never updated when the project grew in size to include a second box and a retaining wall dug into her hillside”.

Though Kerrilyn was able to halt construction after discovering that AT&T had went 2 feet too far into her property, she soon discovered that her city had little leveraging power to stop AT&T. Why? Because in 2006 state legislature passed the Digital Infrastructure and Cable Competition Act, removing her city’s power to negotiate TV service franchises.

So unfortunately, Kerrilyn is face to face with two new neighbors, and a new landscape in her front yard.

(NOTE: The picture included in this post is not Kerrilyn’s property (which is copyrighted). If you want to excellent photo of Kerrilyn’s massive retaining wall, click here to view the original Santa Rosa Press Article.)

According to a whitepaper titled Quality – The Number One Obstacle to IPTV Adoption  recently released by Digital Fountain:

“A recent study found that these quality issues accounted for more than 25% of the obstacles for IPTV
adoption. Solving this problem is crucial to improving customer satisfaction and in doing so reducing
both high customer service costs and customer churn, each of which are currently plaguing the industry.”

This doesn’t surprise me, most of the complaints I run into have something to do with quality of service. And lets remember that the quality issue for adoption of new technology products is one that every industry faces, not just IPTV providers.  After all, cellphones didn’t become widely adopted at first because people couldn’t hear each other well enough, the internet didn’t really get going until broadband came along (because dial-up just didn’t provide a high enough quality experience for most users), and Apple’s newton (an early attempt at a tablet) simply didn’t record handwritten characters accurately enough for people to start using the device. 

IPTV is dealing with the same issues, while it promises a rich suite of features, the real issue will be in regards to quality of service over features or price.

This being said, we’ll pose the question to our readers:

Will U-verse go the way of the Apple Newton, floundering with quality issues and eventually being dropped from the market?  Or do you think it will struggle through this period of less-than-optimal quality and become a successful product?

According to an article on Light Reading AT&T is committed to a greenfield development of FTTH - yeah that’s right, not FTTN, FTTH. Speculation is that this development could be attributed to AT&T’s current FTTN feeling push-back from customers due to bandwidth and U-verse speed.

In response to this article, Telecompetitor posed the question: “What if AT&T finds that their FTTH deployments create better ARPU or compete more effectively with cable? Will they then be forced to roll it out beyond just greenfield developments? And if so, will the current FTTN strategy be a waste of time and money?”

It’s a great question - why would AT&T even be experimenting with this technology unless they had some reason to expect it to succeed? So we have to conclude that someone is having second thoughts about their initial strategy of FTTN, and wants to see if FTTH does any better. With the sizeable investment AT&T has made in the FTTN/Uverse projects its unlikely they would abandon the project entirely, but would they shut it down and relaunch it with a different name? Convert their current FFTN installations into FTTH installations? Either option would likely prove very costly.

But I’m only one guy speculating, what do you think? Why is AT&T experimenting with FTTH, and what could come of it?

As U-verse is rolling out into new areas like Chicago, AT&T is making an enormous effort in time, resources, and money to make this roll-out successful. Still and yet, many customers are still “too far away from U-verse”, even though we see the giant VRAD boxes showing up in neighborhoods.

At this point the distance between a customer’s house and the VRAD unit is the determining factor of whether or not this consumer can have U-verse at all. As a result, many users more than 3,000 feet from the VRAD have experienced service drops after installation or may not be able to get the service all-together.

In fact, many potential customer’s have received promotional materials for U-verse at their address, underwent hours of installation, and then were told at the end of all of this that they are too far away to receive quality service. As you can imagine, this is frustrating and confusing on the consumer’s end. Below is one account from a user that raises an interesting point:

” After waiting for 6 weeks for my install, the tech came out today. After checking a few things out, he had to call in a lineman because he was having trouble communicating with the Vrad. The lineman found that I was 3600 feet away and too far to get a signal. Now I’m back on dialup for the foreseeable future. If my address shows up right now as being OK for Uverse, how will I ever know if I am really OK for uverse? Does a tech have to come out every 6 months and go through this whole process again, only to determine “Oh, sorry you’re too far away”? If they can say from their office that I’m too far away for DSL, why can’t they do the same with Uverse? “

So from this I have the following questions: How far away is U-verse? And, why doesn’t AT&T know which areas are too far for U-verse to work properly?