I've had a 12mb up / 1mb down from my cable company for well over a year now...

AT&T sucks...

lol, I mean 12mb down / 1mb up ;)

You should've had Jesus turn that snail's shell into the AT&T logo.

@aphex: I'm with you. Most of the time I pull a solid 10/down with TW cable.

@aphex:

At least their not pissing money down the drain like Verizon.

They'll still WATCH ALL YOUR TRANSFERS!
[slashdot.org]

FTTP is just a gimmick to make you think it's better. I get on average 30Mbps down on Optimum Online (Cablevision) and I have no interest in switching to FiOS ever.

@Kaiser-Machead: I know! That was totally my first thought.

@yoshi: FTTP is way more expensive to lay, but it's also why Verizon can offer 20/20 symmetrical service of its entire service area. I realize 10Mbps down, 1.5 up is fine for a lot of people, but there is a small but significant demand for broadband on par with Japan and Korea.

I originally signed up for AT&T's 6mbit a few months back. Got less than half that due to my distance from the box. I barely get 3mbit now, and every time I call to tell them that my modem ate itself (3 times now), they want to upsell me to the 6mbit. I always read the AT&T rants when I had TW, but figured it was all exaggerated. Little did I know...

@matt buchanan:

It blows my mind to see how much money Verizon is spending on it's all fiber network. It will get real interesting to see how this affects thier overall business in a recession.

As I've said in the past, I've had Dish Network and Time Warner Cable. I now have U-Verse and can honestly say that IPTV is the best thing going right now across the board. This includes FiOS too.

To think Microsoft is the major player in all this happening is amazing.

I'd be interested in hearing from those with U-Verse. Thought about getting it, but the thought of having to deal with boxes on all my TV's wasn't real exciting. However, if I can get same or better Internet speed than Comcrap (I get all of 6 mbit, woo hoo) at a lower price and dump the cable company, I'm starting to reconsider.

For those who have U-Verse...what do you think? How's the overall quality and customer service? Pricing compared with cable? Any other thoughts?

Who cares, you can still only watch one HD stream on U-Verse. Until they fix that the entire service is useless.

Things to consider:
Single HD stream to your house (today, out of 4 total)
Single DVR (as of today), can't have multiple DVRs in your house

Doesn't work with HD Tivo/Comptuers to record streams

All boxes support HD
No surcharge for the DVR Service
Whole Home DVR (coming soon?)

@lafond66:

FTTP is just a gimmick to make you think it's better.

Ignoring all of that technical gooblygook on speeds and bandwidth -- I agree, it is all a gimmick. And, along the same lines, Bill Gates was right - 640K really is enough memory for anyone.

@IndyJaws: The TV/DVR portion of it is pretty cool. You can record up to 4 SD streams at once, or two HD streams simultaneously, so if you watch a lot of overlapping TV, it works quite well.

Never had any customer service issues, so its hard to say how well that works.

In terms of quality the SD content all looks like 480p, and the HD stuff looks like fairly compressed 720p. They're using H.264 for all their content streams.

Theoretically, U-verse has the additional gimpedness of having the TV recording consume a sizeable portion of your available bandwidth while recording, but this hasn't been an issue for us. We have a house of 5 technologist computer geeks, but we aren't torrenting files all day or anything.

The price benefit was enormous for us, as basic cable and internet cost around $140 in our area, but U-verse delivers lots of HD channels over IPTV, and a faster internet connection for like $80.

We have like 20 movie channels that we basically never watch, but the HD package and 6 mb package structures basically makes it worth it to have them.

Having been all 'basic cable', or 'no cable' people, we were pretty amazed by how much lousy soft core porn is on cable premium channels. After 9pm, its constant bumping and grinding on one channel or another.

Good news for me as I have U-Verse. While the speeds might be a tad slower than what some are getting. I do know that I have HD service quad tuner DVR, all premium channels, 4 boxes, and a 10down/1up connection all for 99 bucks a month. Time Warner was getting me for 140 bucks giving me less channels and only 1 box, oh yeah and the connection was 6down/768Kup here in San Diego. I have to say its excellent service at the best price.

that snail may be slow, but he looks pretty satisfied with his lot in life. kudos snail.

Come on AT&T we know the TV side runs at 25Mb. We also know that the VDSL runs at a different frequency... so why are you not offering a symmetrical 25/25?

Also, nothing short of a symmetrical 25Mb line will get me to forgo my civil liberties and allow you (AT&T) to snoop on my emails.

@Monty: Don't say things you will end up regretting. Copper can have the same bandwidth as fiber optic (faster even).

Yeah, but you don't have to worry as much about your house burning down as a result of AT&T installing DSL.

FiOS = Fire is Our Specialty.

in other news, I hear xerox is about to release a newfangled device to make copies of documents. No way will it ever catch on.

Indeed att does suck. I have a 4 down/.25 up..yes 250 MB upload speed on cable.

@ludwigk:

Does the box have an ATSC tuner as a way to get more HD?

FiOS guys may be chuckling, but AT&T is outright laughing at ALL the money Verizon is spending while AT&T sells their inferior service to all the customers that have no choice!

@digiprod: ... until Verizon has a solid large stable fiber network in 10 years. Then at&t will be playing catchup playing even more to install their own network.

I have U-verse installed. I watched the tech test the line out at 50Mbps, so the bandwidth is there. I think the single HD stream issue must be at the head end, not on the network. My biggest U-verse complaint, honestly, is the cable box software bugs.

@Xenocide: LOL, im a at&t tech....belive me verizon is playing catchup to us. We have a bigger fiber network, most of the uverse system is fiber.

psh. when I want a blazing fast connection I just go to work... to our T1 line!!!

We, at&t, are putting FTTx, in all around the country. If we turned it all up today, hardly anyone would be able to take advantage of it. Providers aren't ready for that kind of bandwith in every home. Besides, we deploy slower, save some money and work out the kinks so it works more smoothly from the start.

I have uverse u400 package and their elite (so called) internet package (6 down, 1 up). I was forced to go with ATT due to the builder of my new house signing into a contract with them. Before ATT I had been a TimeWarner/Comcast customer for MANY years with absolutely no regrets. Both services have pros and cons but I can honestly say I've been pleased with the service from ATT. People need to realize that this is still a 'fairly' new service and there will be bumps along the way that need to be worked out. I have had issues but all the issues I have complained about have been worked out. At this moment I only have 2 complaints about the uverse TV service. 1. the channel guide sometimes hiccups while browsing which can be irritating 2. HD streams sometimes get out of sync. Meaning that the audio is .5-1 second slower than the video. uverseusers.com is a good forum if you want to research uverse any.

@w00zzy: From what I understand, the shift to FTTP installations is relatively recent, and I wager it's in response to Verizon—FTTN was how AT&T rolled, because it's faster and cheaper. There is some value in that approach, for sure. But I do love the competition.

the competition is with the cable company. Verizon and AT&T dont overlap areas. least not in michigan. Im in a verizon zone and will be lucky to ever see fiber to the prem. while AT&T is Launching all around me.

im currently on Fios. i love it. ive used all 3 before DSL Cable and currently using fios.. theres one thing cable and dsl cant do,
im a big movie fan , so i download alot of movies, no matter how many differnent things i download on my 3 different computers, the down streem does not get affected. !!