December 26, 2007
AT&T’s Uverse delivers a few gallactic hiccups
We’re on record calling into question the viability of delivering consistent HD streams through an ADSL pipe that is also serving voice and internet service. Judging from a post at DSL reports we were on the mark:
Why? AT&T has told us the goal was to create “a consistent user experience across the board.” This user in our U-Verse forum is one of those lucky (unlucky) FTTH customers in Oklahoma who decided to give the service a spin anyway, and ultimately decided it wasn’t quite ready for prime time:
Well, that was short lived. We canceled it. Over the last few days we experienced lots of freezing on the HD channels. A reboot of the STB and/or RG fixed it for a bit, and then it would come back. Also, the HD quality was very mediocre. To add to that, it was even worse when played back form the DVR. When AT&T gets their act together in terms of reliability and features, I’ll give it a try again. No bad blood here, just disappointment. I WANTED it to work out.
I’m not saying that it isn’t possible to overcome the early deployment hiccups, and make this service work over copper. In the long run though, I think it would have been cheaper to run FTTH than it will be to fix the bugs, and overcome growing bad press on the service. Then again, AT&T could have just spent the money on building a big fat pipe instead of trying to go into the content business. With the horizon of a decade as opposed to months, this would have been the wisest investment.
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