U-verse

AT&T's U-verse dissected.

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A personal evaluation of AT&T's FTTN (fiber to the node)
By Charlie Brown, August, 2006
'Nosce te ipsum'

In June 2006 AT&T launched their long awaited and delayed IP television (IPTV) service to customers in San Antonio Texas, AT&T plans to launch the service in major metropolitan areas later this Summer and expand the deployments to other markets in 2007 and 2008. AT&T is expected to deliver IPTV services to 20 million customers by 2008. But what is U-verse how does it work and how reliable is it?

U-verse is part of AT&T's project lightspeed broadband initiative and it is in direct competition to the cable digital television service. There has been many Internet articles about U-verse but how does it measure to the cable company service?

U-verse comes in two very different versions:

FTTN (fiber to the node) Fiber running to a distribution cabinet called a VRAD (video-ready access device) and the last segment to the customer premises (up to 5000ft) wired with copper (twisted pair) using VDSL.
FTTH/FTTP (fiber to the home or premises) This is an all fiber installation available in brand new and affluent subdivisions.

In August 2006 I was invited to attend to an AT&T sponsored neighborhood party promoting U-verse. AT&T brought some games (Moon Jump, etc) for the kids and hot dogs for the adults. Some people asked questions about U-verse internet speed and one AT&T employee said that the system is 100% fiber and that the speed was 'awesome' The person that invited me to the party is my cousin and he has the FTTN flavor of U-verse installed in his house so the AT&T employee did not know what he was talking about or he lied.

I had the chance to evaluate the FTTN service and the first thing I noticed was the mediocre image quality. The image looks severely compressed (pixelation and digital artifacts) during fast moving scenes like sports, explosions and water scenes. In multiple occasions when I pressed the remote control buttons too fast the system crashed, other times while watching TV the image freezed up. Despite U-verse Internet speeds of 6000/1000, U-verse internet connection felt slower than my AT&T static Elite (6016K/768K) package probably due to high latency.

I did not have the chance to evaluate a FTTH/FTTP installation but I suspect that customers with this flavor of U-verse will have no problems with the service. I understand that AT&T will be replacing the Tatung STB) with new Motorola and 2Wire boxes later in 2006. These new STBs will increase the video delay by increasing buffering to 30 seconds or even minutes expecting that this technique will eliminate or diminish the freeze ups and crashes related to high packet loss.

I admit that I was very disappointed by AT&T's mediocre (being generous) service. Under no circumstances I will cancel Time Warner's television service in favor of AT&T's (FTTN) U-verse. Uninformed customers expecting an all fiber service will never know what they are buying from AT&T and eventually they will get stuck with the inferior FTTN version.

How does U-verse (FTTN) compares to Time Warner (San Antonio, TX cable provider)

Service	AT&T	Time Warner	Comments
IPTV or Digital Cable	Freeze ups / Pixelation	Excellent picture / Multiple HDTVs	Did I mention multiple HDTVs?
Internet Speed/Connection	6,000/1,000 Kbps	10,000/1,000 Kbps	Your choice
VoIP/Phone	Not available until Nov 2006	Excellent quality / prices	No contest

Buyer Beware!
From the two versions of U-verse FTTH/FTTP is the the most desired installation, unfortunately the majority of U-verse customers will get FTTN. At this time it is unclear what percentage of U-verse customers will get FTTH/FTTP installed in their homes but some estimates place FTTH/FTTP installations at much less than 10%.

Confused and technically challenged customers will not know which version of U-verse they will be getting. My guess is that AT&T wants to keep the line between these two completely different versions as blurred as possible. Even uverse's domain is deceptive and misleading lightspeed...sbcglobal.net implying that all uverse users are on 100% fiber connections in contrast Verizon use fios.verizon.net for fiber subscribers and dsl.verizon.net for adsl subscribers.

Conclusions:
1. FTTN is what more than 90% of new U-verse customers will get. AT&T's marketing spin doctors continuously use the term U-verse to define two completely different systems. If you think that by contracting U-verse you'll be getting something similar to Verizon's FIOS think again because in more than 90% of the cases you won't.

2. FTTN use VDSL/VDSL2 via copper lines for the last segment to your home. VDSL/VDSL2 use the LF/MF/HF bands for data transmission. If you are a HAM radio operator or a radio enthusiast you already know how susceptible these bands are for all kind of interference and electrical noise.

3. Signal delay is a problem. When I subscribed to DirectTV my system had at least a 2-3 second video delay from the original event, this is understandable since the TV signal travels 22,000 miles up and down to and from the broadcasting satellite. The Apollo astronauts had a 2-3 second delay in their transmissions from the Earth to the Moon. U-verse's buffering will make satellite TV pale in comparison with a whooping 30 seconds or more delay. High packet loss makes buffering a must by allowing a 'comfortable' period of time for the lost packets to be retransmitted. For all practical purposes the U-verse TV broadcasting server could be located one fifth the distance to the planet Venus or 6 million miles away.

4. U-verse's official internet speed is 6000/1000. According to AT&T users don't need more than 3Mbps , this statement is understandable since the inferior FTTN version of U-verse is not capable of delivering much more than 6Mbps. Some rumors say that if you don't subscribe to IPTV you could get your internet speed increased. Having to choose between one feature or the other clearly speaks for the system's capabilities.

5. If you are lucky enough to order U-verse and get the FTTH/FTTP version, congratulations! I you get the inferior FTTN version of U-verse and have problems with your service there are other options like cable or satellite.

UPDATE December 10, 2006
It has brought to my attention that many current uverse customers are experiencing many problems with the service. Some of the problems are related to loss of sync, picture quality and HDTV (high definition TV) availability. The common denominator seems to be FTTN installations. Here are some of the problems:

Pixelation, lost packets and freeze ups.
Many uverse customers are reporting pixelation and freeze ups. Pixelation occurs when the video stream is interrupted by interference or any other reason and the STB (set top box) is unable to recover the lost packets in time to continue with a smooth video transmission. Freeze up occurs when the STB is unable to recover from lost packets and the STB's operating system crashes. AT&T hope to overcome this problem by replacing all the original Tatung STBs with new Motorola boxes but many problems still persist. Of course uverse users in denial blame this on Microsoft buggy code.

Compression artifacts.
Blocky images is the result of high video compression techniques. High video compression is used in low or limited or problematic bandwidth transmission systems like FTTN.

Account misunderstandings and configuration.
Customers who ordered uverse with HD (high definition) channels found out that their orders have been misplaced or ignored. Coincidentally customers with marginal connections are being left out without HD channels with excuses like "your service didn't include HD channels" or "HD channels were not in the original order" or "we need to key the order manually" etc, etc. Some conspiracy theorists (myself included) claim that HD streams are severely affected by marginal connections and AT&T is hiding this fact behind vane excuses.

Uverse new reduced distance limitation.
AT&T has reduced uverse distance limit from 5,000 to 2,500 ft. This effectively reduces the coverage area by a whooping 75%. AT&T is no longer accepting customers beyond the new 2,500 ft limit. This is a clear indication that the service is severely degraded beyond 2,500 ft. This is a severe blow to AT&T's expectations of 20 million customers by 2008 by extrapolating these new numbers AT&T can expect 5 million subscribers by 2008. A radius of 2,500 ft represents roughly a 2 by 2 city block area. For reference my home is located at one corner of 9 x 3 city block rectangle and AT&T's central office is located at the opposing corner, according to AT&T my home is 8,400 ft away.

AT&T low level employees, zealots and fans a well greased public relations machine.
Some uverse sites have popped up in cyberspace with the apparent mission to discuss and promote uverse. Many of these pseudo uverse users are by their own admission AT&T low level employees (installers, customer service representatives, etc) others are just AT&T fans that for some reason hate cable companies... something like Republicans vs Democrats, Pepsi vs Coke, Windows vs Apple, NFL vs ... you get the idea.

Some of the arguments that these users use for supporting or switching to uverse have nothing to do with service quality or features. Among these die hard users are some that are experiencing serious problems with the service but they swear that they will stay with uverse why? Because they hate Time Warner or any other cable company... well you can't argue with this kind of reasoning.

It is going to be very interesting to see how many uverse subscribers will be added to the list and most important kept in the list. The service is definitely not mature or solid enough to compete with satellite or cable systems. As we've mentioned before FTTN (fiber to the node) is the weakest link and probably the dumbest decision ever made by SBC/AT&T. Probably some new uverse subscribes will be added to the lists but eventually users will start to migrate back to their original services once problems start to popup.

UPDATE June 30, 2007
I saw one very interesting article by By Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle here or here

UPDATE July 13, 2007
Right from the stage of the theatre of the absurd or from the black and white episodes of the Twilight Zone uverse users now have the 'option' of dropping the TV portion from AT&T's revolutionary uverse TV service. We've seen some reports from uverse subscribers that have dropped the TV service later in their contracts and kept internet access.

AT&T can save some face by luring (internet access only) customers and then allowing them to drop the TV service, of course AT&T will still count them as TV subscribers because it looks very good in stockholders reports. Uverse internet only customers are expecting AT&T to increase their internet speeds to 15/2 others want 25/5 and demanding subscribers want 100 Mbps. Good luck!

Unless AT&T plans to offer internet speeds à la carte we don't expect to see a big increase in uverse internet speeds, perhaps a small increase just to keep up with the cable juggernaut offering basic service of 8/1, in some markets 15/2 Mbps and 'power boost' connections of 25 or more Mbps, and of course there is that little issue of the introduction of DOCSIS 3.0 at the end of 2007 or first half of 2008.

We base our opinions on AT&T's handling of uverse FTTP/FTTH (all fiber) accounts. Despite the huge bandwidth that uverse FTTP/FTTH customers have AT&T only offers them 6/1 Mbps internet, to add insult to injury FTTP/FTTH customers are on ATM L2 transport with a head over of at least 13% so FTTP/FTTH customer's 6/1 Mbps internet is really 5220/870 Kbps.

AT&T can't offer FTTP/FTTH customers more without the risk of alienating their FTTN customers which represent more than 90% of uverse installed base.

UPDATE August 8, 2007
We keep reading more and more that subscribers of AT&T's uverse service are canceling the service and returning to their original TV providers. Others are dropping the IPTV portion and kept internet access but there is a catch... they have to pay an undisclosed downgrade fee which makes the the downgrade official. Official or not for how long is AT&T willing to let this happen?

It seems that the most popular show on uverse these days is the STB firmware upgrade. We keep reading thread after thread, post after post uverse users discussing the highlights of this new and interesting show. We can't wait for the next episode (v 3988.1) of the STB firmware upgrade stay tuned!

It was just a matter of time before this happened. Apparently the technological and capabilities abysm that separate FTTP (100% fiber) and FTTN (copper wires) uverse users (the haves and have-nots) is starting to create some friction between them. Some FTTP uverse subscribers are very vocal in criticizing uverse for the lack of features in their uverse FTTP service. As we mentioned before AT&T can't give FTTP customers more than they are currently giving FTTN customers without the risk of alienating more than 90% of their uverse installed base. 'AT&T fanboys' as one FTTP customer described them are responding to valid criticism with personal attacks. We consider these 'AT&T fanboys' to be green with envy over the FTTP installations of their peers.

UPDATE August 13, 2007
A recent post from a potential uverse subscriber caught us off guard. The person in question claims that he called AT&T to order uverse and the sales representative told him that he had to be 2,000 ft or less from the VRAD (distribution device) and that if his signal was too weak 'they had no choice but to run the fiber all the way to the NID'

People quickly responded to the post questioning the veracity of the AT&T's sales representative in regards to running fiber all the way to the NID but the most significant issue is the 2,000 ft or less from the VRAD. As we mentioned before AT&T has already reduced the distance limit for uverse installations from 5,000 down to 2,500 feet. Is the 2,000 ft limit the new standard? A reduction in distance from 5,000 to 2,500 ft represents roughly 75% less area covered. A reduction from 5,000 down to 2,000 ft represents a very significant 84% less area covered from the original 5,000 ft estimate.

UPDATE August 30, 2007
Strange problems continue to plague AT&T's Uverse IPTV service. One reader pointed us to this thread It is amazing that what it should be a relatively simple decision of using or not using a HDMI port avalanches into a catastrophic operational issue. Like one of the self appointed technicians said 'Well I guess this is what we have to expect from AT&T.'

Who in the world decided to put these self appointed technicians in charge of official uverse technical support? The site seems to be official since the domain points to att.com We couldn't believe the responses some of these individuals gave to one uverse customer in trouble, some of us are still laughing and turning blue.

Individual#1>
Looks like another customer lost?

Individual#2>
I hope not.

Partial transcript.

Another? How many of them have you managed to loose... Oooops!

UPDATE September 3, 2007
If everything else fails try something new, here comes Band-Aid technology.
It is a well known issue that uverse's one and only HD stream is severely compressed and as a result image quality is not what a HD customer should expect. This problem has been reported in many sites like SatelitteGuys.US and even uverse's official site. With the clock ticking to add a second HD stream one can almost hear the 'pair bonding' drum beat in many sites. Adding pair bonding will change everything for the better right? I mean just add a second pair and you double the bandwidth just like magic right?

Not so fast.
Pair bonding have it's draw backs like this TelephonyOnline.com report explains. Like the report says adding a second pair will not result in a 100% gain in bandwidth, crosstalk and other factors reduce the additional bandwidth to 25-30%

So the point is: Will the additional bandwidth help improve the highly compressed image quality in uverse's single HD stream or uverse customers will have to live with two highly compressed HD streams? Some people say that many uverse customers don't need a second copper pair because their gateways can sync higher we'll see if this is the case.

UPDATE September 7, 2007
One reader pointed us to the following two threads. We find it very interesting what user Aztec described in the second thread below. We've known from day one of uverse's introduction about the pixelation and freezing problems but we never related it to heavy network traffic loads.

Thread 1. Only 1 HD viewing at a time / COAX or CAT5?
Thread 2. Freezing, pixelation, etc.!

Aztec posted his/her VDSL2 gateway statistics in the second page of the first thread.


Broadband Link – Statistics
DSL Down Up
Current Rate: 27264 kbs 2048 kbs
Max Rate: 88952 kbs Not Available
Current Connection:
Current Noise Margin: 23.5 dB Not Available
Current Attenuation: 17.5 dB Not Available
Current Output Power: 8.3 dBm -17.4 dBm

Partial transcript.

We find it amazing that a VDSL2 connection 'capable' of syncing 88,952 kbps is having such problems. Other users in the second thread found a rather rude but pragmatic solution (unplugging the equipment) which means that they too are experiencing these operational issues. It seems that pristine VDSL2 connections does not guarantee anyone get good or acceptable service.

As usual the main subject of the thread degenerated into something else like the consequences of unplugging a device and the main idea got lost in a sea of irrational gossip.

UPDATE September 14, 2007
When AT&T released the news of reaching the 100,000 uverse customer mark we were very surprised not because AT&T now has 100,000 uverse customers but because AT&T did not sign more, we were expecting a number of 500,000 or more. As we mentioned before AT&T's original estimate was or still is to sign up 18 million uverse customers by the end of 2008 and this date is only 15 months away.

Which bring us to the number of uverse defections. We have read some posts that have surprised us like this one from user MarkyD a FTTP/FTTH subscriber at http://www.dslreports.com.

And from these threads.
AT&T is getting on my last nerve!
FTTP New House / Sub Division

From the multiple posts we've read it seems that FTTP/FTTH (100% fiber) is a dead issue. AT&T handled the win to the lesser FTTN (copper wires) by completely ignoring the FTTP/FTTH customer. We have not seen any official reports from uverse cancellations or downgrades to internet only accounts but we estimate the numbers to be high perhaps in the low 20%'s or even more.

If AT&T stock price is an indication of how things are then it seems that AT&T has lost its appeal. Even in the lastest stock market rallies the price hasn't managed to break the $41 dollar mark, do stock holders and brokers know something we don't?

UPDATE October 31, 2007 Happy Halloween!

High latency, equipment lockups & disconnects, equipment malfunctions, uverse defections, empty promises of 10mbps for 'next year' and the uverse national outage are some of the popular uverse discussion topics.

If you are a hard core gamer then U-verse is not for you.
Due to uverse's sensitivity to lost packets all uverse customers have been placed in interleaved path. xDSL technologies use two data paths, interleaved and fast and basically means that the circuitry inside the xDSL modem will try or not to correct errors in the transmission. See page 10 and 11 of this link as it explains in detail the operation of VDSL.

In short in addition to other delays the interleaved data path adds a considerable amount of time (delay) to the flow of data. This delay can be from 0 milliseconds (no error correction) to as much as 11.8 milliseconds. We've seen uverse customers reporting latency as bad a 180 milliseconds or more to some game servers.

Pixelation and lockups continue to plague uverse customers.
Old problem... nothing new to add.

Equipment malfunctions.
DVRs locking up, rebooting, not working, not recording, incomplete recordings and skipping are among the most reported problems. It is hard to tell where the problem lies. Is the problem in VDSL, buggy software or both?

Which bring us to customer defections, the uverse 10/21/2007 national outage and the promise of 10Mbps for next year.
In October 21, 2007 uverse customers nationwide lost most if not all of their uverse channel lineup as described in this surviving thread. Another similar thread started in the AT&T's official uverse site was mysteriously deleted when an angry mob of customers started to threat AT&T with canceling the service. For many uverse customers this nationwide outage was too much and according to what we managed to read (before the thread was deleted) many of them did cancel their uverse service. Some of us were among the few persons that closely followed what was being said in the now defunct thread.

Not surprising this thread did manage to survive the quick censorship fingers of 'OptimusPrime' the ~~transformer commander~~ forum administrator. As one of his posts clearly states AT&T's official uverse forum administrator 'OptimusPrime' found the whole outage incident a 'fun surprise' and quickly found himself 'merging' and eventually deleting all ~~dissenting~~ 'stray' messages. We wonder if 'OptimusPrime' know the difference between real uverse customers and his transformer toys stuck in a box under his bed. For them (uverse shills) complaining about uverse's bad service now it is considered to be AT&T bashing. What would desperate uverse customers were supposed to do, praise AT&T?

We have contact with some of the customers that posted to that thread and they are extremely angry at AT&T for what appears to be another example of AT&T censorship and damage control. AT&T uverse resident shills were hard at work trying to convince and console angry uverse customers switching back to their original TV providers. One particular user 'hogrunr' at AT&T's official uverse forum site was over anxiously trying to cover up the disastrous outage incident and as a result annoyed users asked him to be quiet and to stay out of the thread. Seems that some users have a preferential standing in the official uverse forum... perhaps paid AT&T uverse shills or employees? We were very surprised by the volume and traffic that this thread generated in the few hours of it's existence. The anger and disappointment from uverse customers was overwhelmingly. We wouldn't be surprised if many of them canceled uverse the next day.

How do you prevent unhappy uverse customers from leaving an inferior and problematic service? By promising them something better for 'next' year, this is just what an AT&T official did. In an interview with the Dallas morning news Mr. de la Vega stated 'we think that's going to go to 10 next year' when referring to uverse internet speeds. We think that 'we think' is not a professional or honest answer.

We previously predicted a small increase in uverse internet speeds just to keep up with the cable juggernaut and looks like our prediction was on target, well it will be on target sometime 'next year'... really! Unfortunately for AT&T many if not all of the cable companies are rising the internet speed bar again. Sometime during July or August 2007 our TimeWarner internet speed was quietly increased from 10Mbps/1Mbps to 15Mbps/2Mbps at no additional cost!. Our business class TimeWarner internet service now downloads 900% and uploads 33% faster than a T1 for one fourth the price. For TimeWarner residential customers it gets even better, some residential customer are now getting 20Mbps/1Mbps internet speeds. Customers belonging to Comcast, Cox, Charter among others have seen their internet speed increrased at some time in the last year.

AT&T must think that we all are stupid 'gentiles' and that we will buy anything they have to offer us despite the bad quality of their services. We keep reading post after post the new AT&T uverse campaign drum beat 'try our service', 'try it... if it meet your needs', 'when it is available in your area try it'
Is U-Verse really that bad
Once U-verse will be in Liverpool, TX, get it and try it
Generating interest and adding uverse customers looks good in investor presentations, even when customers cancel the service afterwards.

Other incentives that AT&T uverse shills use to promote their service is the price and the 'compared to' punch lines. In this thread lonebandit clearly explains that there is no price advantage from what TimeWarner, Comcast, DirectTV or any other TV provider has to offer. We have read threads so exaggerated that become ridiculous. For example one over zealous uverse user claims that he is saving $40.00 a month from what Comcast has to offer!

UPDATE December 5, 2007
A friend tipped us off that all new uverse residential gateways (VDSL modems) are now syncing at 25Mbps, 2Mbps down from 27Mbps. We expect that current uverse residential gateways (RGs) will migrate to the new profile within the next months.

Which are the reasons behind this decision? Why downgrade and not upgrade? Questions, questions and more questions.

We have some ideas:

1. This is the most plausible explanation. In xDSL technologies syncing lower means less strain on the line, less bits per tone, less used bandwidth. The result is an increase in SNR/SNM (signal to noise ratio or signal to noise margin) As we mentioned earlier uverse customers are continuously experiencing freezing and pixelation problems. Many of them have posted their RG xDSL 'detailed line statistics' located here in the RG http://gateway.2wire.net/xslt?PAGE=J42&THISPAGE=J42&NEXTPAGE=J42 showing astronomically high... yes we meant astronomically high 'corrected blocks' and 'uncorrectable blocks' as shown in the following images.

Click on images to enlarge

In ADSL a decrease of 2Mbps in sync speed will reflect roughly and increase of 6~8db in SNR, the same is true for VDSL. AT&T expects this change will result in a decrease of uncorrectable blocks (lost packets) and therefore less pixelation and freeze ups. We already know about the (incredible shrinking distance limit) distance limitation for new uverse subscribers but this new sync profile have some potential to solve problems. Perhaps AT&T should have been more aggressive and put the profile at 24 or even 22 Mbps. Nevertheless this is a clear indication that FTTN is a problematic transport medium.

2. 25Mbps is a prettier number... and it is divisible by 5.

3. What else can be?

UPDATE January 4, 2008 Happy New Year!
One reader pointed us to this thread U-Verse AVAILABLE in my FTTP area in OKC

Apparently our previous assumption that FTTP (100% fiber installation to the home) users were problem free was incorrect. We already knew about the high image compression techniques used in uverse but freeze-ups and pixelation in FTTP is new to us.

UPDATE January 23, 2008
Well, the anticipated internet speed bump has finally arrived. AT&T today announced a new 10/1.5 Mbps uverse speed tier but there is a catch, unlike TimeWarner or other cable companies it is not an automatic upgrade from the elite tier. The new speed tier will cost uverse customers $55 a month and only if they subscribe to the IPTV portion of uverse (bundle price.) Read AT&T's press release here. New U-Verse tiers

Non IPTV uverse subscribers are scratching their heads wondering if they will be able to upgrade to the new speeds and at what price while others are complaining about the bundle price.

Our concern is the stability of the new speed tiers, we expect to see an increase of corrected/uncorrected packets/blocks and perhaps more RG reboots due to loss of sync. Only time will tell what new problems will the new speeds create.

Also this week AT&T announced the availability of their long delayed VoIP service. Detroit, MI will the first market to see AT&T's VoIP but there is also a catch with the service priced at $39.99 a month. Needless to say both prices and features in the new 10mbps tier and VoIP place AT&T at a disadvantage when compared to what the cable companies or other VoIP companies like Vonage, ViaTalk or even Skype have to offer.

Other rumor circling around is that AT&T will offer higher speeds to uverse customers closer to the distribution cabinet (VRAD). It is unclear if customers farther away from the VRAD will pay the same price as customers closer to the VRAD. We wonder if the unlucky uverse customers will be happy and willing to pay the same price.

UPDATE January 24, 2008
Thanks to an anonymous contributor/AT&T employee for the following pictures and pointing us to this thread.

Below are some close up images from the motion picture the matrix revolutions while being viewed from a AT&T uverse HD stream using a Sony 40 inch XBR5 HDTV. As we all know some scenes in the matrix are full of action, explosions and fast image changes which can strain image compression codecs to their limits.

Macro blocking is a controlled side effect of compression and basically an MPEG compressor looks at a video image, decides what is important information, and discards unimportant information. If the compressor discards information which is in fact important to the overall image, then this becomes evident in the final image.

We have read many reports from users that this condition is present in their uverse service but until today nobody ever took the lead and take some close up pictures. Macro blocking is more noticeable in uverse HD streams but it is also present in SD streams or channels. As we mentioned before the following pictures were taken from a uverse HD channel, notice the severe macro blocking during fast action and especially during dark scenes as shown in image 3. These digital compression artifacts kind of defeat the purpose of spending thousands of dollars for a high definition TV.

AT&T Uverse Image 1	AT&T Uverse Image 2	AT&T Uverse Image 3

Close up ~ 1/10^th of screen.
For a full size image click on the thumbnail.

Again, limited bandwidth in the form of FTTN (last mile via copper wires) has come back to haunt AT&T uverse.

Ars Technica article here.

So even with the boost to 10Mbps, AT&T's competitive situation hasn't really changed, and the company is facing the same long-term bandwidth outlook—one that could become even grimmer as bandwidth-intensive applications like HD video rentals take off.

Quotation.

Light Reading article here.

With Docsis 3.0 hoping to be deployed this year, AT&T could find itself still lagging behind cable in some areas by year's end.

AT&T won't say yet when it plans to offer a second stream of HD video to customers' homes or what kind of network upgrades such as pair bonding or compression tricks it will use to make that possible, if any at all.

Quotation.

Come on AT&T we know you/your employees read our site, what is keeping you from going 100% fiber to the home?

As soon as the matrix revolutions is listed in our TimeWarner HBO-HD (our only HD premium channel) we will take some still shots and compare them to the uverse images kindly sent to us. In the mean time we took some pictures of King Kong using our TimeWarner's HD.

TimeWarner Image 1	TimeWarner Image 2	TimeWarner Image 3	TimeWarner Image 4	TimeWarner Image 5

Close up ~ 1/12^th of screen.
For a full size image click on the thumbnail.

For the experiment we used our HD television, a 40 in Sony Bravia connected via component cable to a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3250HD set top box (STB) set to 1080i (the highest resolution our STB can produce.) We used our Sony Digital camera to capture the images in real time (no freeze screens) We decided to take images in dark and fast moving scenes as in this situations is where compression artifacts are more noticeable.

All images above show no digital compression artifacts or macro blocking. Image 1 was taken during a very dark scene. Images 2 - 5 were taken during the dinosaur stampede and images 2 and 4 are very fast moving scenes comparable in complexity to the matrix revolutions movie. In images 2, 3 and 5 you can actually see the individual pixels of our sony HDTV but no compression artifacts.

We captured all these HD images while our DVR was recording HD movie trailers from the HDNET channel.

More tests to come later...

UPDATE March 26, 2008
A reader that wish to remain anonymous sent us his 2Wire 3800HG VDSL statistics page. As we said before the potential for external interference is very high in VDSL, particularly in vulnerable lines longer than 1,500 ft from the VRAD. We plotted his modem data in our spreadsheet and got the following results (Warning very large file 2.8 MB). 2Wire 3800HG DMT graph

We know from his stats that:

His maximum 'attainable' sync rate fluctuates at around 59,000 Kbps. (700ft away from the VRAD)
He has loss of signal problems every day

The above spreadsheet show our friend's VDSL modem DMT distribution. Profile 17a use 4096 tones spaced at 4.3125 KHz. The first problem we noticed are tones 315 and 316 with zero or two bit loads (2 Wire 3800HG column), most likely cause an AM station at 1360 KHz. Another problem is tone 352 that corresponds to AM station 1520 KHz. Remember our FTTN VDSL friend is 700 ft away from the VRAD.

VDSL downstream band 1 (DS1) seems to handle interference fairly well but when we reach the second downstream band (tone 1206 and up) is where the fun begins. The bitloads that used to be 8s and 7s in DS1 are now 3s and 4s in DS2 and as frequency approaches 8.5 MHz (AT&T supplied diplexer's cut off frequency) those numbers are reduced to 2s and 0s.

UPDATE April 2, 2008
Over the weekend we developed a new script to analyze the 2Wire 3800HG MDC VDSL statistics page. We plan to add database capabilities to give us and our readers an idea of what percentage of uverse users are having problems with their FTTN service.

The script can be found here. http:// adslm.dohrenburg.net /tools/3800hg-stats.php Please let us know how we can improve it.

UPDATE April 21, 2008
We have been very busy working in other projects and we haven't been able to follow any Uverse news.

Today's news is that AT&T has increased their prices in the form of equipment rental fees. The included 4 'free' receiver 'feature' has changed to just one. If customers want additional STBs they will have to pay $5.00 per STB. This roughly increase by $15.00 the price of uverse... so much for the greedy cableco argument.

UPDATE May 2, 2008
AT&T activates 2HD / 2SD U-verse service in St. Louis, more cities to come?

Well, well... finally we have good news to report about AT&T's second HD stream. We knew that some uverse employees/subscribers had been testing it for quite some time but there is something that puzzle us, the IPTV bandwidth cap has been increased from 20,000,000 to 29,900,000. Apparently AT&T engineers found out the hard way that new video codecs alone are not enough to compress the already compressed uverse HD stream down to [sarcasm] zero.

Just a few months back for the sake of stability AT&T had to reduce the gateway's sync rate from 27MBps down to 25MBps Today they have increased the IPTV cap by a whooping 50% to accommodate for the second HD stream. Looks like two uverse HD streams will only be available to the lucky few that are very close to the VRAD.

UPDATE May 11, 2008 Happy Mother's DAY!
Our sincere thanks to everybody that have sent us their 2wire 3800HG MDC statistics. From the curent 34 entries in the database only one show no sign of problems. The person in question posted his MDC statistics page from the following domain xx-xxx-xxx-x3.lightspeed.tblltx.sbcglobal.net Needless to say these results don't look very promising and maybe they are just statistical aberrations so keep those MDC statistics coming!

Again, thank you very much to all of you that have sent us your stats.

UPDATE August 10, 2008 From bad to worse.
Well, well, well AT&T finally took our advice (read our December 5^th comment) and implemented a 19,200/2,048 Mbps profile for people in noisy electrical environments or too far out from the VRAD (extrapolating from our 3800HG line statistics database maybe more than 85% of Uverse subscribers). Needless to say this kinda SUCKS! Imagine getting the worst from an already bad planned and implemented service, it's the ADSL story all over again. While Verizon FIOS (a 100% optical fiber solution in the form of FTTP/FTTH) penetrates deeper and deeper into cable territory AT&T cripples more and more this whole Uverse contraption. Its interesting to see how a forward looking company like Verizon compares to the mediocre rest (Verizon Communications VZ $35.07, AT&T T $31.50).

We first noticed the crippled Uverse profile by chance while examining some of the posted 3800HG statistics, later some of our readers confirmed our observations.

UPDATE September 4, 2008 Good for HAMs bad for xDSL.
A good friend, HAM operator and uverse subscriber brought the following to our attention.

All Summer and most of Fall present good conditions for HF HAM radio operations. The hot and unstable atmosphere offer HAMs great opportunities for distant communications. During this period of the year signal strength reaches -50 or even -40 dbm across the MF and HF bands (300 KHz to 30 MHZ) Unfortunately, as we have mentioned before poorly shielded or unshielded twisted pair wires are vulnerable to ingress RF radiation or interference.

Our friend's uverse gateway is experiencing high uncorrectable CRC/FEC errors during some portions of the day. According to our friend the high errors coincide with high peaks of HF activity. Following his theory and procedures we did a spectrum test in our disconnected phone line and got the following results:

10 MHz span -0db	10 MHz span -30db

10 MHz span.
For a full size image click on the thumbnail.
See movie.

We can confirm the precense of high MF/HF activity in our disconnected phone line. Our spectrum analyzer was set to 1 MHz per horizontal division for a total of 10 MHZ. Remember uverse top frequency is 8.5 MHz (first 8.5 horizontal divisions). The first photograph was taken without any attenuation. You can see that the AM portion (the first 2 horizontal divisions) is stronger than -10db! the next strong portion of the spectrum starts at about 2.8 MHz -60db and climbs to -40db! From 2.8 MHz to 5.5 MHz the spectrum is full of very strong stations. Photograph 2 was taken with the attenuator set to -30db.

Uverse subscribers far from the VRAD should be more vulnerable from such seasonal activity than those closer to the VRAD.

UPDATE September 10, 2008 Bad news for those on the 19200 profile.
While googling for uverse and 19200 we reached to the following link: Pixelation Woes.

Apparently there is no margin for error in uverse installations. It is a balancing act on the edge of a blade, a little movement here or there and thats it. As previously mentioned seasonal MF/HF activity, thunderstorms, electrical noise, RF interference etc can severely disrupt the VDSL signal and therefore severely degrade the service. Like we said before, it is the ADSL story all over again.

In the past few months we have noticed a slowdown in uverse related activity. The demise of callvantage, uvoice price reduction and little and not so little changes here and there that could signal us a change in strategy from AT&T's part.

Only time will tell.

UPDATE September 25, 2008 Bad economic conditions or capitulation?
One reader who wish to remain anonymous sent us the following comment:

We got UVerse near us and one of the guys that got it, got a call from AT&T saying he was going to lose it because no one else in his area was signing up for it ... too expensive to maintain. Weird.

Quotation.

Perhaps the reason for AT&T's decision to cancel uverse in that particular site is the bad economic conditions and not the uninspiring uverse VDSL technology. I understand that one of the main reasons AT&T decided for VDSL is the low initial cost and low maintenance.

As long as AT&T offers uverse FTTN (via copper twisted pair) there will be some customers willing to buy it despite the availability of better options.

UPDATE October 16, 2008 The demise of Uverse TV?
One reader sent us this link. 18 Mbps uverse.

We find interesting that AT&T a company that took 7 years (1999-2006) to increase ADSL's upload speed from 384 to 608 Kbps a company that took 9 years (1999-2008) to go from 6 to 10 Mbps offer a 18 Mbps tier within months of the introduction of the MAX (10 Mbps) tier. What happened to this argument?

Something must be wrong with AT&T's estimate/earning reports for AT&T to make such an 'aggressive' move. Considering that the majority of uverse gateways can't sync faster than 25 Mbps and that 'sync estimates' of +80 Mbps are just that... estimates, this comment explains it all 'If customers are willing to forgo TV services, more of that bandwidth can be used for data.' We are almost sure that many if not the majority of uverse customers will opt out of uverse TV and go for faster internet speeds and of course return to SatelliteTV or cable for their TV needs.

It is expected that AT&T's move will force cable companies to increase their internet speeds again and perhaps accelerate the deployment of DOCSIS3 and other technologies. Comcast recently introduced a 22/5 Mbps tier and TimeWarner is currently deploying 15/2 Mbps in many markets and plans to offer powerboost to all of it's subscribers by the end of 2008 are on schedule. It's just a matter of time before cable companies move non premium service cutomers to the +20/2 Mbps tiers. In the mean time FTTN is stretching thin perhaps to breaking point.

UPDATE October 20, 2008 18Mbps ADSL2+?
We know that AT&T's uverse VRADs are backward compatible with ADSLx technologies. One reader raised the question that maybe AT&T will use ADSL2+ instead of VDSL2 for the new 18/x Mbps internet only tier. ADSL2+ have a longer reach than VDSL2 making the technology more attractive for adding subscribers in these troubled economic times. ADSL2+ use the 0.38 to 2.2 MHz frequency spectrum and existing copper lines will be able to handle 18 Mbps speeds at +5,000 ft.

UPDATE October 21, 2008 Uverse price increase what in the world is AT&T thinking?
EngadgetHD has a very interesting article found here.

Apparently uverse features/price 'advantage' is disappearing. One reply that caught our attention states:

Yep- we got the un-informative postcard also. Funny, when we got U-verse in 2/2008, they said we'd be able to watch recorded programs from all tv's by Summer 2008, just like Dish Network that we gave up. Well, that just happened & now we get this. If they take away much more, we'll just go back to Dish. They touted this as giving us so much more than Dish at a GREAT savings. Seems there were several shortcomings & now price increases.

Dish wasn't bad, so we'll go back with no hesitation.

Quotation.

UPDATE October 22, 2008 C'mon AT&T the writing is on the wall. What is you keeping from delpoying FTTH/FTTP to all of your customers?
This link must send chills up AT&T's spine.

We just can't understand why would someone choose AT&T's FTTN uverse (internet, phone and TV) over DOCSIS 3.0 solutions. The writing was on the wall 2 years ago when AT&T first introduced FTTN uverse and today the writing is all over the place. DOCSIS 3.0 will destroy everybody still using the feeble twisted copper pairs. We never thought DOCSIS 3.0 services would offer faster speeds than Verizon's FIOS but today it looks like this is the case.

Verizon is very well positioned to absorb the blunt punch of DOCSIS 3.0 but a at a very high monetary cost, AT&T's story is a lot different. AT&T has relied on the US government for 'favors' and 'special' treatment but with the 2008 elections just a week away this scenario is very likely to change and AT&T will be forced to compete solely on their merits.

The beauty of DOCSIS 3.0 is the extremely low cost of deploying the technology. As we have mentioned before coaxial cable (RG6) is highly immune to RF interference and noise. Some cable systems with +1GHz of bandwidth available for switched digital video, IPTV and internet make coaxial cable ideal for next generation services and remember that coaxial cable is already deployed!

It is a good thing for AT&T that some cable companies like TimeWarner are taking a wait and see attitude towards DOCSIS 3.0 otherwise it could become a massacre with telco customers dropping land lines and now ADSL services at an accelerated pace. But all that can change in the blink of an eye, TimeWarner already stated that they will deploy DOCSIS 3.0 in highly competitive areas and uverse areas are considered highly competitive.

So the question remains: When will AT&T wise up and drop this whole uverse FTTN contraption and put all their efforts in FTTH/FTTP? Time is running out and the future looks bleak for FTTN solutions.

UPDATE October 27, 2008 Suddenly the FTTP/FTTH upgrade tide is gathering strength.
Now its cable's turn. According to the Wall Street Journal in this link. Cable companies should start thinking about deploying fiber to customer homes.

We have been reporting that from all the major ISPs AT&T is in the worst position to face the future of the internet. This comment says it all:

So far cable operators have been winning the war. They have a greater broadband market share  thanks to more flexible technology. Major cable companies have about seven million phone subscribers while phone companies have fewer than 100,000 TV subscribers.

Verizon is the only major phone company that is trying to compete by upgrading its entire network with fiber. Other companies, such as AT&T Inc., are trying to get by with less expensive network upgrades. A few are deploying fiber in areas where new homes are being built, at a rate of about 1.9 million per year, according to the Cable Labs report.

Quotation.

Unfortunately for AT&T we all know what happened to the new homes bubble market... it did burst!

UPDATE November 4, 2008 Don't forget to VOTE! Century old twisted pair copper lines, big ugly VRAD cabinets poping up everywhere, uninspiring FTTN solutions and now USAGE CAPS!
A reader sent us this link.

Starting this month, AT&T will enforce xDSL usage caps in Reno, NV. According to the above document all current and new xDSL customers will participate in the trials. The above document also describes how current customers not willing to participate in the trials can cancel their xDSL service without incurring in early termination penalty fees. Suddenly cable usage caps is no longer an issue when comparing xDSL and cable services. We know a lot of people that will not be happy once the new TOS propagates all over AT&T's service territory.

This action came to us as a big surprise considering that AT&T is loosing xDSL and landline customers by the thousands. We expect AT&T to propagate the new TOS (terms of service) to all of its footprint at a much faster pace than they do xDSL speed upgrades. Probably all xDSL customers will see the new TOS as early as the first quarter of next year. Comcast have generous usage caps and much faster internet speeds and TimeWarner is testing usage caps only in Beaumount, TX.

We can't understand how AT&T can profit under these circumstances. With a declining customer base and a 190,000 employee population we can expect a new wave of AT&T employee layoffs in the near future.
AT&T Fundamentals.
AT&T number of employees.

UPDATE November 6, 2008 Well, well, well. After all not all AT&T customers are sheep.
We are closely following this thread and this thread and now this thread and this thread.

After all the negative posts and customer outcry some of us and many of our readers believe that AT&T will have no guts to implement usage caps beyond the trial areas. This comment makes a lot of sense.

Personally, I think cablecos use caps to scare away bandwidth hogs and steer them to the telcos. Unfortunately AT&T's slow reaction to this situation will make them look like the bad guys (which they are).

Quotation.

AT&T missed their opportunity to implement usage caps and now it's too late. If AT&T go ahead and enforce usage caps they will be the 'bad guys' on the other hand if they don't enforce the caps AT&T will end up harboring all the exiled cable bandwidth hogs and their very own home grown bandwidth hogs like this one or this one. This is why we changed our mind and now we are almost sure AT&T's usage caps will never expand beyond the trial areas.

It is ironic that the usage caps news came at the same time as the uverse internet only 18Mbps tier news.

Now its time to sit back, relax and watch the cableco juggernauts respond.

UPDATE November 10, 2008 The 18 Mbps tier that isn't.
An reader and friend sent us his first impressions of his new uverse internet 18 MBps tier.

I look at it as a reverse powerboost. The more TVs are on the less speed I get.

Quotation.

AT&T decided to go with VDSL2 and QoS to manage the operational balance between TV streams and internet traffic. The QoS is analogous to ISDN's 2b+d (128 Kbps) With ISDN the moment you pick up the phone the data speed drops to 64 Kbps, when you are finished talking and hang up the data goes back to 128 Kbps. In uverse's case TV streams will be the resposible factor for limiting internet speeds.

What baffle us is why AT&T didn't go for 20, 22 or 25 Mbps? Comcast, TimeWarner and others (DOCSIS1.1 powerboost) are currently offering way over 20 Mbps so what kept AT&T from offering more internet speed?

The 18 Mbps tier will keep AT&T's uverse somewhat competitive with the cablecos +20Mbps offerings... that is until DOCSIS3.0 becomes mainstream.

By the way we loved the reverse powerboost description... thanks David.

UPDATE December 4, 2008 AT&T layoffs arrive... as expected.

Our inside information was confirmed today by this AT&T announcement.

Using AT&T's misleading wording (as usual) today AT&T announced that it will ~~layoff~~ 'reduce' 12,000 employees from its workforce.

The news did not come as a surprise but as a confirmation of what we already knew. AT&T cited ~~uncompetitive products~~ economic pressures, ~~lack of interest for uverse TV, DSL and landlines~~ changing business mix and ~~getting rid of unproductive employees~~ streamlined organizational structure as the reasons for the 'Job Reductions'.

In our September, 10 comment we noted that there was some unusual activity inside AT&T's management. The introduction of the 18Mbps reverse powerboost tier and today's layoff announcement confirmed our observations. The only thing we missed is that we were expecting a 10% job cut instead of 4%. We can't understand the high number of idle AT&T employees roaming numerous bulleting boards. Is AT&T is paying them to chat and post in these boards? Perhaps in the future we will see less and less of these trolls.

On another page, like we mentioned before some people with crippled uverse service (the have nots) continue to complain about the price.

Roger H. kindly sent us this link:

Complaining customer:
1 HD/3SD Profile

I am on the lower tier, should i be paying the same price as someone who can get multiple HD and SD streams?
Common sense would be no.

Forum resident:
AT&T has charged people the same price for 384kbps internet as 1500kbps internet, depending on CO distance. Not really fair, but that's how it is with distance limited service. A few months ago they would have just told you that you didn't qualify for service.
I suspect you could call AT&T and threaten to cancel over it and they might work out a discount to keep you as a customer.

The short answer should be NO, people with crippled uverse 19,200 tiers should not pay the same price as those on the standard tier in addition customers should not be put in a position of begging AT&T for special treatment or concessions because of uverse's FTTN self imposed/inflicted limitations. Un-happy uverse customers should put aside all the 'neo-con' keywords and phrases like 'I hate the cable company' or 'its the new technology's fault' or 'vdsl is more stable than cable' etc, etc and consider other services based on quality, reliability, value and most important common sense.

Bottom line is: If uverse is not delivering the quality and value that you expected cancel it and get another service.

UPDATE December 12, 2008 Nugget.

In loving memory of 'Nugget'

You'll be deeply missed.
2001- December 12, 2008

UPDATE December 16, 2008 What is the real story behind pair bonding?

We came across this Telephony Online article.

Contrary to IBM which owns many leading edge and high technology patents and their 'cream de la cream' research group is always working on something revolutionary and new AT&T falls into the technology implementers category. By this we mean that companies like Cisco, Alcatel, Lucent etc are the IBMs of the telecommunication industry and AT&T just decides and deploys what ever products these companies produce. The role of AT&T engineers (if they have some and which type) and technicians is to implement other people's technologies in their networks.

Which bring us to the pair bonding thingie. Origianlly planned for deployment for 2007 then 2008 and now 2nd half of 2009 pair bonding is not a magical or a clean solution and most important there are some physical issues that must be considered before it can provide some if any additional bandwidth to the 'have not' uverse subscriber.

This comment from the Telephony Online article 'Meanwhile, some industry sources say CPE vendors haven’t moved quickly with these products.' makes sense. Why are companies developing pair bonding dragging their feet? As mentioned before pair bonding is a band-aid (a very little one) solution. We see pair bonding existing as the result of a poorly thought and implemented original idea named UVerse via twisted cooper wire pairs also known as FTTN (fiber to the node.) The answer to our rethorical question is lack of interest from other companies and the 'too little, too late' concept. With Verizon FIOS proving to be the way of the future and DOCSIS3.0 proving that it can compete (although not as glamorously) with FIOS what's left for AT&T's FTTN uverse? Right! 'pair bonding.'

UPDATE December 26, 2008 More Uverse price hikes.

Engadget HD in this article explain AT&T's price increases for 2009.

Looks like AT&T is raising the price of uverse once again, they must think they have a killer service?

The price for the STB rental went up 40% from $5 to $7, the movie package went up 33% from $15 to $20 and the paquete en español went up a whooping 50% from $10 to $15 a month! Why the 50% increase in the spanish package? Does AT&T think Hispanics are less prone to complain about price hikes? We just find it odd that the spanish package (paquete en español) was targeted for such disproportionate price hike.

We don't mind a company trying to be profitable and survive but when a mediocre service like uverse FTTN is pushed into existing consumers at high prices well... it is time to look elsewhere for your TV and internet needs.

Strong reactions to the price hike (from those that still respond and think) didn't take too long to appear in bulletin boards.
In this link. we can read some comments.

djrobx said
For me, it's a little early for these sorts of increases. The system still has maturing to do. My HD quality is still mediocre and I'm still dealing with annoying 5.1 audio drop outs. I put up with it because I'm getting a good value.

A 40% increase on the price of an extra STB is excessive. That increase will hit around the same time my promos expire. If they keep up with the anti-customer changes it might nudge me to look at DirecTV.

dustman81 said
They might as well dump the Movie Package all together as the Movie Package upgrade will now cost the same as the upgrade from U200 to U300, which includes the Movie Package.

tito said
I find that very confusing! Why would they make the movie package the same price as U-300, which gives you the movie package, plus additional channels? 

joako said
They need to pay for their idle VRads somehow....

Djrobx is absolutely right in that the service needs some maturing to do, we would call it evolving into a 100% pure fiber deployment and forget about the feeble VDSL twisted pair contraption. If dumb people keep subscribing to a clearly inferior product like uverse FTTN and not to cable, SatTV or if you are lucky to Verizon's FIOS. AT&T will have no incentive to move to a FIOS like product (aka. 100% pure fiber, FTTH/FTTP.) AT&T will just keep milking that century old fossil called twisted pair cables.

Bottom line: Uverse users loose by subscribing to an inferior and relatively expensive product and investors win by getting a high return for their investments, that is if AT&T stock recover in two or three years.

UPDATE January 9, 2009 Consumer Reports (CR) clueless uverse triple play report.

One reader sent us this laughable link.

As we mentioned at the beginning of this review (circa August, 2006). AT&T wants to ~~erase~~ blur the thick line between FTTN (last mile via copper wires) and FTTP/FTTH (a 100% pure fiber solution.) Today AT&T found much needed support in a Consumer Reports clueless and misleading uverse triple play review. In one of their graphics CR states that uverse is a 100% pure fiber solution 'Type' as 'Fiber.'

What baffles us is that in the article at least in what we managed to read here without wasting our money by subscribing to a useless magazine is that nowhere it is mentioned what is FTTN, FTTH or FTTP and how it applies to uverse, so much for an educated and properly researched review right? It is unknown what percentage of uverse users are FTTP/FTTH or FTTN but one thing is certain that the vast majority (perhaps 80% or 90%) of uverse subscribers are fed by twisted copper wires. So calling a service with more than 80% of their subscribers fed by 100% TWISTED COPPER WIRE PAIRS a 'fiber type' of service is ridiculous, misleading, ignorant and plain laughable. This is a tactic commonly used by unscrupulous AT&T's uverse door to door salesmen when trying to add new clients to AT&T's TV/Internet mediocre service.

In addition like we also mentioned before CR have some of their facts right, like checking your bill. AT&T is notorious for screwing up bills so bad that not even an high level math professor with a PH.D. in astro physics can decode and oddly enough the errors are always in AT&T's favor, go figure.

Poor CR loosing some more of the little credibility they have left.

UPDATE January 22, 2009 Uverse static IPs.

In response to our comment that uverse was unlikely to offer static IP addresses one reader sent us this link.

Looks like AT&T is trying very hard (within the limitations of their FTTN solution) to prove us wrong in many areas. First the ridiculous original uverse 6, 3 and 1.5 Mbps internet speed options, well AT&T after succumbing to customer pressure and maybe by cable's new 20+, 25+ and 30+ Mbps tiers decided to increase it to 10 Mbps and a couple of months later to the pseudo 18 Mbps tier. Unfortunately AT&T hasn't done much in the picture quality area like this link or this link show. Today we have some good news well sort of, in that AT&T is offering static IPs.

The introduction of static IPs is good news indeed but more questions have arisen. The target market for static IP packages is the small-medium size businesses. We consider small business somewhere between 1-10 employees with no need for servers much like a Starbucks, Barnes&Noble even an AT&T phone center. A medium size business is 50 - 250+ employees hosting their own servers SMTP, WWW, SSH, DNS, FTP etc, much like the business we deal with in this area. Large (NAFTA related) warehouse operations, automotive parts ( GM, Ford, Toyota etc), GE aerospace power plants and many AM/FM/TV broadcasting companies from the US and Mexico.

In December 2008 we worked in a contract with a well know US based spanish broadcasting company to provide IT, calibration and metrology services for their equipment. This company has fiber optic cables provided by Time Warner and AT&T to connect their office and studio to their broadcast transmitter located some miles away. This company is what we call a medium-size business.

All of the above with the exception of Starbucks-like companies require professional grade equipment, something a 2wire gateway won't do. So the question is what is AT&T going to use for static IP packages? The following excerpt rises these questions.

Enlightener said
Is this a real block ( 8 = 5 usable ) or is this the pseudo-static assigment stuff that I think we used to see with I believe the netopia routers?

apeface said
No, they are real blocks. They way we have it configured on the the RG and through the network is pretty...odd. 

houkouonchi
Does this use a new RG where you don't have to be double NAT'd? Can you put the RG in bridge mode or is it the same BS crappy 2wire crap they send out with uverse?

etaadmin said
Like hokumuchi said
Will this set up include a vdsl modem that can be bridged? The 2 wire gateway is useless in a business environment.

It is well known that user apefe works for AT&T as well as keithww (among many, many others at that site) so for the ape to call the setup 'pretty...odd' is very worry some to say the least. We have worked with 32 and 128 IPs DSL static and T1 packages using ZyXell and Cisco routers with bridged ADSL modems without problems but when a 2wire is present weird things happen even when it is pseudo-bridged. Many years back SBC used to provide frame relay and T1 customers with cisco 1721s, will AT&T do the same for uverse static IP customers? AT&T should go for a different VDSL modem manufacturer like ZyXell, Netopia or Westell and Cisco or ZyXell for the routers.

Some AT&T brass have stated that if uverse customers want the whole pipe (25/2Mbps) for internet only they will provide it. Is this time to save some face and let uverse subscribers drop uverse TV? Like here or here or here or here. Some sites even have FAQs on how to successfully get rid of uverse TV. No wonder why our site has been hit so many times by Wall Street investment companies trying to get the whole picture.

When we first got static IPs ADSL circa 2000 SBC sent us a dumb Westell Wirespeed B90-36R516 DSL modem (no routing or pppoe/pppoa capabilities) for our true static IP account we provided the ZyXell router. AT&T shoud do the same and provide uverse static IP customers with a dumb VDSL modem and let the customer decide what router if any to use. This is a solution that even us are interested in, provided that we are within 1000 ft from the VRAD of course. We can keep our TV programming from Time Warner Corporation and everybody is happy.

Other questions remain but the main unanswered question is: What type of equipment will AT&T use for the static packages? Is AT&T going to fumble the ball by providing uverse static IP customers with a 'pretty...odd' solution?

We have the feeling that we will be revisiting this subject in the future as our uverse friends and readers start to review the static packages.

UPDATE March 6, 2009 Things are going to get very interesting... the cable industry procastinator poster boy is to spin-off its cable division on March 31^st 2009.

The imminent split of TimeWarner's cable division is old news , what is not so old is the restrictions or lack of that the FCC has imposed light reading article here.

It is still unknown under what name the newly created company will operate but it is almost certain that by March, 31^st 2009 TimeWarner cable division will be on it's own. This is a very significant game change for a company that have done almost nothing to upgrade their equipment to DOCSIS3.0 or fiber optics. Although we have read some hints of what TimeWarner is thinking

Time Warner Cable's Fiber-licious RFI
Cable Starts to Seed All-Fiber Future
Next-Gen Cable Networks: Opportunities for Fiber-Based Technologies

It is still unclear how TWC is going to lure back SatTV customers and to some extent keep the for now happy broadband customers they currently have.

One thing is for certain that the new company will have to change their attitude and adapt to a more aggressive and efficient company, the alternative is to become part of Comcast (which is not a bad idea) or follow the Dodo bird into extinction. Fortunately TimeWarner's split have no FCC restrictions leaving the newly created company free to do what it is necessary to evolve and successfully compete. As a public enterprise the new company has to keep investors happy and that can only be accomplished by strong and solid growth. Grow can only be accomplished by the number of new subscribers and market share which bring us to DOCSIS3.0, Switched Digital Video (SDV) and the deployment of fiber in greenfields.

AT&T in their latest earnings report stated that they will stop new uverse deployments for a year, is this a coincidence? We don't think so, if cablecos go ahead and start deploying FTTH/FTTP this could be a game changer for the short sighted company that AT&T currently is. AT&T pipe dreams of FTTN will go up in smoke as soon as the cablecos start deploying FTTH/FTTP. Rather than 'stay the course' and keep deploying an obsolete and dying technology we think AT&T is taking a wait and see attitude at what the cablecos are going to do. Another interesting question lingers in the ether, what will happen to the uverse FTTN network?

Rumors, rumors and more rumors.
Reader Hank kindly sent us a message with a link to an AT&T rumor stating that a new uverse 32 Mbps profile was/is in the works. According to the rumor this new profile will allow uverse subscribers (for those very, very close to the distribution device VRAD) to watch 3 HD and 1 SD streams at the same time. Unfortunately this poses a lot of problems:

From our data we find that the majority of uverse subscribers can't do 32 Mbps without risking major CRC/FEC errors.
Uverse HD and SD streams will have more video compression.
This is another example of the 'haves and have nots' of this type of technology. Remember the 19 Mbps tier?

We think that AT&T should fix their current over compressed HD/SD video streams before adding a third one. This thread shares our thoughts.

Thread excerpt.

djrobx said
I have a feeling this isn't happening soon. There was an interview with the AT&T cto towards the end of ladt year who said something along the lines of "nobody complains about not having 3HD". It seemed a bit like he was backpeddaling on earlier 3HD promises. Perhaps people ARE complaining about the HD picture quality which might give them cause to rethink a plan that would result in cutting the bandwith per stream.

Frohike said
I would rather they fix the current HD Streaming technology 1st instead of adding a 3rd substandard HD Stream.

The Macro-blocking on the HD channels is awful to say the least.

mibrnsurg said
Not much of that here, I'd say something's wrong somewhere, my HD PQ is very very good. I sit 3x diagonal distance from my 42" Panasonic plasma to qualify anything PQ from me, if anyone sits much closer, I say they are too close and will see many more compression artifacts on Uverse. ;

tito said
No kidding! Wouldn't adding a third HD stream compress it even more & make it worse?

Joebury2004 said
Doubt this will happen. U-verse is only running on a single twisted pair right now. They did run a cat-5 line from your network interface box to your RG, this is what i'd imagine is for a possible use of multiple pairs in the future. The FCC doesn't let at&t do this right now for government BS reasons that would fill a book.

With only 25mbps being delivered to each premise over the phone line, I doubt they can handle the 3rd HD stream. I notice when 2 hd streams are in use the compression changes and there are way more artifacts in the picture.

The other possibility is at&t is finally pulling the governor off of its FTTP new builds. Any house built in 2007 in at&t turf has FTTP.

dlewis23 said
Doing more compression would be extremely stupid on AT&T's part because the extra bandwidth is there so they wouldn't have to do more compression.

There is no reason why they can't up the sync rate to 36 Mbps for most people. That would would allow 3HD streams and people on the 18 Mbps internet wouldn't see as much of a slow down with all 3 HD streams going at once.

So I hope they don't do more compression, its compressed enough as it is.

Of course if all else fails uverse subscribers can fix macro blocking and pixelation by following user mibrnsurg's solution... that is to sit where you can't see the TV screen very well.

Rather than funny, reading these comments is very disappointing. Imagine spending thousands of dollars in flat panel HD TV sets for nothing. Uverse FTTN is not what consumers deserve.

UPDATE March 9, 2009 RFoG (radio frequency over glass) and other things.

Apparently we hit a nerve when we mentioned cablecos and in particular TWC's FTTP/FTTH/FTTB/FTTMDU (Fiber to the premise, home, business and multi dwelling units). Some readers (one of them a TWC insider) confirmed that cablecos are very interested in RFoG solutions. Apparently RFoG offer numerous advantages orver HFC (hybrid fiber coax)

100% compatible with current HFC technologies (DOCSISx.x)
Bandwidth gains.
Low capital expense for deployment.
Extremely low operating expenses.
Revenue enhancement.
Easily bridged with future technologies.

The beauty of RFoG is that it can fully coexist with HFC systems making it an ideal upgrade path to 100% fiber solutions.

RFoG is somewhat old news but the recent increase in interest and activity is not. Motorola, Alloptic, Calix, CommScope, Arris and Cisco Systems also have been listed as RFoG purveyors.

So back to the main theme of this web page. AT&T's decision to stop new uverse deployments for one year is not a coincidence, as a matter of fact AT&T's top brass must be sitting on their desks thinking if this uverse FTTN thingie was a good decision after all.

Reference links:
‘RF Over Glass’ Concept Gains Steam
RFOG picture is coming clear
Why RFoG?
Sifting Through the RFOG
The Rationale for RFoG

UPDATE March 23, 2009 Revisiting Uverse static IPs for business.

As we mentioned before the idea of a business oriented Uverse (with static IPs) is not making much sense even for small business as this thread indicates.

Previously, AT&T employee 'apeface' described his company uverse static IP service as a 'pretty odd' solution, we absolutely agree with his description. The 2Wire gateway is too limited and awkward to be used in a business environment even when placed in 'pseudo bridge' mode. A mode in which packets are still subjet to filtering rules, basically NOT really BRIDGED . We know of several ADSL business customers that got rid of their 2Wire ADSL modems and bought a 'dumb' or true bridge capable ADSL modem to be placed in front of Cisco or ZyXell routers.

El Paso said

We just switched, and I'm still struggling to get the setup the same way. The tech told me that the unit is basing its connection on the MAC of the router that is connecting to the service. We have multiple network at our location and eventhough the speed is EXTREME for US (Europe had this years ago for pennies on the dollar) I would do your research.

The TV option is not available for us, neither is the phone, the system right now for commercial purposes is only internet. I'm going to have to go back to DSL it seems to make this work, 2Wire is home stuff and doesn't work with commercial applications, it is way overcomplicated and putting multiple IPs on a single PIX is probably going to end up being a big no-no since from what I can see the 2Wire only supports setting it up in pseudo-freaky bridge mode but with 1 IP per MAC connected, which is going to make routing 80 to seperate internal devices a no go.

Good luck in your transition, I would suggest that if it works leave it alone for now until others have taken out the risk and perhaps there is a REAL commercial router on the market for it.

Cheers.

gadgetinsp said

Thank you very much for the feedback. I think we hit the showstoppers right there. With static IPs, I don't want my outgoing port 25 blocked (because I locally manage my own email server) - and I don't want a caching proxy (because I run one of those too)

I suspect ATT has their own SMTP server I could use, but then I have to change all the SPF rules on my domains names, and worry about their uptime/message size limits, etc. when I would redirect my server to their serve for outgoing relays. I suspect they block 25 for the greater good so people don't have spam bots on the net - but I would think they should have some sort of advanced or business packaged that would provide no port blocking and mandatory caching to those people that know what they are doing. I guess we aren't there yet.

AT&T uverse implementation for businesses is plain dumb. We always thought that FTTN was the weakest link in this whole uverse contraption but AT&T once again has proven us wrong by using the 2Wire gateway. User 'El Paso' is absolutely right this 2Wire is 'home stuff' unsuitable for business oriented services.

Why can't AT&T use VDSL modems like these?
ZyXel VDSL modems.
Netopia VDSL modems.

UPDATE May 8, 2009 Tomorrow will be full moon so take out your cloak and potions and be prepared to revisit Uverse's pair bonding spell.

Matt kindly pointed us to the following article: Still Waiting On Faster AT&T Speeds, Line Bonding

As we mentioned more than a year ago in our September 3, 2007 entry pair bonding is not the miracle cure that AT&T hoped to be. Too many factors and some unknowns limit the potential gains that pair bonding has to offer. Not to confuse pair-bonding with channel-bonding that DOCSIS3.0 use to increase node speeds up to +320 Mbps. Pair bonding is a ~~desperate~~ last resort contraption used to ~~increase badly needed bandwidth~~ extend uverse's coverage area. Pair bonding use an additional copper pair (physical link) whereas channel bonding use additional bandwidth chunks or channels already present in the physical link (the coaxial cable.)

A little bit of history, back in August 2006 AT&T projected that VDSL2 (FTTN) was good for up to 5,000 away from the VRAD (distribution device.) At that time uverse gateways synced' at 27,264 Kbps downstream and 2,048 Kbps upstream so AT&T's engineers used the best case scenario (a no no in engineering) to make a very bad assumption that the real world would follow their pristine hypothetical model.

Unfortunately the best case scenario is blasphemy in engineering and should never be used, AT&T engineers found this the hard way. Shortly after the introduction of FTTN uverse AT&T engineers were forced to reduce the sync rate by 8% down to the current standard rate of 25,216 Kbps. In addition to the sync rate reduction AT&T uverse coverage area was reduced by 75% from 5,000ft down to 2,500ft. The coverage area of a 5,000ft circle is 19,634,954 square feet (area of a circle is defined as the square of the radius of the circle multiplied by Pi; A = r² x π) The area of a 2,500ft circle is 4,908,738 square feet for a difference of -14,726,215 square feet or 75% less area covered.

Back to the present, unfortunately AT&T is not pursuing pair-bonding to enhance uverse but to bring uverse have-not's up to par... you know those on marginal 25 Mbps and the 19 Mbps tiers. Another sad note is that the article states that 'pair-bonding is working' on ADSL2 only and that VDSL2 is scheduled for later this year. After 6 years of Uverse FTTN pair-bonding will be working by year's end, is this the best AT&T can offer?

UPDATE May 28, 2009 Revisiting uverse's static IP service.

Good news for those on the 25 Mbps profile.
After constant pressure from the cableco juggernaut AT&T has been forced to increase uverse'e download speeds by leaps and bounds. In just a couple of years uverse download speeds have gone from the pathetic 6 Mbps to a somewhat respectable pseudo reverse powerboosted 18 Mbps top tier. Those on the 10 Mbps tier have received a respectable 1.5 Mbps increase so the 10 Mbps tier is now about 12 Mbps.

Those on the 19 Mbps profile... well maybe next time and remember to pay your bill on time to avoid late payment fees. Thank you.

All these uverse download speed increases are in response to the cable juggernaut headlines of 50 Mbps and even 100 Mbps DOCSIS3.0. Even the cable industry procastinator aka TWC now have 15/1 or in some markets 15/2 Mbps with powerboost up to 30 Mbps by using the somewhat archaic DOCSIS1.0-2.0.

An anonymous reader sent us the following link: Uverse DSL With Static IPS WORST ISP EVER!

Nothing new here. As previously mentioned numerous times before AT&T's uverse static IP service for small business is basically a joke.

UPDATE July 9, 2009 Uverse gateways now syncing at 32 mbps.

Well only some of them...
A good friend and AT&T insider sent us his gateway VDSL statistics showing a 32192/4992 kbps profile. What caught us by surprise is that the SNR under the new 32mbps profile dropped by 9db~10db! His new SNR is now hovering around 10db. The SNR drop is very significant considering that many gateways max 'attainable' sync rate of ~40 mbps have SNR of 18db 12db and as low as 9db making the new 32 mbps profile 'un-attainable' for them. I wonder how the official uverse alchemists are going to handle these marginal accounts?

Another thing that caught our eye is while comparing the corrected/uncorrected errors we noticed a big difference between the two sync profiles. Looks like FEC and CRC (corrected and uncorrected errors) jumped by a whooping 30% Its evident that the new sync profile is putting the gateway under severe strain.

Needles to say this new profile fragments the uverse product and uverse subscribers even further. Uverse now have the 32, 25 and 19 mbps profiles for the 'haves, have-nots and have nothing'

Update: Our friend sent us the current distance limitations for each profile.

Profile	Max Distance (feet)	Sync (Mbps)	Video streams (HD/SD)	Max internet speed (Mbps)
~~Haves~~ High	Up to 2,200	32/5	3HD/1SD	18
~~Have nots~~ Medium	Up to 3,000	25/2	2HD/2SD	18
~~Have nothing~~ Min	Up to 3,400	19/2	1HD/3SD	12

Current uverse sync profiles.

Update: What do 400 feet really mean.

One reader correctly pointed us out the small margins involved between each uverse profile. As for today the difference between the 32 and 25 Mbps profile is 800 ft, the difference between the 25 and 19 Mbps is 400 feet! In our neighborhood 400 feet signifies 3 or 4 homes as indicated by the following picture.

Click image to expand.

The difference between getting the 19 or 25 Mbps profile is only 3 or 4 houses away. We find remarkable the level of service inconsistency related to the uverse product, you could be 3 or 4 homes away from the 25 Mbps profile or 6 to 7 homes away from the 32 Mbps profile.

UPDATE July 31, 2009 AT&T playing catch up with FIOS and the cable juggernaut.

Actually only with the cable industry juggernauts. Unfortunately FIOS and uverse don't directly compete on the same markets.

For a company that took 10 years to upgrade from 6 Mbps to 10 Mbps. A company that used to tell us that users don't need more than 3Mbps. We find it interesting and amusing the ~~desperate~~ measures that AT&T is taking in order to remain somewhat competitive when news like this hit the internet:
Comcast: 50Mbps speeds to 65% of territory by end of 2009
Comcast launches 50Mbps broadband... for $150 per month
Rogers rolls out 50Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 service, 802.11n router
Cox Launches Faster Internet Speeds in Rhode Island Powered by DOCSIS 3.0
Cablevision loves you, will offer $99 101Mbps uncapped internet service

For AT&T, internet speeds suddenly started to matter more than their users' internet 'experience' which bring us to this thread:
max turbo 24 mbps

The interesting part is that we already knew that the new 32Mbps profile would bring a new internet speed tier for those 'lucky' (if you want to call them lucky) subscribers whose homes are located under 2,000ft from a VRAD. Why are we calling the 32Mbps profile a desperate measure? Because not all uverse subscribers currently on the 25Mbps profile will qualify for the new 32Mbps profile and therefore will not get the 24Mbps internet tier. As stated in our July 9, 2009 entry the difference between 25 and 32 Mbps is only 400ft, only 3 or 4 homes away!

The amusing part is that if you read the above thread carefully some tech savvy uverse subscribers know this but others who don't know the difference between a bit and a byte still think the upgrade will be automatic for everyone currently on the 25Mbps profile. Another amusing fact is the introduction of buzz words like 'PhaseI, PhaseII, MaxI, MaxIII, UVClass9, UVClassthis, UVClassthat' currently AT&T is at UVClass11... we can't wait for UVClass106 and MaxMMXI. They are just buzz words designed to keep uverse subscribers confused and happy.

One entry in the thread says it all.

Like a few others have said, with the way uverse works they cant do this, most people are on profiles that cant handle this new speed. If they bumped the speed up, and I had to pay the same amount as the next guy whom gets the speed but I don't, I would be extremely upset paying for something I cant get. All they can do is make new tiers, or reduce the price of the current ones and introduce the new high end one at the same price. I think att has way too many tiers going on here.....

768k (dsl only) $20
1.5m $25
3m $30
6m $35
12m $55
18m $65

It needs to look like this:

768k (dsl only) $15 ---- Pre uverse price (price was bumped when uverse came out
1.5m $20 ---- Pre uverse price (price was bumped when uverse came out
3m $25 ---- Pre uverse price (price was bumped when uverse came out
6m $35
12m $45
18m $55
24m $65 --- closest match to comcrap price

As mentioned in our July 9, 2009 entry uverse subscribers and the uverse product is increasingly becoming more fragmented not by price or economic status but by geographic location (the haves and have not's) With FIOS or cable the difference between getting this or that speed tier is determined by how much you are willing or want to spend on a service. With uverse the previous choice is determined by how far away is your home located from the VRAD regardless of your capacity or willingness to pay. This business model is totally unacceptable and unfair for those who pay the same for a much lesser service.

UPDATE August 3, 2009 Its 'Déjà vu all over again', thanks Yogi. Going back to the 25 Mbps profile.

Two uverse subscribers whose service was recently upgraded to the 32Mbps profile contacted us and provided us with much appreciated information.

Here is the scoop, according to both of our friends the new 32 Mbps tier is causing lots of 'instability problems' in the form of low 'SNR' (signal to noise ratio) and high 'BER' (bit error rates.) As we mentioned in our July 31, 2009 entry the 32Mbps profile caused the 2Wire gateway's CRC/FEC to jump by at least 30% when compared to the 25Mbps profile using the same line at the same address.

We have received some reports that some subscribers whose service was upgraded to the 32Mbps profile have been downgraded to 25Mbps. We have not confirmed this but assuming that this information is true we wouldn't be surprised at all. From our data we've noticed that not all uverse subscribers currently using the 25Mbps profile and with gateways 'capable' of syncing above 40Mbps will be able to safely handle the 32Mbps profile.

Update: Confirmed, AT&T rolls back uverse to the 25Mbps profile.

A reader kindly sent us this link 32/5

trparky wrote:
Dropped back down to the 25 profile for some reason.

texasguy37 wrote:
This message was posted on the uverseusers.com forum on July 31st:

"We got a mail today that they are rolling back the 32 megs s they have lots of problems. All 32meg customers are being changed to 25meg by Tier 2 and we are supposed to call in if we get a 32 meg install to have it downgraded. I did 2 32 megs the other day and all was fine. I don't know what the issue is they're having with them"

trparky wrote:
Why do I have a feeling that this may be the thing that pushes AT&T to reconsider their use of FTTN? A lot of telephone lines are in quite the bad shape and they simply can't handle the data throughput that VDSL is pushing.

The fact that they have to backpeddle isn't good news at all to both customers and stockholders. They might just have to wake up and smell the coffee and realize that this VDSL plan isn't going to work as well as they had hoped.

twill1989 wrote:
I think it's a little early to start proclaiming this event as being the death of Uverse via VDSL. We simply dont know what the problem is that AT&T is encountering. It could be something to do with the third HD stream or a equipment issue. The lines aren't necessarily a issue. ATT is only trying to send 32 Mbps down, no where near the magical 50 Mbps VDSL is capable of. Like it or not, VDSL is a proven medium. It's used in many places outside the US, and they do not have the vague line issues you are referring to.

MyDogHsFleas wrote:
Talk about making shit up.

They made a non-publicized internal change to something that's technically quite feasible, they backed off of it because of something (what we don't know), and you're ready to link this to a tens-of-billions-of-dollars investment question and your supposed "knowledge" that VDSL doesn't work?

doublea wrote:
I hate to say it but the 30-50 year old copper in some areas is not making things any better. The Att tech said the only reason why we could not get dsl to my grandmas house was due to the line quality, not distance limitations, and this story has been heard before.

Also VDSL in itself was not a large mistake, it allowed ATT to join the tv world without going broke, atleast we have a choice other than comcrap (or any cable co) and the dish.

twill1989 wrote:
Line quality is a issue for any medium: cable, phone, or electric. On the rare occasion, a line quality issue will arise. As such, that issue cant be the overriding factor behind such a large decision such as VDSL or FTTP, IMO.

So it's official uverse subscribers are back on the 25Mbps profile.

The question remains. What prompted AT&T to back off the 32Mbps profile? We have a few ideas.

Most credible answer. User trparky stated AT&T should reconsider this uverse FTTN thingie and think about deploying fiber all the way to the home.
We don't think VDSL is dead or that the problem is a 3^rd HD stream or equipment malfunction. We think VDSL have it's merits and uses but to stretch VDSL to it's limits that is another story.
We have to define what is 'technically feasible' and under which circumstances (distance, media conditions, electrical and noisy environments) What works in a lab usually doesn't work as planned in real life. Every engineer should design or plan for the worst case scenario. Trying to send a high frequency signal using phone grade twisted pair cable over 1,500ft will not always work or work as planned regardless of the quality of the cable.
Yes, physical line quality is a BIG issue. This picture of a nearby cross box tells it all.
Problems arising from line quality is an issue when one or two subscribers are having problems. When AT&T backs off a global deployment that is considered a disaster.

There goes the new 24/2 internet tier.

UPDATE August 4, 2009 13,200 Mbps a new profile or pair bonding?

While browsing our 3800HG diagnostics logs we came across a very interesting post.

We are not aware of any 2Wire gateway syncing at 13,200 Mbps, could this be a uverse subscriber testing pair bonding or just a VDSL marginal line forced to sync lower? We are inclined to think that the mysterious post is from a gateway using pair bonding but who knows, only time will tell.

Click image to enlarge.

Notice the mode 'G.993.2' instead of 'G.993.1' Also notice 'VDSL Line: Line1(innerpair)' instead of 'VDSL Line: RJ-11' or 'VDSL Line: Coaxial' and Vendor is now 'CXSY' (Conexant?) instead of 'ALCB' (Alcatel) Could the vendor change signfy a change of equipment for uverse gateways? One of the sicking points in uverse and in particularly in uverse static accounts is the lack of a true bridged mode in 2Wire gateways. Perhaps this change in chipset vendors will bring good news.

We'll have to wait and see.

Update

Frequency allocation for xDSL services up to VDSL2+ (lower limit in KHz and upper limit in MHz).

Of course this pair bonding rosy picture is all lab data and we know that real world conditions will vary significantly. For example, current 2Wire gateways using the spectrum above 5Mhz are rare and only gateways very close to the VRAD are able to use the upper part of the VDSL spectrum like this 'lucky' uverse subscriber 600ft away from the VRAD. As distance increases gateways are less and less capable of utilizing the higher part of the VDSL spectrum like this subscriber 1,100ft away. It comes to a point when the distance factor makes it impossible to use any high part of the spectrum, usually above upstream band 1 (US1) that ends at 5.2MHz like this uverse subscriber 2,800ft away.

Update
Conexant VDSL2 bonding solutions white paper. (Document has been removed by Conexant, contact us for more information.)

By reading Conexant VDSL chipset white papers we've noticed an additional step in the fragmentation and reassembly of bonded packets. One question that arouse from this extra step is: Will this extra step add latency to the flow of data? We all know that interleaving adds considerable latency in xDSL technologies and the pair bonding fragmentation and reassembly process resembles the interleave process. Page 24 of the above Conexant PDF document describes in detail the segmentation and reassembly process involved in VDSL pair bonding techniques.

UPDATE August 6, 2009 Ok let's move on, 32Mbps didn't work for all. How about 32Mbps for those under 1,000ft?

Hamlet's final words: 'The rest is silence ...' Suddenly all the 32Mbps and 24/2 Mbps threads became so quiet.

From our data we can conclude that almost all gateways under 1,000ft from a VRAD can handle the 32Mbps profile so why is AT&T not saving some face and upgrade those gateways to the 32Mbps profile, what the heck why not 48Mbps? (not being sarcastic)

We agree that only a handful of homes using FTTN will qualify (until pair bonding is globally deployed or AT&T deploys more VRADs next to our well manicured lawns) but if they count all the FTTP/FTTH subscribers that will add up a few more. So how about it AT&T deal or no deal?

UPDATE August 7, 2009 32Mbps profile back?

The rumor is that AT&T will bring back the 32Mbps tier with shorter distance limitations. At this time it is unknown the new distance limit for the 32Mbps profile but previously AT&T had this number placed at 2,100ft. As we mentioned in our previous entry gateways located around 1,000ft should easily handle the 32Mbps profile.

After all looks like AT&T made the right decision bringing the 32Mbps back to the lucky few very close to the VRAD.

Update Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
A reader correctly reminded us about our December 5, 2007 (yes almost 2 years ago) entry when AT&T was forced to reduce the default profile from 27 Mbps down to 25 Mbps. This reduction of only 2 Mbps did help uverse gateways achieve more stability and solve many problems. We can't understand why AT&T didn't learn from this experience and went ahead with this absurd 7 Mbps increase specially for gateways up to 2,100ft?

After almost 4 years (more if you count pre-trials) AT&T can't keep hiding behind the 'new technology' argument. Today uverse should have evolved to a mature professional service just like Verizon FIOS or cable's DOCSIS3.0 is. Instead uverse subscribers are getting these ~~desperate measures~~ phases in ~~water dropper~~ UVclass increments (PhaseIII, UVClass11, and so on).

Today it looks like AT&T called our bluff and will bring back the 32Mbps profile but at what cost and for which subscribers? Be patient, sit back, relax and watch the sparks fly.

Update An uverse user sent us an incoherent and angry message asking us what we want and what we want to accomplish.
The angry message reminded us of this post on you tube. Just replace every occurrence of Britney with AT&T and you'll get the idea. Warning mature language not suitable for underage viewers.

Leave AT&T alone!

The simple answer is: We want AT&T to deploy a 100% fiber based service similar to Verizon FIOS or get out of the way and let others step in.

Let's keep it civilized shall we?

UPDATE August 10, 2009 G.993.1 vs G.993.2

The big advantage of G.993.2 over G.993.1 is reach. We all know that the VDSL2/VDSL2+ allocated spectrum is up to 30MHz. The last segment in VDSL profile 12a and 12b is assigned to the upstream band 2 (8.5 ~ 12 MHz) This segment is not currently in use by uverse and passively filtered out by AT&T's supplied diplexer.

So to take advantage of more downstream spectrum gateways will have to use bins above 12Mhz. Currently uverse gateways very close (~600ft) to the VRAD can only achieve 2 bits per tone in bins above 7Mhz (maybe 3 in pristine twisted pair lines ) so we find it highly improbable that uverse will use VDSL2 and VDSL2+ to increase downstream capabilities.

That being said, pair bonding have the potential to bring uverse's have not's into the haves community. Pair bonding global deployment is expected at the end of 2009 but with recent ~~problems~~ implementation issues that remains to be seen.

UPDATE August 13, 2009 FIOS and Uverse, the right way and the wrong way, the visionary and the procrastinator, the brave and the fainthearted. A tale of two philosophies.

We've read so many posts from a few easily recognizable over-zealous uverse subscribers/AT&T employees /shills telling us that AT&T is doing it the right way because they have spent this or that amount of money in infrastructure, that (paraphrasing Sarah Palin) they can see AT&T's fiber from their homes, that the fiber is so close that maybe tomorrow it will spawn into their homes and the most important thing; that stockholders and investors are very happy. Furthermore their absurd argument continues stating that uverse is getting the same results as Verizon FIOS who has spent over $18 billion bringing 100% pure fiber technology to the masses. As a customer the least I should care is if stockholders are happy or getting good returns on their investment. My concern should be that I get the best service my hard earned money can buy and that is Verizon FIOS! pure and simple.

But the money spent on uverse is not making too much sense from the number of subscribers standpoint. As a matter of fact it seems that uverse is getting more expensive to install, deploy and maintain than previously planned. In contrast Verizon FIOS is getting less expensive for the 18 million of homes passed and for its 12.5 million FIOS subscribers. By the end of 2009 Verizon will start to see profits from their expensive investment and by 2010 the number of homes passed could reach 33 million.

'The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.'
Ronald Reagan.

UPDATE August 17, 2009 When does VDSL/VDSL2+ really work and work well?

One of the arguments that the FTTN pundits use to support VDSL/2+'s inferior technology (under the circumstances) is that Europe and other countries successfully use VDSL/2+. There are significant differences between Europe, Japan and other countries in the way VDSL/2+ has been implemented. Uverse could work very well if the same conditions are applied here in the US. So which are the differences?

After 2^nd WW most of Europe and Japan's infrastructure was devastated. These countries had to rebuild their telecommunications infrastructure from the ground up with new standards and materials. You will never see in Europe or Japan something similar to this. Today Europe's telecommunication infraestructure is clean, well designed and maintained. Mostly fed by fiber optic cables and in many cases fed by FTTB/FTTMDU (fiber to the building and multi dwelling units.)
Japan's territorial area is about 370,000 Km² the same is true for Germany at 350,000 Km² Most of the European countries have similar territorial areas and population densities. In Japan and Europe most of the people live in department buildings instead of houses spaced at 75 ft intervals making it the ideal implementation for VDSL/2+ solutions. When a VRAD is placed in a building the farthest you can be from the VRAD is maybe 100 ft?
Japan and Europe building codes are more strict than in the US. As mentioned before you will never see something like this in those countries. When you order uverse and AT&T tells you that they are going to 'recondition' the line it means that they are going to send somebody to clean up the mess that somebody should have cleaned up decades ago.
Japan and Europe industrial codes are also more strict than in the US. Interference caused by power lines and other types of interference receive special attention and prompt resolution. Here in Texas we have reported intermittent power line transformer noise at one of our offices for decades with no resolution in sight.
Japan and Europe's implementation of VDSL/2+ is mainly in the form of FTTC and not FTTN as AT&T wants to implement it. FTTC is defined as VDSL/2+ via copper wires up to 1,000 ft. This is why we keep saying that AT&T should give those under 1,000 ft from the VRAD all that their gateways' can achieve.

So hopefully with pair bonding some distance issues will be solved but the future remains bleak with a problematic service stretched to its limits and vulnerable to failure caused by numerous external factors. A service and a company that has no vision or room to expand and grow a service that will remain the 'ugly duckling' of the telecommunications industry for years to come.

A reader sent us these uverse jokes.

How many AT&T employees are needed to successfully install uverse?
-- Five one to run the CAT5 cables and four to see which 2Wire gateway will work. 

How many Christian Scientists does it take to make uverse work?
-- None, but it takes a least four to pray it works.

How many fatalists does it take to make uverse work as planned?
-- It doesn't matter, it barely works.

Thanks Fred.

UPDATE August 19, 2009 Everything you always wanted to know about uverse but were afraid to ask.

A reader sent us a link and asked us why his uverse service becomes unstable during thunderstorms?

This is one of uverse's many dirty little secrets. Uverse service disruptions not only occur during thunderstorm activity but it also occurs when electrical noise and EMI (electromagnetic interference) is present in the area. Thunderstorm activity and other types of interference are known causes of service interruption in xDSL technologies and VDSL/2+ is not immune to this problem.

The thread so far.

Question
T-Storm causes pixelation
I was watching live TV last night for my first time after the install when a thunderstorm came through. Having been a dish owner in the past, I know that outages and pixelation can be a problem with storms. I could watch the lightning flashes outside and the pixelation would occur within seconds.
I never lost signal but any of my recordings will have to be rescheduled unless I want to sit through that anytime I watch it.
I had good signal and good speed when installed. Doesn't the RG or STB have error correction that would have worked around the short static bursts from the lightning?

Answer
Did you have very heavy rain? If yes then the line coming from the VRAD to your house has been cut/open in some way.
I have the same problem but only during heavy rains. I will get a ton of errors and nothing can be done unless a line tech (I&R) is out while it's raining. My issues was caused by the local power company trimming branches. After that I had problems before that no issue. With the way they were hitting the lines I can see why I am having problems.
I would contact Matt/Tier2 (link at top of the forum) to get a tech out to you.

The answer given is misleading, incorrect and ignorant, the twisted pair cable is not 'cut/open in some way' and yes tree branches touching high voltage power lines are known causes for interference but the subject of the question is 'T-Storm causes pixelation.' The truth is that ALL uverse FTTN subscribers are vulnerable to any type of EMI (electromagnetic interference) including thunderstorms and no '(I&R) or hello I'm Matt/Tier2' technician will be able to solve this problem. The only solution is to wait for the atmospheric meteor to pass. So if you want uverse to 'work' find a place to live in a geographical area with low probability of thunderstorm activity and low electromagnetic interference. Uverse FTTP/FTTH subscribers are 100% immune to these type of interferers, see why we want a 100% pure fiber FTTP/FTTH uverse?

UPDATE August 27, 2009 What is worse than one uverse marginal line?

Two uverse marginal lines.

One reader on pair bonding trials sent us his first impressions of how pair bonding is working for him. From his review we can conclude that pair bonding is just a 'band aid' solution designed to add more uverse customers regardless of service quality or reliability. Looks like AT&T is desperate to make this FTTN thingie work as far as 6,000 ft and add as much uverse customers as possible. AT&T needs these customer numbers to justify their lack of vision and pump up their stagnant under-performing stock.

One wonder how a company like AT&T can survive while spending so much money in endless TV english and spanish commercials (2.3 billion dollars in 2008), mail advertisements, corporate sponsors ( Formula1 Williams team , tennis, golf , etc) making disadvantageous deals with Apple's (iPhone), loosing amazing amounts of land lines each quarter, loosing long distance customers to cablecos and VoIP and spending tremendous amounts in salaries and pensions.

Those 2.3 billion dollars spent on the ad campaign would have been better spent on FTTH/FTTP instead of luring customers into their flakey uverse FTTN.

Unfortunately our reader did not include a real email address to contact him back. One question that has not been answered is if pair bonding will add additional latency. Many uverse customers mainly gamers continuously complain about regular uverse's (not pair bonded) interleaved high latency. As we mentioned in our August 4, 2009 entry we suspect that pair bonding will add even more latency to the uverse product.

One thing our reader did include in his assessment of uverse pair bonding is information about FEC/CRC errors. Errors are still there and the numbers are as high as the distance in miles from the Earth to the Sun, in the billions.

UPDATE August 28, 2009 Competition, where are the BIG savings?

Price more than value was one of the most important points uverse pundits made when promoting AT&T's uverse but today uverse cable and DBS consumers are yet to see those BIG savings materialize. As we have reported this before (April 21, 2008 and October 21, 2008) AT&T uverse price increases has placed the service as expensive or more than cable or DBS offerings which bring us to this Broadcasting & Cable article and to this United States Court of Appeals resolution.

It is now well known that AT&T's push for 'franchise reform' was just a ~~con~~ smoke screen designed to blind and confuse states and communities into submission. In fact areas served by uverse now have new toothless consumer protection laws if any, uverse prices are as high or higher than cable or DBS operators while the inferior uverse product remains in the 'new technology' or 'infancy' category.

The resolution issued by the United States Court of Appeals is very good news indeed and a confirmation of the fact that AT&T was not playing it fair. One question remains, what will the future bring? We have a few ideas.

Comcast will aggressively seek mergers with other cable operators (Cox, TWC, Charter, etc.) After all why would Comcast appeal the user cap?
Eventually if mergers are approved Comcast will become a huge company with a huge 'war chest' capable of technologically outspend the telcos.
DOCSIS3.0 will become the de facto standard and 'surgical' 100% pure fiber solutions the next logical upgrade path to compete with that other visionary forward looking company called Verizon and its FIOS product.

Things are going to get very interesting, we wonder if the cheap Comcast stock is a buy?

UPDATE September 11, 2009 Silly merger rumor season.

We came across this very interesting Wall Street Journal article.

As we mentioned in our August 28, 2009 post we entertained the idea of a mega merger in the cable industry perhaps Comcast as the initiator with maybe Time Warner Cable or any other cable company as the surrogate to form a mega corporation. In this blog we usually write about AT&T uverse technical merits and demerits instead of discussing the 'what ifs' or the business strategies but the following WSJ paragraph caught our attention.

If AT&T buys DirecTV, for instance, which could occur in just a few months given a pending reorganization of DirecTV's ownership, the resulting company would have at least 20 million TV subscribers and a national marketing power that cable operators can only dream of. One reason AT&T may be prompted to move soon is that buying DirecTV would mean it could reduce investment in its land-line TV service U-Verse. That would allow it to invest more in adding capacity to its wireless phone network, which is becoming overburdened with heavy iPhone users.

AT&T buying DirecTV is almost a done deal and could be a game changer for the flaky FTTN uverse product as the WSJ reported it. Let's think about it, if AT&T can't (and mostly they still can't) get their act together with uverse it would be easier to funnel those unhappy defecting uverse subscribers to DirecTV than to loose them to the cable companies. A few ~~beads and mirrors~~ visa rebate cards will ~~trick~~ convince defecting ~~Indians~~ uverse customers stay with AT&T and DirecTV. The WSJ continues saying that 'it could reduce investment in its land-line TV service U-Verse' which makes a lot of sense since uverse FTTN will eventually hit a brick wall when it comes to competing with DOCSIS3.0.

DirecTV have a few disadvantages compared to cable operators

High price of TV packages and equipment.
Moderate to mild video compression (not nearly as bad as uverse)
Subject to blackouts/dropouts during snow, rain and thunder storms.

and some advantages

More HD content than some cable companies like TWC
Good quality of the product.
Really 'pretty' user interface and a TV remote with lots of buttons.

What a wonderful and easy way to add 20+ million AT&T TV customers by buying DirecTV right?

UPDATE September 12, 2009 Merger mania.

Merger mania news just keeps comming in.

In this MultiChannel news article Mike Farrell of Multichannel news analyzes the pros and cons of a mega merger.

UPDATE September 14, 2009 WSJ now cable360.

Despite the hype and anticipation of uverse FTTN coming to your ~~city~~ neighborhood uverse FTTN looks like it is heading to the back burner.

This cable360 article have a few interesting points.

We disagree that the iPhone is or will be responsible for a uverse slowdown, the main reason of uverse's FTTN slowdown is consumer education. No one can argue that Verizon's FIOS is the product of the decade and perhaps the century and everybody that can get it gets it, FIOS is the new standard that all ISPs should be measured to. One of the ~~lies~~ uneducated arguments that door to door uverse salesmen use to lure customers away from satellite or cable is that uverse is a '100% pure fiber' solution. A while back we had a chance to see a door knob flyer perpetrating this lie (if some body have this flyer please email it to us so we can post it here)

As tech-savy potential uverse subscribers understand or find out the undelaying technology associated with uverse FTTN the less and less attractive uverse get regardless of all the new and useless gadgets recently introduced like whole house dvr, multiview, etc and not to forget the customized popup ads that uverse customers get based of their browsing habits.

Many thanks to David for the flyer.

UPDATE September 18, 2009 Twisted pair's death have greately understated.

We came across this very interesting Gigaom article.

Verizon the visionary and his CEO Ivan Seidenberg have a very interesting vision of the future of landlines. When it comes to the demise of the landline (century old twisted pair cables) the writing has been on the wall for many years. The 'inevitable decline in landline subscriptions' is just that 'inevitable' As we (our small company) prepare for yet another business customer switching to cable business services (telephone and data) we just wonder how long will it take for AT&T to reach the same conclusion?

The customer in question is an insurance agency with 4 total land lines 3 regular and 1 fax, elite adsl all from AT&T Their monthly bill reach a little above $600 USD including international long distance calls to his offices in Monterrey, Mexico. Their local cable company is Time Warner and they got a contract for 4 business digital phone lines and 10/1 business internet for $187 USD/Mo and 8 cents a minute to his office in Monterrey. Needless to say the owner signed the TWC's installation order and phone number porting order as soon as it arrived. We have seen this tenths of times in the last few years. Of course as soon as AT&T received the port order the owner got a call from AT&T's retention department offering him $128 USD/Mo for 4 lines plus internet plus a long distance plan, as expected he declined AT&T's offer.

We were very surprised to read that AT&T spent $52 USD in 2007 for maintenance of each copper line and those lines are still not up-to-par when the FTTN uverse comes into play. In our area we haven't seen any AT&T trucks for years and the result is this. We have read many times that uverse subscribers are getting their lines 'reconditioned' for uverse. We were more surprised to read that AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson stated that AT&T's landline business was dying. So why continue with this absurd FTTN uverse contraption? It makes no sense.

UPDATE September 25, 2009 Land lines the end of an era.

Almost anyone can remember the scene in The Godfather II movie picture when dictator Fulgencio Batista proudly shows to his guests the ~~bribe~~ gift that the euphemistically called 'United telephone and telegraph company' generously gave him. As the gift passed from hand to hand to Michael Corleone to Hyman Roth the symbolism of the pure solid gold telephone was evident. AT&T was on top of the communications world, who would ever thought that in just a few decades later twisted pair copper cable was going to become outdated and be replaced by radio frequency waves or a stream of pure coherent light?

As we mentioned in our previous entry of September 18, 2009 our company got a contract to upgrade the servers/software and to rewire the whole building for a new telephone system and a new telephone provider. Usually we don't do wiring jobs but our client presented us with an 'offer that we could not refuse.' Anyway, we were not prepared for what we found, decades of neglect, patch cables here and there. Just like a geologist we removed layer upon layer of cables until we reached the original layer perhaps 1970's or 80's technology. We were very surprised by the excellent quality of the original work, the cables were thick multiconductor (25 pair) with blade female edge connectors attached to one end. Everything was well spaced and cut to size, evidently the AT&T technician that made the original installation put a lot of effort and pride in his work unlike today's AT&T technicians.

The owner of the company gave us permission to document and take pictures of before, during and after the installation so we decided to make a webpage explaining the process of going from AT&T's land line to other telephone providers (TWCBC in this case.) The page is under construction and can be reached by clicking in this link.

UPDATE September 29, 2009 Time Warner Cable, the cable industry procrastinator first steps into DOCSIS3.0

The news has been there for a while.
Time Warner Cable delivers 50 Mbps in NYC.
Time Warner Cable Powers Up Wideband In Big Apple.
TWC Speeds Up Internet in NYC.
and from Time Warner's official site.

but a reader sent us a link to the first posted speed tests.

Like user etaadmin said the thing that catched our attention is the 8ms number. Latency is what some users specially gamers pay more attention to and the 8ms latency will be a make or break deal when deciding between uverse internet and DOCSIS3.0 technologies.

If our memory serve us correct TWC highest speed tier in NYC was 15/1, so for a company to jump from 15/1 to 50/5 without expensive or time consuming upgrades (specially in the physical layer) is indeed an amazing achievement. TWC is delivering 233% more downstream and 400% more upstream speeds and all this without powerboost technologies which bring us to the measly 7Mbps increment in uverse's failed 32Mbps profile upgrade.

The writing is on the wall and unless AT&T decides to go full fiber to the premises with their uverse product they will be relegated to a third world company, with ~~dictators~~ CEOs, ~~torture chambers~~ uverse (TV, internet, UVoice, 2wire gateway with static IPs) and ~~Big Brother~~ warrant less surveillance.

It is amazing how much can be accomplished with so little effort.

UPDATE October 7, 2009 G993.2 redux.

As AT&T prepares for uverse pair bonding deployment; according to our sources by the end of October or early November the backscatter noise is starting to pick up. A reader (Tim T.) sent us a message with a link informing us that his gateway's firmware was upgraded to a new version. We have received sporadic reports that some gateways are rebooting and syncing to VDSL2 (G993.2) but what's in this for you?

As we mentioned in our August 10 entry VDSL2 is useless if you have a good line. We doubt that AT&T will bother with your service if they decide or consider that you have a good line. At this time it is unknown if AT&T's 2wire gateways are compatible or firmware upgradeable to pair bonding or if AT&T will provide desperate subscribers in need for more bandwidth (the uverse have not's) new equipment. One thing is for sure that a second pair or a new drop with multiple pairs will be required for those placed in pair bonded installations. Don't despair there are plenty of unused copper pair lines as AT&T shed land lines by the millions each quarter.

So why is VDSL2 useless in 'good' lines? Because the VDSL2 downstream band is allocated above 12 Mhz and to get more downstream bandwidth gateways will have to use the 12 Mhz+ segment, something that the majority of the gateways very close to the VRAD can't achieve. In addition AT&T's own supplied diplexer passively filters out any signal above 8.5 MHz so to increase downstream capacity the only option under the current circumstances is to allocate more bits to the bins in the VDSL downstream bands; DS1 (1.1 ~ 3.5 MHz), DS2 (5.2 ~ 8.5 MHz) and the segment used by adsl.

The main purpose of VDSL2 is reach. AT&T needs to make this uverse FTTN contraption work beyond 2,000 ~ 3,000 ft to make it profitable. To make investors happy if you wish. A service that only works in a confined area is not efficient and/or profitable.

We are surprised to read in many forums that uverse subscribers think pair bonding will benefit all of them. In a sense yes (providing that pair bonding will work as planned) it will help bring the uverse 'have not's' into the 'haves' community but for the average user it will be business as usual, perhaps the ill-fated 32 Mbps profile and the 24 Mbps internet will see a comeback but with Verizon FIOS and the cableco juggernaut news of 50, 60 and 100 Mbps internet, low or nonexistent video compression, multiple SD and HD video streams and inexpensive VoIP and long distance plans this uverse FTTN thingie is getting pretty boring.

UPDATE October 8, 2009 TWC DOCSIS3.0 baby steps. Part II.

We have been following this thread very closely.

As some TWC's wideband subscribers learned the hard way equipment malfunctions and unfinished products can make a big difference in how a new service is perceived by the public. Apparently TWC's wide band SMC router is not up to par to handle TWC's new 50 Mbps DOCSIS3.0 tier. Some resourceful customers went to the extent of going out and buy the Motorola SB6120 wide band modem hoping that TWC will provision the 3^rd party modem, fortunately for them TWC provisioned the modem and saved some face in the process. So far the difference in stability and performance is like night and day. We also love the no frills design of the Motorola SB6120, it is just a box without rounded edges or phallic protrusions. We just wish TWC offer DOCSIS3.0 in our area, which brings us to AT&T's awkward equipment.

We've hear some news that AT&T has a VDSL ~~'adapter'~~ modem in the works for internet only subscribers. As everybody already know potential uverse customers can evade uverse installation fees by ordering TV and internet at the same time and later drop the TV part. You can even get some ~~trinkets~~ visa rebate cards before you cancel the TV part.

Like we mentioned before AT&T likes to prove us wrong, and we love to be proven wrong even when we were right in the first place. As we mentioned in our March 23, 2009 we asked the following question:

Why can't AT&T use VDSL modems like these?

ZyXel VDSL modems.

Netopia VDSL modems.

and the answer is apparently they will. AT&T says that the uverse gateway is 'too expensive' for internet only subscribers and they are planning to offer a VDSL modem to these customers. The brand and features (router or modem) is still unknown but we hope customers and in particular static account customers will be able to bridge the thing and get all the static IPs and choose a different TV provider. This news is indeed good news. We just wish AT&T will prove us wrong and deploy FTTP instead of this FTTN Rube Goldberg awkward contraption.

UPDATE October 15, 2009 Phasing in VDSL2 G993.2, now what?

As more and more uverse gateways get new firmware and reboot syncing to VDSL2 (G993.2) many uverse subscribers are questioning whats in this for me? After the uverse gateway reboots there is no visible or ovious new functionallity, features or bandwith/speed increase. Just a few different numbers in some parts of the 2Wire management web interface pages indicating that a new firmware and that the gateway is now using VDSL2 (G993.2) as we reported in our August 4, 2009 blog entry.

Some relatively new VDSL modulation and PSD techniques have evolved to help VDSL cope with crosstalk and weak signal reception mainly in the form of low SNR.

Ericcson white papers.

But remember these results are laboratory results that ~~never~~ not always follow the conditions and obstacles found in the real world. AT&T has been very quiet with this upgrade perhaps to avoid another 32 Mbps fiasco. After all, this new firmware upgrade and VDSL2 implementation is not putting the uverse gateway under more stress. The profiles and internet speeds are the same, the only thing that changed is the signal's power management and other modulation and DSP algorithms.

So whats in all this for you?

Better power management in the form of better SNR (signal to noise ratio).
Better spectrum management in the form of more immunity to crosstalk.
Probably better reach as the result of the above.
Perhaps better line statistics in preparation for pair bonding.
The appearence that uverse FTTN is doing something for their customers.

What uverse FTTN subscribers will not get?

Less video compression.
Wide band that competes with Verizon FIOS or cable companies (50, 60 or 100 Mbps internet)
Immunity to noise or interference.
A future proof technology.

UPDATE November 1, 2009 VDSL2 G993.2 and the 32 Mbps profile. AT&T's insecure and indecisive steps.

Last week a reader (Thank you Tim) sent us a cryptic email stating that everything was 'looking good on my end.' After reviewing his VDSL line statistics we found out what his words meant. Looks like Tim is one of the lucky uverse subscribers that is very close to the VRAD (1,100 ft) and that AT&T has enabled his gateway for the 32 Mbps profile. See our VDSL database results here. This bring us to AT&T's indecisiveness in enabling the 32 Mbps profile and phasing in VDSL2 G.993.2 (more about G993.2 later in this entry). Looks like today's AT&T is a different AT&T that brought us the 32 Mbps fiasco. Today AT&T seems more insecure, cautious if you want when making big decisions with little, erroneous or hyped information. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.' Enabling the 32 Mbps profile in all gateways because the maximum attainable sync rate is above 32 Mbps falls into the realm of Sagan's quote. OK, back to the point. It is unknown what motivates AT&T to enable uverse gateways to use the 32 Mbps profile but our database show only a handful of uverse subscribers using this enhanced profile. We have to admit that those few gateway statistics look very good indeed albeit being closer than the magic number of 1,000ft from a VRAD.

Now lets talk about G.993.2 VDSL2 shall we? Our VDSL statistics database show quite a few entries showing gateways using VDSL2. Right now is too early to make conjectures about the operation or performance of G.993.2 based on the little information that we have but what caught our attention is the low Final rx gain number in all the G.993.2 database entries. Perhaps this a firmware bug but this number seems too low in addition in one of the VDSL2 G.993.2 database records the gateway retrained with a 'ERR_LOS_LIMIT' which corroborates the low SNR (signal to noise ratio) number. The CRC and FEC numbers look a little bit lower when compared to gateways using G.993.1 which is what we had expected as mentioned in our October 15, 2009 entry. We have not seen gateways using the 32 Mbps profile AND VDSL2 (G.993.2) which is understandable considering AT&T's new timid and insecure attitude.

UPDATE November 4, 2009 Uverse is no longer 'lightspeed', no kidding!

One reader sent us a email asking us why his uverse reverse pointer record no longer contains the word 'lightspeed' in it. Since we don't work for AT&T this question came as a surprise to us and to confirm our friend's observations we searched our logs for uverse domains with the 'lightspeed' word missing and sure enough quite a few results showed up. The new format is 'x-x-x-x.uvs.location.sbcglobal.net' where 'x-x-x-x' is the assigned IP address and 'location' the geographic location of the subscriber. The first entry in our logs is from March 15, 2009 so this has been around for quite some time now.

So there you have it uverse is no longer 'lightspeed' which is a known misnomer since the majority of subscribers are fed by FTTN. Perhaps 'lightspeed-to-the-node' or 'plain-twisted-pair' or 'twistter' should be a more appropriate reverse PTR record.

Update
What prompted the truthful AT&T to change the reverse PTR scheme of their uverse product? Perhaps there's a map for that. and and another one here.

PCWorld article:

AT&T doesn't claim that the information related to 3G coverage is wrong, but rather that customers that view the ads are too dumb to understand that it is only referring to 3G coverage, and not coverage in general.

Do you mean like this uverse flyer that claims that uverse is:

100% pure fiber optic technology for the 21^st century. Lisa, if you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way. Homer Simpson quotes.
New fiber optic cable (to the node)
190 crystal clear digital channels. With severe macroblocking on fast, dark and water scenes.
Installed/Support; AT&T employees. Ah!, Rock Stars... Is there anything they don't know? Homer Simpson quotes.
Easy to Up/Downgrade services. Hello? AT&T sales? Yes, I would like to upgrade to Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH).
30+ HD Digital channels With heavy use of video compression.
Dedicated internet to "You". To me? What a novel idea.
New fiber optic/digital cable (node) Hmm, don't say.
Fast business class/ Secured internet. Internet! Is that thing still around? Homer Simpson quotes.

It takes one to know one.

UPDATE November 27, 2009 VDSL Monitor pre release.

Information can be found in this page.

A redesigned version of the 'old' ADSL/VDSL monitor has been uploaded to this page page.

VDSL Monitor is in ßeta status. The first step is to make sure the tool is able to connect and authenticate with the 2Wire gateway something that we successfully did back in 2008 using the original version of the 2Wire gateway. This project was placed in the back burner until a reader encouraged us to continue developing it. We haven't tested VDSLM with newer versions of the gateway so if you want to try our new toy feel free to download it from the above web page and don't forget to give us some feedback.

There are many differences between VDSLM and the online tool. One of the most important difference is that VDSLM can report in real time the status of the gateway and VDSL line at as low a 10 seconds intervals making it an ideal tool for troubleshooting line condition and error changes.

UPDATE December 1, 2009 Uverse interference?

A fellow Connecticut HAM (thanks Robert C. for the report) sent us a very interesting email claiming that uverse is causing severe interference in his HAM gear.

We are aware that some internet services like BoPL (broadband over power lines) are well known interferers but we were not aware that uverse with its weak DMT modulation was. Recent posts to our VDSL statistics database show a significant number of gateways getting much less CRC/FEC errors. Could Robert C's report be related to the low number of CRC/FEC errors in uverse gateways?

For a gateway to reduce the number of errors without rewiring a drop (from the VRAD to the home) one of two conditions have to be met.

RF output has to be increased.
Better DMT PSD/modulation techniques.

Better PSD/modulation techniques are part of VDSL2 (G.993.2) but most of the gateways with lower CRC/FEC errors are still using VDSL (G.993.1) so higher power output is a plausible explanation. Furthermore higher power output can be achieved by increasing the power level at the VRAD or as a result of colder weather. When a copper conductor cools down their electrical resistance drops.

Today we came across a very interesting QRZ forums HAM blog.

We remember back in the 80's when the FCC ordered cable providers to reduce their egress radiation. The egress energy was so high that we could watch analog cable TV just by placing a coaxial cable a few feet away from the street main drop. If this is the case with uverse will the FCC take action against AT&T? Time will tell.

UPDATE December 5, 2009 As expected VDSL2 results show better handling of noise.

It's no secret that VDSL researchers like Ericsson and other European and Japanese companies are hard at work making VDSLx handle noisy and in particular American noisy phone lines work better with VDSLx technologies.

The free library.
C114.net

Our database show very encouraging results regarding VDLS2 (G.993.2) As expected FEC and most important CRC errors are way down in the reporting parties' gateways. Either the 2Wire firmware is cheating in displaying the errors or the new PSD, VDSL band management and vectorized (crosstalk cancellation) is working, we believe the later is responsible for the reduction in errors.

But what is the compromise? At this time it is unknown (to the consumer) what implications will these new techniques generate. In engineering there is always a compromise between a problem and a solution. In the case of xDSL technologies either you get faster transfer rates or you get low latency, you get faster link rates but you have to use more copper pair lines (SIX! in some of the reports). Time will slowly release its secrets.

On another note VDSL Monitor for 2Wire gateways has reach another milestone. VDSLM has been downloaded 246 times in the past 5 days. We have received positive reports from 36 uverse subscribers asking us for more features. The latest built 0.0.1.4 now have FTP support to upload statistics to a web site and faster graphics.

Our sincere thanks to all of you that have sent comments, requests and bug reports regarding VDSLMonitor.

UPDATE December 7, 2009

Click image to expand.

One reader (thank you Kevin Harper) sent us a couple of pictures of what he thought was AT&T's FTTP/FTTH uverse installed at his neighbor's home. He claims that a AT&T door to door uverse salesman offered him and his neighbor 100% fiber uverse but in reality it was FTTN. These stories have popup many times in the past and in the future they will continue to appear in forums and newsgroups. One military friend once told me that the art of lying it not to actually lie but to make the other person believe what you want him/her to believe (some friend eh? he must be working for AT&T by now, sorry Ken) The truth is that these fiber conduit pedestals are all over and by no means a sign of uverse FTTP/FTTH. Sorry Kevin no FTTP/FTTH uverse for you.

But don't despair with the introduction of VDSL2 you still may get the 32 Mbps uverse profile and perhaps 24 Mbps internet soon. Not that it matter but with news like these

Comcast: 50Mbps speeds to 65% of territory by end of 2009
Comcast launches 50Mbps broadband... for $150 per month
Rogers rolls out 50Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 service, 802.11n router
Cox Launches Faster Internet Speeds in Rhode Island Powered by DOCSIS 3.0
Cablevision loves you, will offer $99 101Mbps uncapped internet service

and from the cable procrastinator poster boy

Time Warner Cable delivers 50 Mbps in NYC.
Time Warner Cable Powers Up Wideband In Big Apple.
TWC Speeds Up Internet in NYC.
and from Time Warner's official site.

24 Mbps internet is old news.

UPDATE December 9, 2009 Finally! Uverse's super-duper turborized 24 Mbps internet tier is back.

As predicted in our October 7 entry and confirmed today AT&T finally has re-introduced the 24 Mbps internet tier. We were expecting it by late October or early Novemeber it came out just a little bit late but now that it is here does it really matter?

As we mentioned in our previous entry, news from the cable juggernauts of 50, 60 and 100 Mbps have eclipsed uverse's recycled 24 Mbps tier. Just today Cox announced its new 50/5 tier for las Vegas, NV. Cox new internet tier is 108% faster on the download and 67% faster on the upload than uverse's recycled 24 Mbps tier and that is without even trying!

Other things to consider is that competing cable companies have much better picture quality than uverse has regardless of what just a few uverse subscribers say. It is a fact that uverse SD image compression bit rates 'hover' around 5.5-6.5 Mbps We would say more around 4.5-5.5 and this is not good. So will the new 32 Mbps profile improve this severe uverse limitation or AT&T will squeeze another HD stream into the service or both? With the introduction of AT&T's new uverse TOS (terms of service) our guess is that AT&T will turn the notch up on image quality and sacrifice internet (bandwidth) speed as more TV streams are in use. In a few words it is a balancing act between TV watching and internet surfing, the more TVs are on the less bandwidth (slower internet speed) available for internet.

The re-introduction of AT&T's uverse 24 Mbps internet tier is just a very small response to the overwhelmingly news of 50, 60 and 100 Mbps internet. We remember back in 2000 when AT&T had a lead with the 6 Mbps tier when TWC had only 1 Mbps. Over the years that changed to 2 Mbps to 4 Mbps to 8 Mbps to 10, 15, 20 and in the present to 50 and 100 Mbps. Today AT&T is lagging behind the cableco juggernauts internet speeds by more than 50%! Uverse's picture quality (despite all the image manipulation tricks) is at the lowest quality of the industry.

Some overzealous shills like to argue that uverese FTTN works, that milking copper saved AT&T billions and that their 401K's are doing fine. Well, yes FTTN works but does it work as well as a 100% fiber solution (FTTH/FTTP) do? Is uverse FTTN future proof capable of surpassing or even match DOCSIS3.0 cable? We don't think so.

UPDATE December 18, 2009 A more stable VDSL2? What is the compromise.

We have received a couple of messages stating that uverse first hop latency has increased after the introduction of VDSL2. Another reader sent us the following link. As we all know by increasing the interleaved 'depth' engineers and VDSL2 implementors can achieve more stability in xDSL technologies. As mentioned in our December 5 entry some kind of compromise had to be reached in order to calm down the CRC/FEC error 'epileptic seizures' present in some uverse subscriber's VDSL2 gateways.

Some clues are evident (if the gateway's GUI is reporting it right) lower upstream and downstream max sync rates and much lower signal to noise ratios (SNR) We suspected an increase in latency but we were not sure. In ADSL technologies the interleaved depth is an adjustable variable ranging from 1 to 64 with 1 no interleave and 64 the the maximum interleave depth and therefore the maximum introduced latency. We are busy looking into our VDSL2 papers looking for VDSL2 maximum interleave figures but we haven't been able to find them so if any of our readers have this or know where to find this information please send us a message. In the mean time people with VDS2 enabled keep an eye on the gateway's latency.

From the beginning interleaving and latency has been a thorn in AT&T uverse FTTN product. Apparently uverse's intrinsic latency has not been received very well by uverse subscribers. Not sounding like Glenn Beck but has VDSL2 stability been achieved by increasing the interleaved depth and thus adding latency? In VDSL2 enabled gateways the GUI is reporting a delay of 7.8 ms (milli seconds) that is a gain (in favor) of 0.1 ms compared to gateways using plain VDSL. Could the gateway GUI be reporting incorrect information?

UPDATE December 26, 2009 Happy holidays! Uverse alchemists and other things.

One reader ( Thank you Romeo C.) sent us this link and asked us if the profile was real and how to qualify for it.

Yes, the database entry appears to be legitimate.

First, our friend needs to be about 300 miles closer to the north (from Pharr, TX to San Antonio, TX) to even consider uverse. Second, not all of San Antonio is covered by uverse so he has to choose a neighborhood that is wired for uverse. Third, only a very small number of homes in that neighborhood will be within the magic number of 'less than' 1,000 ft from the VRAD and then and only then he might get that profile. Like Romeo said; His chances of hitting the Texas MegaBall jackpot are far better than getting uverse and the 36,200 mbps profile in Pharr TX, roughly a 1 in 1,175,711,536 chance.

On another topic, it seems that the ADSL alchemists graduated to VDSL/2+ sometime this year. The endless discussions of VDSL this and VDSL2 that and my twisted pair have this and your twisted pair have that and your pair have a left-handed twist but mine is right-handed and on and on and on.

Let's not forget that the maximum sync rate reported by the gateway is an estimate a best case scenario if you wish but not even that. It is a mathematical calculation based on the theoretical maximum capacity of a system considering real world factors like tone SNR (signal to noise ratio), bin load and attenuation.

QAM

2Wire's algorithms used to calculate this value are proprietary an in our opinion misleading and useless. Someone commented that the 'maximum' value in VDSl2 is capped at some x value, how can someone 'cap' a calculated value? The 2Wire gateway is not even syncying to this number. 2Wire should 'fix' this number to a more pleasant value, lets say 100 Mbps and forget about it. This way everybody will get the 'placebo' effect and be happy.

UPDATE December 28, 2009 Uverse VDSL2... the surgical procedure was a success but the patient died.

First, our most sincere thanks to all of you that have contributed to further develop our 3800HGV online tool and VDSLMonitor. Special thanks to:


Tim T. from San Antonio, TX. Super feedback!

Eric G. from Ohio. Super feedback!

Chris H. from Connecticut.

Robert N. from Chicago, IL for allowing us to remotely connect to his PC. Thank you very much!!!

John B. from Fort Worth, TX

Tom P. from from Cleveland, Ohio

Ronald F. from Florida for letting us know that VDSLM doesn't work with FTTH/FTTP uverse ;)

Rob C. from Rhode Island


If we missed any of you our most sincere apology and let us know so we can add you to the list.

The 'surgical procedure was a success' part.

Judging from the VDSL2 data that has been posted to our 3800HGV online tool we have reached some preliminary conclusions. As mentioned in our October 15 entry and in our December 5 entry VDSL2 came at the perfect time (four years after uverse's introduction) to quell uverse's CRC/FEC epileptic episodes. As expected the new PSD, modulation and crosstalk abatement techniques developed by Ericsson and other companies have stabilized some uverse gateways. CRC and FEC errors continue to escalate but at a lower pace and in gateways located 1,000 or less from the VRAD (what VDSL2 should be used for) the errors are negligibly.

The 'but the patient died' part.

Do all this really matter? Especially with the gigantic steps that the cableco juggernauts are making. If the numbers are right and we have serious doubts that they are. After all would you trust a company that has lied and continues to lie to the public in every aspect of their operations ( G3 wireless coverage, blame the 3% of our iPhone customers that use 40% of the bandwidth, our users don't need more than 3Mbps internet, you will get a $250 cash back card, we don't spy on the traffic passing trough our network and the best one for last. Reform the franchise system and prices will go down and availability will increase)... didn't we pay millions of dollars in the 70's and 80's to deal with this monopoly? Back to the point, the fact is that competition especially from the cablecos in the form of phone, internet and TV is better positioned to deliver a far better product than AT&T is. For example, where we live uverse is not available and we seriously doubt that it will be available in the near future first because the cable infrastructure is so old and neglected that AT&T will have to replace most parts of it in order to make uverse barely work. The same was true for the cableco infrastructure in the mid 1990's but then TCI (telecommunications incorporated) now TimeWarner did a wonderful job in upgrading the system.

Our current internet choices are AT&T's ADSL 1.5-6.0 Mbps/784 Kbps or cable 20/1 Mbps with powerboost ~30/2 Mbps. Our TV choices are DishNetwork, DirecTV or cable. For phone it is AT&T's phone and their 'satellite' reseller companies, cable's digital phone or VIOP like Vonage etc. We are a lot more exited to the prospect of DOCSIS3.0 coming to our area than the availability of uverse. Some of us have 4 or 5 HD TVs in our homes with 3 or more in use at the same time. We all are very interested in 50/5 Mbps or more internet and if it became available today we would sign for it ASAP.

The current form of uverse is more expensive than cable or satellite, availability is severely restricted, service is not homogeneous across the service area (some will get better service than others based not on price but geographical location), the 'bang for the buck' is not the same as with FIOS or cableco offerings. We would like to see uverse offered in our area not because we want it but because of the effect it can have on competition, we want uverse to scare the 'bejesus' out of other TV/Interent providers in order to stir up their competitive juices... that ain't gonna happen.

UPDATE December 30, 2009 VDSL3?

One reader from Brazil (thanks Joao R.) sent us a 'see I told you so' message and some very interesting VDSL2+ chips application notes and schematics. In fact the new VDSL2 modulation, power and spectrum management techniques did not exist until recently so when uverse was originally deployed the technology was doomed form the start and the proof is that 4 years after uverse the problems still persist in gateways using VDSL. So what can save uverse FTTN?

Based on the information that Joao sent us, the simple answer is DSM/vectoring. DSM (dynamic spectrum management) is an ingenious solution developed by Ericsson in Kista, Sweden (those darn Europeans stole our ideas... again) DSM currently has four levels ranging from level 0 (static spectrum management) to level four (multiple input/ multiple output crosstalk abatement) One interesting level is vectoring. Alcatel originally opposed this technology stating that the computational power was too high for today's chips (we wonder if this is why the vendor in VDSL2 gateways is Conexant)

DSM's levels handle a variety of techniques ranging from INP (impulse noise protection), delay (latency) bit swapping and vdsl spectrum management which bring us to this article.

Looks like an Israeli company ECI (those darn Israelites stole our ideas... again) is taking VDSL2 to the next level and that is VDSL3. DSM and SRA are computational intensive techniques that work and work very well. With SRA (seamless rate adaptation) the processor chip continually evaluates (thus the computational drawback) the statistics (SNR of each tone, errors etc). When a source of interference is present the receiver evaluates if the new conditions require a change of operational parameters and notify the transmitter of the needed changes. When the transmitter receives the message with the request and parameters like tone SNR, power settings and number of bits per tone it replies back with a 'sync flag' This flag contains the scheduled time for the proposed change. Needless to say this constant monitoring requires the modem/gateway processor to spend a lot of time doing monitoring chores.

DSM is another computational intensive process. According to the documents obtained by adslm.dohrenburg.net there are three different techniques or types and four levels.

DSM types:

IMP Impulse noise protection.
Spectrum balancing.
Multiple input/Multiple output vectoring

INP:
This type takes care of noise caused by electronic/electrical devices (like electrical ranges, A/C, electrical motors, security lightning etc) The new 2Wire gateway firmware shows some very interesting 'new' parameters The first one is the addition of INP and Delay for the upstream channel. These new parameters are listed in the American National Standards Institute's DSM standards.

Spectrum balancing.
This type actively adapts and eliminate 'chunks' of the VDSL spectrum that might be problematic due to crosstalk and/or external interference. For example; if the receiver (STB, gateway, VDSL modem) is near a predictable source of RF interference the receiver can eliminate (filter out) the offending segment of the VDSL spectrum.

Multiple input/multiple output. Vectoring
This method handles and manages multiple signals (pairs) and coordinates the management of crosstalk.

From all the types vectoring is the one that promises the more potential. Vectoring could very well be the miracle that saved uverse FTTN by increasing reach and bandwidth. Along the VDSL2 technical documents obtained by adslm.dohrenburg.net we received a sample of a VDSL2+ device using the spectrum up to 17 MHz (a true VDSL plan 17a) at more than 2,000ft. Needless to say vectoring can easily enable gateways to use VDSL2+ plan 30a (up to 30MHz)

What is the drawback to all this? The quick answer is processing/computational power Something that can easily be solved by moving things around and making the right decisions now rather than later. For example Some uverse subscribers know that the 2Wire gateway is not very good at handling too much traffic and that putting a router in the pseudo DMZ+ can help the 2Wire gateway handle traffic better. Now it is time to delegate (bridge the thing, RFC-1483) and let a real router handle some of the traffic.

Maybe AT&T can still pull this one off and make it relatively successful. We still think that AT&T's original uverse FTTN idea was stupid and short sighted and if it wasn't for this new VDSL techniques uverse would be still doomed. Time will tell if these new VDSL technologies will make uverse successful when compared to FIOS or the cable juggernaut offerings.

UPDATE January 5, 2010 POTS -- AT&T to FCC tell us what to do.

As mentioned it multiple times the end of the POTS era is imminent (something that AT&T didn't know until we told them) The writing was on the wall years ago and today the writing is still on the wall with bright yellow letters on a red background. POTS is dead or dying. AT&T and the end of POTS

But what is POTS (plain old telephone system) why should it be 'phased out' and what relation is here with uverse FTTN?
If we carefully analyze the effects we can easily find the causes. POTS is not the technology that is dying, in reality the part that lost its luster is twisted pair cables, you know the transport medium used by +95% of uverse subscribers. So why did AT&T suddenly in an an episode of divine lucidity reached this conclusion? To find some of the answers we need to read this document

For this discussion/presentation please insert the DVD labeled The sting or if you have the sound track of the movie just set your CD player to continuously play the main theme or just go youtube.

The first con.

I. PHASEOUT OF CIRCUIT-SWITCHED POTS SERVICE AND THE PSTN IS ESSENTIAL TO ACHIEVING UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO BROADBAND ...... 3
A. Universal Broadband Access Is a Critical National Priority .......................................................... 3
B. POTS Service and the Legacy PSTN Are Diverting Critically Needed Funds that Could Be Used for Broadband Deployment .. 8

(I.A)
'Universal access to broadband a critical national priority.' What is so critical about 'broadband access' that require the intervention of the FCC? Illegal file trading? Watching porn?

(I.B)
'POTS Service and the Legacy PSTN Are Diverting Critically Needed Funds that Could Be Used for Broadband Deployment.' Critically needed funds? What happened to all the profits that AT&T made inprevious years? Instead of reinvesting the profits they went right into the deep pockets of 'special' investors and wasted in endless advertising campaigns featuring Tiger Woods and many others lying about their G3 coverage. Most unpleasant are AT&T's latest commercials featuring the disagreeable Luke Wilson. AT&T's commercials used to be good with good music (specially those featuring the Apple iPhone) but after Verizon forced them to 'react' they now look like stupid child rants, the latest AT&T's commercials are as bad as Time Warner's featuring Mike O'Malley.

The Set-Up/The Great Henry Gondorff AT&T

II. THE COMMISSION SHOULD TAKE SEVERAL STEPS TO FACILITATE THE TRANSITION TO BROADBAND ............................................................................ 14
A. Setting a Firm Deadline for Sunset of the PSTN ........................................................ 14
B. Creating the Preconditions for a Successful Transition Through the Resolution of Several Longstanding Issues ....................................................................................... 16
C. Seeking Comment on a Range of Legal and Policy Questions Related to the Transition .................................................................................................................... 23
1. Carrier-of-Last-Resort and Other Potential Legacy Obstacles to the Transition ........ 24
2. ILEC Obligations under Section 251 of the 1996 Act ................................................ 26

(II)
The commission SHOULD NOT act on behalf of AT&T and let the market and consumers decide on the faith of obsolete technologies. If fleeing consumers are killing POTS then let POTS die a natural death with out any government intervention.

(II.A)
Setting a 'firm deadline'? That time has already come and gone, that time is NOW. AT&T has been loosing landlines right and left for the last few years. The only person we know that still use AT&T's land lines is our janitor lady and that is only because she is under the 'life line' low income program paying around $15.00 a month for no long distance and a limited number of calls per month.

(II.B)
Preconditions? Like let us manipulate our stagnant AT&T stock price and avoid sharp drops due to fact that our landline product is dead? What kind of impact do you think this news is going to make in the price of AT&T stock? For a successful transition to where? People have already gone trough a successfull transition to other solutions. For example Comcast is now the third largest phone company in the US and this only the beginning. Consumers don't need the FCC telling them who or where to go for phone service.

(II.C and II.C.1-2)
Comments have been already made by AT&T's lobbyists and passed on to the members of the commission so when AT&T is sitting at the hearing they will be listening to the comments that they made, no surprises here. The surprising part is the 'carrier-of-last-resort' we wouldn't be surprised if the commission gives AT&T that honor. Look it like the health care reform 'MUST HAVE INSURANCE' clause that force US citizens regardless of their ability to afford it or not to buy a health care policy or face increasing penalties of $95 for the first year and up to +1000 for the years ahead.

The hook.

3. Public Safety, Law Enforcement, and Accessibility Issues ........................................ 27

(II.C.3)
Public safety? We think the industry has already done a good job with E911 and as for 'Law enforcement and accessability issues' we all know where all this is leading to right?

Hooker Hooked By The Feds.

4. Eliminating the PSTN Regulatory Superstructure ...................................................... 29

(II.C.4)
For the 'elimination of the regulatory superstructure' it is the video franchise reform fiasco all over again.

The Big Con.

It is very interesting to see that the underlying technology in which uverse rides on is considered to be a dying technology. AT&T euphemistically is calling it the death of POTS but in reality it is the end of the twisted pair era.

Let's hope consumer groups and other competitors have a say in this matter.

UPDATE January 6, 2010 Loyalty have its limits?

This morning while reading the news one of us came across a very interesting thread.

Like many of you know lots of people have been ~~victimized~~ censored by the so called ~~tyrants~~ moderators in some internet forums. Every comment that is not in line with the 'general' consensus of the group is subject to ridicule or censorship (removed from the thread) so the tone that these threads have taken is a homogeneous politically-correct lame babble where active and inquisitive minds are depressed and or excluded.

Some people have called our blog 'overly negative' something that we never intended to be. If pointing out the merits and severe flaws in something is considered 'overly negative' then we plea guilty as charged. Our original intention was to persuade AT&T to reconsider the deployment of FTTN and deploy FTTH/FTTP something in what we failed miserable which brings us the the above thread.

Many of those appeasers that censored and criticized others for speaking up their minds are now changing their opinion about AT&T? We were very surprised by the comments posted in that thread. We were told that these people are 'regulars' and known AT&T supporters.

Poster1
I will likely be giving up 3 Mb/s Internet. I am right on the edge of what it is worth as it is.

I have no clue; but any increase under $5 a month is hardly worth it. My guess for Pro is that the price will rise to at least $35 a month, and maybe even on a par with AT&T Southeast (where 3.0 Mb/s "FastAccess" is $37.95 a month).
...
But seriously, a price hike of the magnitude of AT&T Southeast tiers would make Comcast an economically feasible option for me. Unless I just drop back to lower speed of service.

Poster2
An increase in Elite pricing better come with faster speed, better performance and matching or surpassing T/W's best offering in N.Tx or (as much as I hate cable companies in general) I'll be switching to T/W HS Data w/o a second thought.
...
I'm moving to a downstairs apartment next month, I may just drop all three SBC/AT&T services (POTS, Cell and DSL)

Poster1
Likely the fastest they would offer is 7 M-.768 k. Unless they upgrade the plant to ADSL2.
...
As a rule, ADSL can't keep up with DOCSIS 3.0.

Poster3
My family keeps asking me why we don't switch to cable service. The argument about price looks like one which will be harder for me to make. The lack of UVerse development to my house while it is all around me is further disappointing me. I am feeling that at&t may be leaving me in broadband purgatory, while Comcast is clearly making an effort to provide upgrade paths. Although if significant metered limits do happen a small price increase may not seem so bad.

Poster2
Arguing that ADSL can't keep up with something that is NOT available to me in Dallas TX is an EMPTY argument TW/RR does not have DOCSIS 3.0 anywhere in N.Texas (per their tech dept yesterday, no plans exist either), FIOS is also a non-available option here. Essentially they don't cross each others legacy borders. AT&T only does it because of the legacy copper into the home.

The only offering AT&T is giving me for better speed/performance is their newly bumped up U-VERSE tiers. Impressive yes but it only comes bundled with their crappy TV product. I don't want their overpriced crappy TV product anywhere near me.

Poster4
It will be *very* interesting to see how much AT&T will raise DSL prices. If the Pro package (3/768) will cost anything beyond $35/month, I think I'll be switching back to Comcast. The price difference between the two services ($43 vs $35, $8 difference) will become too small considering the speed difference (12 vs 3 Mbps, 9 Mbps difference).

Regarding potential/current caps, yeah I know AT&T is not capped yet but I think I can live with Comcast's 250 GB cap.

Poster5
Think I'll have to jump to Comcast as well if prices increase too much to my liking. Given my performance issues since AT&T bought Bellsouth, this may be the thing that moves me to Comcast.
Yes, Comcast has caps, but I don't doubt AT&T is headed that way as well. Plus I don't download enough to hit those limits.

All of the posters above are ~~tyrants~~ moderators or what that group calls them 'MVM' an urban gang-like hierarchical degree based on who-you-know so for these people to make such comments as to 'think' about switching to cable is indeed an amazing 'thought-crime'

Interesting to note that AT&T's alternative miracle upgrade path is uverse. One poster claims it is all around him but not available and it has 'further disappointed him' It's not a good feeling to be on the wrong side of the fence isn't it? It is OK to censor criticism from others but when the bad or lack of service affects 'me' it is not OK, right? That poster should listen to his family and get cable instead of promoting a bad and unfair service and be used as a censorship weapon against others.

While browsing our refferer logs we came across a very amusing blog located here Amrit Williams Blog Looks like AT&T employees and shills tried to hijack Amrit's blog but failed one very amusing entry is from an AT&T uverse installer (Mr. 3.90 GPA) it is worth reading.

UPDATE January 8, 2010 The future of 3D-DHTV and the implementation or lack of in AT&T's Uverse.

A reader (thanks to Gabriel Morrow from Tennessee for the insight and link) sent us a very interesting comment about 3D-HDTV.

Apparently Gabriel is attending the CES (consumer electronic show) in Las Vegas, Nevada where 3D-HDTV is supposedly 'a huge thing.' We are no fans of 3D-HDTV but we can see the explosive potential that this technology can have. The question is how much bandwidth is required for 3D-HDTV and how will the additional bandwidth impact uverse FTTN?

According to some sources 3D-HDTV requires a full 6 MHz segment for each channel. DirecTV says that a simple firmware upgrade will enable their receivers to use 3D-DHTV and cable companies with 860 MHz and in some cases +1 GHz bandwidth plants will have to find new ways to optimize their allocated bandwidth. Needles to say Verizon FIOS, DBS and cable companies are perfectly positioned to handle 3D-HDTV explosive growth which lead us to uverse FTTN.

Uverse's FTTN allocated bandwidth is (at the time of this writing) 8.5 MHz passively limited by AT&T's own supplied diplexer and by AT&T's twisted pair inherited limitations. Uverse's HD/SD TV streams are severely compressed to the point that rendering (retouching image tricks) techniques are used to make them look good but this image manipulation tricks alter the contents of the original work and what uverse subscriber's are watching is not the original work. Some subscribers have told us that some TV streams look 'cartoon-ish-like' not to be confused with the Cartoon Network.

So how can AT&T implement 3D-HDTV in their uverse product? Once again just as soon (four years after uverse's introduction) as AT&T manages to balance uverse's limitations there is a new technology that threatens to delegate uverse FTTN even further to the back of the pack. We are skeptics about 3D-HDTV but after reading more about 3D-HDTV we can see the potential especially within the gaming community. Gamers can catapult this technology earlier rather than later, maybe in 2-3 rather than in 5-10 years we will see 3D-HDTV's explosive growth. TV manufacturers are ready for 3D-TV with new and exiting products.

OK, enough already. So how can AT&T implement 3D-HDTV in their uverse product? One quick answer is pair bonding for everybody not just for the lost souls too far from the VRAD but for everybody and even then AT&T's uverse will still be on the back of the pack. Paraphrasing this visionary AT&T employee we can almost hear AT&T's top brass say 'Our clients don't need 3D-HDTV, what are you going to do with 3D-HDTV? It's like having an Indy race car and don't have a race track to drive it on. All these bells and whistles are nice for the casual user but what we are offering today is comparable to fill-in-the-blank, the product that we are offering today meets the needs of 90% of our users. We have 50+ years in network experience and the 3D-HDTV technology that is being touted today is not there yet. We have trials of 5D-HDTV in a place called chili-picante and hemp farms in Texas and I can tell you that we cannot prove it economically and our stock holders and our stock price and this and that and blah, blah, blah.'

UPDATE January 11, 2010 Our 2009 referrer logs.

While browsing our 2009 logs we came across a very interesting statistic. As you all know HTTP header fields contains very interesting information. One piece of information is the referrer (referer) field which is sent by servers indicating where the request for the page came from.

In our server 98% of the requests came from search engines like Google with 87%, Yahoo 11% and Bing 2%, the remaining 2% came from links to other websites and blogs. The interesting part about the referrer field is that Google, Yahoo and Bing include search words. For example when you search Google for 'uverse' and 'profile' the referrer field will include these words in the result so administrators reading the logs can get a general idea of what the user was looking for when he/she requested the search.

Example of referrer logs:

2009-12-10 21:07:12 99.x.x.x    uverse.php                     US 99-x-x-x.lightspeed.oshkwi.sbcglobal.net
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&ei=l6NKS_m1FZWANrjJtI8J&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&ved=0CAkQBSgA&q=uverse+pixelation&spell=1

2009-01-10 13:29:29 76.x.x.x    uverse.php                     US 76-x-x-x.lightspeed.irvnca.sbcglobal.net
http://www.google.com/search?q=uverse+adding+a+second+hd+stream+causes+errors%3F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

2009-01-10 09:16:30 65.x.x.x    uverse.php                     US adsl-65-x-x-x.clt.bellsouth.net
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=how+does+att+uverse+work&ei=UTF-8&fr=

2009-01-10 12:59:39 99.x.x.x    uverse.php                     US 99-x-x-x.lightspeed.iplsin.sbcglobal.net
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-887&p=u-verse+hd+problem&SpellState=n-4199593771_q-6WPj%2FRaEvKmiNDtv7djNTgAAAA%40%40&fr2=sp-top

2009-01-09 18:13:32 99.x.x.x    uverse.php                     US 99-x-x-x.lightspeed.tukrga.sbcglobal.net
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu7p2KElLtl0BNRRXNyoA?fr2=sg-gac&sado=1&p=u-verse%20picture%20quality&fr=yfp-t-885&pqstr=U-Verse%20Picture%20&gprid=ub8pi0BbQ0qAfpckeZ9M1A&sac=1&sao=2

2009-12-09 18:35:44 99.x.x.x    uverse.php                     US 99-x-x-x.lightspeed.rcsntx.sbcglobal.net
http://www.bing.com/search?q=uverse+egress+profile&mkt=en-us&FORM=IE8SRC

2009-12-10 18:57:43 67.x.x.x    uverse.php                     US adsl-67-x-x-x.dsl.sndg02.pacbell.net
http://www.bing.com/search?q=uverse++low+profile+no+connection&form=QBRE&qs=n

The interesting part is that Google produced more than 87% of the results and words like 'pixelation, errors, problems' were common search words especially in results requested from uverse domains. Looks like Google have a strong hold in the search engine market no wonder why Jim Carmer of MSNBC and many others 'love' Google but back to the point, the other interesting part is that the results from Yahoo are a lot more 'sanitized' we haven't seen Yahoo search requests with words like 'pixelation' or 'high errors' etc. Since AT&T have economic ties with Yahoo we wonder why is this happening? We leave that question to be answered by the conspiracy theorists. With Bing is too early to comment with only 2% of the hits.

The point is that our web page was hit hundred of thousand of times during 2009 that is a 120% increase from 2008. Most of the hits contain search words like 'uverse, pixelation, errors, freeze, lockup, image quality' and the requests usually come from users within uverse domains.

Very interesting indeed,

UPDATE January 20, 2010 Uverse lightning interference, AT&T wireless spending and other things.

We have covered this topic so many times but one reader (thanks Roger) sent us this link asking us if it is true that lightning storms 'can' cause loss of service in uverse FTTN.

Q.
Is it possible a lightning storm that we are having in the area caused uncorrectable blocks? I have had 97 uncorrectable blocks since the storm. The tv and internet seem to be operating as normal it us just the uncorrected blocks which i don't usually get. I have at time had corrected blocks which is also high during this storm at 19795.

A.
Yes, lightning storms can generate interference that impacts U-verse, Cable and even Sat TV. I have all underground utilities from the VRAD to my home and I also see Corrected Blocks and Uncorrectable Blocks during active lightning.

Lightning storms DO CAUSE serious disruption of service in uverse FTTN installations, it is not a matter of if but how serious. The closer the atmospheric meteor to the VRAD or subscriber the stronger the impact will have in uverse's service. Thunderstorms don't have to be nearby it can be as far as 15-20 miles away to cause interference in xDSL systems. Interference in xDSL technologies.

Unlike FTTN uverse cable and satellite are much less vulnerable but not immune to lightning interference. First with cable because of a far superior shielding and much higher frequencies in the VHF/UHF range instead of MF/HF range like uverse. Second with satellite systems the frequency range is in the microwave region. The weak link in satellite TV systems is the free space loss and attenuation of the microwave signal due to presence of water (vapor and rain) in the atmosphere not by lightning itself. So saying that cable and satellite systems are as vulnerable as FTTN uverse is not entirely correct and misleading.

Analyst: AT&T needs to spend 5 billion dollars to catch up.
... and another 5B in uverse and another 5B in 'reconditioning' their copper lines and another 5B in this and that. Looks like AT&T is not spending anywhere. While Verizon and Comcast were fast to react to the Haiti humanitarian crisis AT&T was surprisingly silent and unresponsive, AT&T's reaction to the crisis was like the greedy company that we all know. AT&T first issued a statement saying that they were 'examining the possibility' and later throwing in a few crumbles (Update | 4:09 p.m. Adding comment from AT&T at end.) in response to overwhelmingly positive response from other socially responsible companies like Verizon and Comcast. We are sure that 'examining the possibility' will bring water and food to the desperate Haitian people, way to go AT&T.

AT&T Drops Fight Over Maps in Verizon Ads
Looks like AT&T agreed with us and decided to drop those stupid Luke Wilson (Verizon bashing) TV commercials... maybe comparing them to TWC Mike O'Malley's commercials did the trick? Now if we could persuade TWC to do the same.

AT&T may well have decided to withdraw because Judge Timothy C. Batten, who held a hearing on Nov. 19 on its case in Atlanta, rejected its motion for a temporary order blocking the Verizon ads. And he said rather explicitly that he didn’t believe AT&T would prevail in its suit based on the evidence submitted so far.

Judge Batten stated:
'I think that a person with a skeptical bent of mind might call Verizon’s ads sneaky, as I indicated earlier. I think a more sanguine view is that they are simply clever. Either way, however, they are literally true. And the Court holds that AT&T has failed to carry its burden of showing that they are nevertheless misleading.'

Verizon, in fact, is continuing to mercilessly taunt AT&T with its maps. Jeffrey Nelson, a Verizon spokesman, said that its ad campaign had not changed in any respect. Indeed it unveiled a new Christmas-themed TV ad (below) in which Santa criticizes one of his reindeer for having a cellphone coverage map from AT&T, rather than Verizon.

Maybe Santa will give AT&T a new set of crayons this year.

What is AT&T going to do with their new crayons? Use your imagination.

UPDATE January 25, 2010 Unrelated to uverse. This week may be our lucky week.

According to the Boy Genius Report AT&T may lose iPhone exclusivity this week. Apple users/fans (some of us included) and iPhone users could get the news that they (we) have been waiting for. Many of you know Apple will introduce their 'latest creation' on Tuesday, January 27 in San Francisco. Apple's latest creation is widely expected to be a touch-screen tablet device called the iSlate.

Among the iSlate announcement Apple is expected to release the new iPhone 4.0 which could be a hint to the end of AT&T's exclusivity. Needless to say the end of exclusivity and this week's quarterly earnings report can sling shoot Apple's stock to new heights after loosing more than 10 dollars on Friday, ouch! If Apple's stock skyrockets we will be very happy which brings us to AT&T's stock price. We all know that AT&T's wireless profits are very important and if they loose the iPhone exclusivity it is going to be a massacre with many existing iPhone clients abandoning their mediocre wireless service. The question is: How is AT&T stock going to handle these news? We'll have our answer in the next few days.

Update:
Those of us who grew up with Doom, the 7^th Guest and many other DOS games never understood the rationale behind the migration to the Windows gaming environment. In windows, games have to share CPU cycles with other processes not related in any way or form to the game being played which brings us to this very interesting article. Apparently games and social networking is what Apple's tablet is all about, just imagine a highly efficient gaming machine running not OSX but a compact and fast iPhone OS. No CPU cycles or disk access time lost here or there in unrelated processes. Quite a few companies should be worried if Apple's 'latest creation' becomes a hit.

Amazon's kindle.
Google's chrome OS
A new gaming console?
Sony's Reader.

Companies that can ride on Apple's success.

Netflix?
Barns & Noble, Amazon, any electronic book distributor.
Electronics Arts already in.

UPDATE January 26, 2010 The end of AT&T's iPhone exclusivity, the plot thickens.

Probably the same guy that sent us the angry 'leave AT&T uverse alone' message back on August 7, 2009 sent this message too Apple COO: Leave AT&T Alone

One thing is for sure we (Apple stock holders) have to thank AT&T for giving us the ride of our lifetime. In just one year more than 140% gain a lot more if you count the past 2-3 years. So we call on AT&T to keep subsidizing the iPhone, we won't buy it from AT&T but we love to see others do. On MSNBC we once saw an Apple stockholder? buying an iPhone and calling Apple's stock 'this stock is magical' we absolutely agree! So for Tim Cook to go out and defend the company that is buying all the iPhones in the US is perfectly understandable, from a business stand point you just don't burn your bridges behind you as you advance to other markets.

But which other markets? Mainly Verizon wireless and T-Mobile. If AT&T looses its grip on the iPhone Apple can expect their iPhone sales to double or quadruple in the next few years. The question remains will this happen tomorrow or this June?

UPDATE January 28, 2010 Potential iPhone customers will have to wait.

Apples's decision to stick with AT&T as the sole wireless carrier baffled numerous analysts.
Apple Shuts Out Verizon on IPad
AT&T wins iPad–Don’t act so surprised
Apple’s AT&T Affection Baffles Analysts
Apple's Contract With AT&T Is Done In June

Like we mentioned earlier you don't burn your bridges behind you as you advance to other markets and we reiterate our call to AT&T to continue to heavily subsidize the iPhone. We still won't buy it from AT&T but we still love to see other people do. All this was good news for AT&T's stock price that managed to gain a few cents before ending the day unchanged on a bad day for the financial markets.

The news that Apple was keeping AT&T was a positive on AT&T's stock which indicate us that AT&T needs Apple more than Apple needs AT&T and the proof is that Verizon's stock dropped 2.2% on the news.

Verizon Communications Inc.’s stock fell as much as 2.2 percent yesterday after Apple said AT&T would sell wireless plans for versions of the iPad that work with phone networks.

This is a clear indication that if later this year Apple decides to offer the iPhone to other wireless carriers AT&T's stagnant stock could face severe downward pressure as AT&T's main income source is from wireless customers. Let's face it the Cupertino, CA company have the wireless carriers by the 'antennas' $450 is the subsidized amount for each iPhone sold. In the long run AT&T will have to recover this in the form of long term contracts and ETF (early termination fees) no problem since we know iPhone customers running a $390/mo bill, yes that is three hundred and ninety dollars a month! Enough to cover the subsidized amount in just one month.

At the iPad presentation 'A small groan rippled through the audience at the Apple event this morning as Steve Jobs announced that the device’s carrier will be AT&T' New iPad, Old Carrier: Apple Sticks With AT&T or watch Apple's special event here. Looks like the majority of Apple users are not happy with this decision but by watching Apple's business tactics over the years this is an efficient way to apply some pressure to other carriers as they enter into license negotiations. This is why we think the majority of iPhone users will jump ship as soon as the iPhone is available to other wireless carriers.

UPDATE February 1, 2010 Apple (APPL) a case of 'Buy on the rumor and sell on the news or something else?'

Last Friday, January 30, 2010 Apple's stock price closed at $192.06 down 3.63% from the previous day. After Apple's iPad special presentation the stock has been hammered from the all time high of more than $214 to last Friday's close of $192. It's no secret that some financial analysts want the visionary Apple to cut the U-shaped shackle that tie the Cupertino, CA company to that Dallas, TX mediocre wireless carrier.

According to some sources Apple can easily make more profits by selling the iPhone to other wireless carriers instead of having it exclusively on AT&T. Other inside sources and articles say that AT&T ensured Apple that they are going to spend heavily in wireless 'fixes' to cope with the iPhone's heavy bandwidth requirements. The news is all over the Internet

Apple iPad Adds to Pressure on AT&T
AT&T says it will invest heavily in network fixes
AT&T says it will invest heavily in network fixes

and many more. Looks like AT&T plans to spend 2 billion or more, yes that is billion with a 'B'. Expressed in scientific notation: 1x10⁹ or what the rest of the world call it two thousand million dollars to only ~~band aid~~ fix their wireless network. Where do we have hear that before? No surprises here, in AT&T's half assed U-verse FTTN. It looks like AT&T has made a habit of cutting corners by limiting spending but this time it hit them back in the face in the form of a highly competitive visionary wireless carrier named Verizon instead of a local cable company with DOCSIS1.1 networks and analog TV. Will AT&T's habit of half assed ~~investing~~ spending will come back to haunt them with their uverse FTTN as it did with their wireless network? We think so.

Some say look at AT&T's record wireless profits and we say yes but also look at the iPhone record sales and bandwidth usage. They go hand by hand which lead us to believe that the moment the iPhone is offered by other wireless carriers those AT&T record profits will fall significantly and AT&T knows this and this scenario scare the 'be jesus out of them' this is why they are spending billions in 'fixing' their wireless network just to please Apple.

Some Apple stock holders believe that the recent drop in Apple's stock is due to this 'odd couple' relationship between Apple and AT&T. Apple stock holders were very unhappy by Apple's decision of sticking with AT&T. This summer maybe the news will be better.

For Apple this decision could be risky. The iPad's home could be a niche market comprised mostly of 'apple heads' that most likely will not get data plans from what they consider an 'evil' company. Instead iPad users may opt for free wi-fi networks as iPod-touch users do. Let's face it so far the iPad is not for everyone if handled incorrectly the iPad can easily become the Newton instead of the Palm

UPDATE February 2, 2010 DOCSIS3.0 just makes sense.

This morning we came across this very interesting survey conducted by Multichannel news.

According to the article more than 52 Million customers now have access to DOCSIS3.0 technologies. The cable juggernauts (as we like to call them) are basically unstoppable with offerings of 50 and even 100 Mbps. The irony is that while most uverse gateways can't even sync at the 32 Mbps profile across the board and much less offer 50 or 100 Mbps internet some of the cableco juggernauts have footprints as high as 100% coverage and the cable industry procrastinator (TimeWarner) and Charter with less than 11%. The rumor is that this year TimeWarner will increase their DOCSIS3.0 presence all over it's footprint starting in Texas and other markets. All this makes a lot of sense since DOCSIS3.0 is not only about internet speeds but also about load balancing by using multiple DOCSIS3.0 channels.

Company	Homes passed	Footprint%	Service area
Comcast	More than 38 million	More than 75%	Boston; Baltimore; Chicago; San Francisco Bay Area/San Jose; Denver; Delaware; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; New Jersey; Minneapolis/St. Paul; Atlanta; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Washington, D.C.; Hartford, Conn.; Harrisburg, Pa.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Ft. Wayne, Ind.; Eugene, Ore.; Spokane, Ore.; Richmond, Va.
Time Warner Cable	3 million	11%	New York City
Cox Communications	4 million*	40% *	Las Vegas; Louisiana; Northern Virginia; New England (Rhode Island); Arizona; Orange County, Calif. (Palos Verdes)
Cablevision Systems	4.8 million	100%	New York metro area, including northern New Jersey and parts of Connecticut
Charter Communications	1 million	10%	St. Louis; Reno, Nev.; Worcester, Mass.; communities in Southern California
Bright House Networks	More than 1 million	40% *	Tampa Bay, FL.
Mediacom Communications	More than 200,000	25%	Waterloo, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa; Dagsboro, Del.; Charleston and Moline, Ill.; Mound, Minn.; Gulf Breeze and Milton, Fla.; Columbia and Springfield, Mo.

Note: Estimated homes passed unavailable for Suddenlink Communications and RCN; Insight Communications and Cable One had not deployed DOCSIS 3.0 as of Jan. 31.
* Multichannel News estimate
SOURCE: Multichannel News research

UPDATE February 3, 2010 Comcast, the numbers are in and they are... Great!

Despite all the propaganda (Comcrap sucks), despite all the demagoguery (I switched to uverse because Comcrap sucks), despite the (generous) usage caps, despite the economic down turn and despite all the gloom and doom Comcast has managed to become the third largest phone company in the United States and get this; it has surpassed AT&T as the number one broadband carrier in the US! As we predicted it many times before Comcast has the drive and potential (maybe already is) to be the major player in the future of the telecommunication industry.

Every morning in our office the first thing we do is to tune our TV into CNBC after the janitorial service personnel left our TV tuned to spanish soap-operas (telecomedias) the night before. This morning we saw Carl Quintanilla talking about Comcast's and TWC's earnings, when the numbers came in we were surprised by the strong numbers of both companies but in particular Comcast's.
Comcast Beats Expectations with More Broadband, Phone Subscribers
Comcast profit up on Internet, phone subscribers

Comcast alone is the cable industry juggernaut poster boy, positioned to match what Verizon FIOS and completely obliterate what AT&T FTTN uverse have to offer. It is a no-brainer if someone had to choose between Verizon FIOS, DOCSIS3.0 or VDSL2 the answer will always be FIOS, FIOS and FIOS and then DOCSIS3.0 but not by a too wide margin. Some say that Comcast's DOCSIS3.0 network is close to 80% complete we would not be surprised if it is already 100% and they are just making sure everything works as planned before 'flipping the switch on'. In additional news Comcast's CEO Brian Roberts announced a change of its image with consumers. 'Xfinity' is the new brand, so no more 'Comcrap' demagoguery. The name change is a wise desicion as many consumers usually accept exotic words better than common words. It is like 'u-verse' and 'lightspeed' what do these words mean? AT&T u-verse is definitely NOT lightspeed and since it is not universally (across its footprint) available is not uverse either.

As previously mentioned we wouldn't be surprised if after Comcast finishes their DOCSIS3.0 network to go out an buy other cable outfits like TWC, or one of the small players like Charter or Bright House networks. Kudos to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts! If only AT&T had a visionary CEO?

UPDATE February 12, 2010 Götterdämmerung and the rise of the machines.

Richard Wagner's opera twilight of the gods ( Götterdämmerung ) refers to a war between the Gods that brings the end of the world. Recent developments in the telecommunications industry can bring the end of the world to those companies that are too old and big to react to the rapidly changing world. Former hedge fund manager Jim Cramer once referred to Apple as a 'forward looking company' and to Google as 'that other forward looking company' in his Mad Money CNBC TV show

The news is that Google 'that other forward looking company' is preparing to join Verizon in deploying a 100% pure fiber FTTP/FTTH network trial. It is evident that Google knows something that AT&T doesn't know or don't want to know and that Google has done their homework and reached the conclusion that a 100% pure fiber FTTP/FTTH network is the only logical path to success. It is not clear which are Google's expectations from deploying this network but one thing is certain it won't be good news for companies that rely on outdated technologies. Google is not saying what else are they planning to do with their 1 Gbps network but our guess is that their intentions are a 100% war on all the current players (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, TWC et all) We wouldn't be surprised if Google already have plans for Google TV, Google voice and of course Google internet. In addition Google's suspicious interest in the radio frequency spectrum here and here makes us wonder if the future holds offerings from Google wireless.

One thing is for certain; Google is a company that one should not trampled upon. After all Google didn't get this big by doing the wrong things wrong. Google's growth is due to it's intelligent approach and aggressive business models.

UPDATE February 14, 2010 New tool.

Based on the idea of one of our readers (thanks to Hank, S) we are developing a new set of tools that can be reached here.

UPDATE February 16, 2010 U-verse, VDSL2+ and the Google factor.

We have received quite a few comments and links to other sites in relation to our February 11, 2010 entry.

The general consensus indicates that AT&T and other internet and TV companies shouldn't have anything to worry about what that 'search and content' giant has to offer. The fact of the matter is that they should be afraid... be very afraid of what this 'forward looking company' is doing or planning to do. With a deep war chest Google can easily outspend the major ISPs and TV content providers. The best part is that Google have the 'know-how' and most importantly the bright young minds that can and will deliver the results that everybody want. Google is not your Grandfather's AT&T, Google is a highly successful dynamic company that can and will take on these old 'white elephant' telecom companies.

The image that most of us have about AT&T is the one portrayed by our good ol' friend and ex AT&T engineer Mr. Buck. Nobody here knows exactly how old is Mr. Buck but estimates place him in his early 80's, as a matter of fact Mr. Buck was onboard the Pinta when Columbus arrived in America (of course he was a very young child then). Mr Buck is still active and from time to time we see him in offices repairing AT&T's merlin equipment, the back of his truck is full of old ebay acquired merlin headsets and spools of twisted pair cable among many other things (some say that Jimmy Hoffa's bones are on the back of his truck). These are the guys that built AT&T and we salute and respect them as these are the people that made America what it is today. They had their time and place and they made their mark but unfortunately this is the current AT&T's idiosyncrasy, an old eccentric, unimaginative, slow to react and timid company unwilling to take risks and move forward. On the other hand we have a young company named Google. A risk taker with young blood running trough their corporate structure a visionary and like Jim Crammer called them 'a forward looking company' A company that is testing the waters with a 100% fiber adventure that just might be a big success.

One big question we have about Apple is AppleTV. What's going on with AppleTV and why it is considered an Apple's 'hobby'? The reason may lie in the fact that Apple doesn't own the pipes that could turn AppleTV into a big success. If google is successful with their 100% FTTH/FTTP endeavor it can become a major player in the triple play arena and in particular TV services. Just imagine a GoogleTV device running on a Gbps 100% fiber connection, think about the possibilities? This 100% fiber Google experiment could easily be the glue that bring the other Google projects together. Android, search, content, advertisement, Chrome (browser and OS), voice, mail, groups etc all will fit nicely into a 1Gbps pure fiber super highway. No more how far away are you from the VRAD or which profile or how many video streams, pixelation, macroblocking, loss of sync because of thunder/snow/rain storms, and they promise me $400 but got $150 and this and that.

Time will tell what this forward looking company will have to offer us.

UPDATE February 23, 2010 Why Google's FTTP/FTTH vision makes so much sense.

Google's experiment of 1 Gbps 100% pure fiber to the home has been well received (at least on the surface) by many ISP's. Secretly, we are sure all of the incumbent ISPs are green with envy and hoping for this young arrogant company to go ahead and fail (miserable and with extreme prejudice if possible) in their new and bold incursion into the uncharted territory of becoming an ISP.

With Verizon slowing down it's FIOS build outs and concentrating on their current FIOS footprint, with the CableCo juggernauts speeding up DOCSIS 3.0 deployments and u-verse continuing with that 'absurd FTTN uverse contraption' Google is looking forward to the future and evaluating the pros and cons of outmaneuvering some of the incumbent ISPs by being the first to deploy fiber to some consumers's homes.

The trick here is to be the first and Google knows this. It is unlikely that two competing fiber products will compete in the same market because of the return on the investment so the moment that someone puts his foot on the FTTH/FTTP ground it will be a definitive one. This is why Google should react and react fast to this window of opportunity.

So what does Google need to do and what it has learnt from other ISPs?

First Google has to be prepared for an all war. Speak softly and carry a BIG stick Go in peace and prepare for war.
Google knows that incumbent ISPs have the power to limit their growth, after all they own the pipes that Google desperately need.
Be prepared to offer triple play services and not just internet access.
Be prepared to outmaneuver the incumbent ISPs dirty tactics. We are sure that AT&T's owned senators will try to stop Google if successfull.
Work with local governments instead of fighting them like AT&T is well known to do. Many communities are keen to deploy FTTH/FTTP in their territory.
Devise new an innovative ways to deploy last mile fiber.
Prepare to fight for open access and protect their own investments. In other words what it's mine is mine and what it's yours is negotiable.

Owning the ultra wideband pipes makes so much sense for Google especially when the Sword of Damocles is hovering above their heads due to vague and uncertain network neutrality laws.

For how long will consumers will be able to stream extraneous ISP content without incurring in additional charges or just being blocked? For example last year we got a Sony PS/3 just to watch Blu-ray movies (we bought Gran Turismo 5 prologue just to test the waters) but the revolution came at the end of last year when we subscribed to Netflix. We have received 4 DVDs in the mail and watched over 30 streamed movies. Looks like we are not alone in this trend and we expect that some day our ISP will complain about our Netflix usage.

This is what must be bothering Google one day some ISPs will find a way to block Google's services. This is the main reason for owning the ultra wide band pipes to assure uninterrupted continuity of their business plans.

UPDATE March 1, 2010 The Google factor, DOCSIS3.0 upstream bonding and... well U-verse 32 Mbps gateway profile struggle.

In the past few days there has been a lot of activity in the DOCSIS3.0 arena, mainly from Comcast's upstream channel bonding news that will offer consumers much higher upstream speeds of up to 75 Mbps. Also from Google's push for ultra fast internet and from many other MSOs and not to forget the cable industry procrastinator 'poster boy' Time Warner's DOCSIS3.0 expansion into parts of Texas and Ohio.

Notice that Mr. Breznick mentioned Verizon's FIOS and completely ignored AT&T's uverse.

As the cable juggernauts and the visionary Google plan for the future AT&T's uverse is still struggling with upgrades to the 32 Mbps gateway profile. An angry uverse subscriber sent us a message telling us that in the middle of the night his 32Mbps profile was silently downgraded to 25Mbps. This is the first time we have received such a report after AT&T's uverse 32 Mbps fiasco back in August, 2009. It looks and we can confirm it that despite the upgrade to VDSL2 (G.999.3) the ~~ridge~~ abysm between the haves and have not's is still alive and well. From our data we can conclude that gateways beyond the magic number of 1,500 ft are marginal or mediocre at best. Nobody in their right mind would think that VDSL2+ will work as efficient beyond 2,000 as it does at less than 1,000 ft. Well we had one entry in our database in which the poster claimed that his gateway was at 10,000 ft away from the VRAD using the 32Mbps profile and with low or nonexistent FEC/CRC errors! Perhaps he/she belongs to the group that convinced AT&T to deploy FTTN instead of FTTP/FTTH, it just won't happen!

About a year ago we got an email from what we think was an AT&T employee. We think he is an AT&T employee because of his bragging about his 401K's pool of stocks that included Verizon and AT&T. Here is an excerpt from the email received on August 14, 2009.

ATT is deploying is a slower network much faster than verizon.  This is good for consumer as it brings more choices to more consumers faster.  There is no way to spin this as negative.  

FIOS is a superior network, but I would have to say u-verse is a superior total package as iptv is better than cable tv over fiber.

While fios is a superior network it is not generating superior results. It is only getting slightly better market share penetration than u-verse even though they are spending basically 2-3times what ATT is spending. You are right that happy shareholders have little to do with happy consumers, but typically consumers are also shareholders. I know my 401k funds hold both companies.

You are right vdsl does have drawbacks and limiitations as compared to fiber, but it also has advantages that cant be ignored (cost and speed of deployment).  I have had the service for over 3 years now and it continues to mature and get better every year.

If we read in a resume a cover letter with this kind of mentality that resume would be in the trash can before we read the rest. What's all this about 'ATT is deploying a slower network much faster than verizon'? It is like writing in your resume 'I'm an idiot but I can do stupid things much faster than others'... back to the point.

Here we are in March, 2010 and AT&T's uverse FTTN is not getting better as a matter of fact it is getting worse as the outdated and problematic technology that it was built on age and become obsolete. The rest of the internet world is passing AT&T's FTTN uverse like a Ferrari against a Yugo. Netfix streaming is booming, internet video, GigaByte downloads, 3DTV, multiple HD streams (not just 2), low compression HD streams, we can go on and on.

Here we are less than a year after we received that email and DOCSIS3.0 is almost 100% deployed in Comcast territory growing exponentially across the rest of the MSOs' footprint, threats from Google and their 1Gbps fiber project, 3DTV, a slow economy that will force internet/TV users to search for the best deals in terms of price/performance (uverse is not cheap nor high performance). More than five years after uverse debut AT&T is still struggling with what it is supposed to be a simple sync gateway profile increase of only 7 Mbps! AT&T is pushing this anemic 7 Mbps upgrade going from market to market and from user to user and hoping the gateways will hold the profile. Some users will get it but the vast majority won't and all this while Comcast is upgrading their upstream by four or five times of what AT&T uverse is getting only for downstream. It just doesn't make any sense to continue down this path, our question remain: How long do we have to wait for uverse to be called a 'mature' service? Five years have passed away should we wait five more years? Ten more years?

Our guess it that AT&T's next step will be 'pair bonding'. Pair bonding was already late when we received that visionary email but today it is desperately late and by the way which decisive benefit will this technology bring? None that we can think of. Google is absolutely right in 'provoking' and challenging the rest of the ISPs but consumers have to do their part too. Subscribing to a mediocre and expensive service and 'hoping it will get better year after year' is not the right way to make ISPs change.

UPDATE March 4, 2010 DOCSIS3.0 deployments, a technological tsunami.

The good news (or bad news depending on which side of the fence you are) keeps coming and coming and it never ends. DOCSIS3.0 deployments are gathering momentum as this article explain. The above article is just another one in a series of similar articles popping around the internet that confirm our claims that AT&T made a terrible mistake in putting all their eggs... or the few left they have into the FTTN basket. It has been almost 4 years since we started this blog and FTTN was a bad idea then and today it still is a terrible idea. So what's left for AT&T? How can AT&T stay ~~alive~~ competitive as the DOCSIS3.0 ten mile wide doomsday-space-rock is approaching in a collision course with AT&T's world?

Unfortunately AT&T's weapons arsenal is empty and they can't knock out the doomsday-space-rock while in space. Well maybe if AT&T can ~~corrupt~~ convince some US senators to do something about it like rule DOSCSIS3.0 as as a new strain of N1H1 or give away some of the few civil liberties that we still have left as bargaining chips. In that case AT&T may be able slow down the DOCSIS3.0 threat.

But seriously, their only option is to accelerate the pace and deploy their ~~umbrella~~ 'pair bonding' technology and hope for the best. This is the end of the line, this is the moment of truth, this is what we have been blogging about for the last 4 years. The rate at which this thing called DOCSIS3.0 is coming feel like a tsunami it is not only the first wave but what's behind it. The beauty of DOCSIS3.0 is the extremely low deployment costs limited to CMTS and nodes, the easy upgrade path and the gigantic performance advantage of 50, 70, +100 Mbps internet speeds and of course upstream node de-congestion.

We seriously doubt that today's AT&T have the economic resources to respond to the DOCSIS3.0 threat by deploying FTTH/FTTP. After all AT&T is busy spending billions of dollars in upgrades to their lucrative wireless infrastructure hoping they will remain competitive against Verizon et all. So the only 'fast and dirty' solution is 'pair bonding' and this is where the line ends.

Those that believed that AT&T's uverse FTTN had a 10-15 year life span are re-evaluating their positions about the technology. User Rick at broadbandreports.com is a known AT&T uverse FTTN critic and he has repeatedly said over the last 3 years that uverse FTTN will become outdated and obsolete as new, much faster and stable technologies enter the market.

User Rick wrote

what people don't realize is..

it's only going to get WORSE.

Because now people WANT the speed..they hear about it all over..and companies like AT&T don't have the upgrade path for them to compete effectively. And so..those people leave..and take their phone service with them. And the cable co's have the triple plays to add price insult to injury to the telcos..effectively pricing a landline at pennies compares to what they were paying with a telco.

People don't understand that the WORST damage to a sinking ship comes more towards the end than the beginning..And these telcos are starting to stand on end...

I predicted this 2 to 3 years ago on this website..and it is now happening. People saw my posts as telco bashing. It wasn't that..

It was saying you had better get busy..real fast.

Because a storm was coming. A tornado in fact.

And that tornado is called

Xfinity.

We understand that we Americans have a limited attention span of maybe 15 seconds but deciding between DOCSIS3.0 and uverse FTTN is a no brainer and it only requires from 5 to 10 seconds leaving us with 10 to 5 seconds left for other useful stuff like... beer!

New FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
PDF Document.

The term 'we' refers to the persons involved at some point in time in the writing of this blog.

We are reviewing the new FTC guidelines and making sure that when they are enforced on December 1^st 2009 we will adhere and comply to the new regulations.

So far we are in compliance with the new rules since we have no financial interest in the success or failure of any of the products or services discussed in this blog. Our interest in the services and products mentioned in this blog is purely scientific, academic and as consumers. In the past we have not been compensated in any way or form nor we will be compensated in the future by any company or individual for reporting or saying anything in this blog. We don't work for any company mentioned in this blog and if in the future we are financially or professionally involved or there is a conflict of interest with any company mentioned in this blog we will cease to update or terminate this blog.

All of our information come from our custom data gathering tools, inside information, public web pages, public forums, 3^rd party testimonials, public white papers, public technical information/schematics/specifications and from feedback provided by our readers. Our opinions are solely based on previous and current experience with some of the services and products mentioned in this blog, academic and professional training and experience and common sense.

Work in progress... subject to review.