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The old 'new AT&T'
Your 'world delivered' trough a mangled mess of twisted pair cable.
Click on image to enlarge.
A personal evaluation of AT&T's Uverse FTTN (fiber to the node)
August, 2006
γνῶθι σαυτόν 'nosce te ipsum'
This blog mirrors our new blog.
Last blog entry: 2011-12-29 [ yyyy-mm-dd ]
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:
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.
| 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 |
From the two versions of U-verse FTTH/FTTP is the the most desired installation, unfortunately the majority of U-verse customers will only 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.netfor 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.
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.
I saw one very interesting article by By Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle here or here
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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 be hind 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.
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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?
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.
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.
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.
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AT&T Uverse Image 1
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AT&T Uverse Image 2
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AT&T Uverse Image 3
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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.
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.
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.
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TimeWarner Image 1
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TimeWarner Image 2
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TimeWarner Image 3
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TimeWarner Image 4
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TimeWarner Image 5
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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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well, well, well AT&T finally took our advice (read our December 5th 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.
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:
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10 MHz span -0db
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10 MHz span -30db
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 FTTNuverse 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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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, 2008 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.
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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 copper 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.'
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 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 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 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 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.
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.
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 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 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 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.
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, 31st 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:
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.
djrobx 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 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 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 No kidding! Wouldn't adding a third HD stream compress it even more & make it worse? Joebury2004 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 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.
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)
The beauty of RFoG is that it can fully coexist with HFC systems making it an ideal upgrade path to 100% fiber solutions.
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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
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 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 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.
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.
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 toincrease 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?
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 |
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.
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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.
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.
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 Dropped back down to the 25 profile for some reason. texasguy37 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 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 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 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 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 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.
There goes the new 24/2 internet tier.
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.
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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:
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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.
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/FTTHsubscribers that will add up a few more. So how about it AT&T deal or no deal?
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.
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?
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.
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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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Things are going to get very interesting, we wonder if the cheap Comcast stock is a buy?
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 willtrick 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
and some advantages
What a wonderful and easy way to add 20+ million AT&T TV customers by buying DirecTV right?
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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, 2009 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.
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 3rd 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.
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?
What uverse FTTN subscribers will not get?
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.
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:
It takes one to know one.
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Information can be found in this 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.
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.
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.
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.
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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 may still get the 32 Mbps uverse profile and perhaps 24 Mbps internet soon. Not that it matter anymore 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.
As predicted in our October 7, 2009 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.
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, 2009 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?
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.
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, 2009 entry and in our December 5, 2009 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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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 of this technology. 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 some 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 it 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.'
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 visitor 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 visitors field is that Google, Yahoo and Bing include search words. For example when you search Google for 'uverse' and 'profile' the visitor 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.
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.
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.
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 7th 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.
Companies that can ride on Apple's success.
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?
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.
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
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
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.
| 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. |
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?
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 called 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.
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.
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 th is and that.
Time will tell what this forward looking company will have to offer us.
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?
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 streame d 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.
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.
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 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, 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.
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 AT&T's world in a collision course?
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 feels like a tsunami and it's 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.
Rick
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.
Sorry Rick but that tornado is called DOCSIS3.0.
We understand that we Americans have a limited attention span of maybe 15 seconds but deciding between DOCSIS3.0 based service 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!
If it wasn't clear enough about Google's intentions today they announced that they are evaluating Android based set-top TV boxes.
'Evaluating' is such a nice word that disguises the ambition behind this 'forward looking company' called Google. Let's put the pieces of the puzzle together shall we?
What is all this telling us?
When the short sighted AT&T unveiled their uverse FTTN stuff almost five years ago they didn't realized that somewhere, somehow, somebody was going to come up with something new like DOCSIS3.0 and that this new thing was going to render their feeble products outdated and uncompetitive in a short period of time. These AT&T guys thought; 'hey! DOCSIS3.0 is 10 years away' and it won't be a threat to us for the next 10 years. But guess what? In just 18 to 20 months Comcast has managed to cover almost 100% of it's footprint with DOCSIS3.0.
History will repeat itself but now with Google. While DOCSIS3.0 has managed to remain competitive against 100% pure fiber solutions uverse FTTN has not and while FIOS is not in direct competition with uverse Google's fiber will be. This is why it's no secret why AT&T is fighting municipalities and towns seeking to deploy their own 100% pure fiber networks. AT&T knows they can't compete against these technologies so how can they fight this how-dare-you communities and towns? In the courts of course.
Back to the point, all this activity within Google's top brass and engineering is a clear indication that Google are positioning themselves to become a major and perhaps 'the' player in the content as well as in the delivery to offer 21st century information and entertainment services to the consumer. As we previously mentioned, imagine Google TV perhaps 'ala carte' subscription based and internet content (you tube et all). Google voice, wireless and VoIP driving the last nail into the telco's land line coffin and all this delivered trough a 1 Gbps super wideband pipe to every consumer.
All the puzzle pieces are on the table all that Google needs to do is to put them back together.
A reader sent us this link.
Irrelevant is probably an understatement considering the news refers to the cable industry 'procrastinator poster boy' aka Time Warner.
But if Time Warner is offering 30/5 Mbps for a mere * $25 and 50/5 Mbps for $99 which is a lot cheaper than Verizon's FIOS offerings, so where do all this leave AT&T?
Franky, this uverse stuff is getting ridiculously slow and expensive to add insult to injury AT&T's recent 2010 price hikes make us question; What in the world is AT&T thinking?
Recent prices for uverse internet are here. For what you pay Time Warner for 30/5 Mbps with uverse you can only get 1.5/1 Mbps. This pronounced price and most important stability differences between uverse FTTN and DOCSIS3.0 offerings make uverse FTTN ridiculously unattractive.
AT&T needs to decide and decide fast a date to announce their long overdue 24/? Mbps internet tier. Obviously not all current uverse subscribers will be able to get this tier but at least AT&T will have the bragging right to say that they have a 24 Mbps tier. At the same time AT&T needs to lower the price of the remaining internet tiers and at least try to compete in price with the cableco's offerings.
For those Time Warner subscribers it is always a good idea to negotiate a better price.
* Correction.
The price listed for Time Warner's 30/5 tier is not $25. It will cost $25 more than the standard plan. Thanks to Jonathan Browder for reporting the error.
A reader sent us this link and this link.
Looks like the best technology doesn't always win when referring to Verizon's FIOS nor the worst when referring to AT&T's uverse FTTN. What we find interesting is that only 48% of homes passed by FIOS actually subscribe to the service. So what is the remaining 52% of households using?
If the above article is correct the winner in all this is or will be the cableco juggernauts with their DOCSIS3.0 technology. So what's next for Verizon? A while back Verizon was also interested in FTTN could this be in Verizon's future? Perhaps there's a map for that.
If Verizon bails out of the FTTH/FFTP ship the only players left will be Google, towns and communities. If Google play their cards right they can succeed where Verizon is failing or failed and that is in better controlling deployment costs.
For the cableco juggernauts the only thing they have to do is to keep deploying DOCSIS3.0 in all markets and that will take care of itself.
We came across a very interesting CNN Money video.
Apparently Jonathan Blum is sending Google a few subliminal messages aiming at discouraging them. Yes, starting a project from zero is a monumental task but as the sixth century B.C. Chinese philosopher Confucius said 'a one thousand journey starts with a single step'. Google has to start at some point to deploy their 100% pure fiber experiment and that point is at zero, there's no question about it. So Google let's get started!
One advantage that Google have is that most of the job can be outsourced to other companies. The point of contention in a 100% pure fiber system is not the equipment or laying the fiber from point A to point B, the most problematic and time consuming phase is laying the fiber from the last distribution cabinet to each consumer, as the insiders like to call it 'the last mile'. In this phase is where all the gas, water and existing services are damaged or broken, in this phase is where the well manicured gardens and lawns are digged up, in this phase is where concrete walls, fences and slabs have to be drilled, in this phase is where a lot of money is spent.
The advantage of outsourcing the last mile phase is that Google can save a lot of money. AT&T, Verizon and all others have to use their own man power to do this job. Most if not all of these companies have personnel that belong to unions making the job costly, problematic and slow. There are so many companies out there that can do the very same job for pennies of what a unionized work force charge. We have worked in the past with foreign companies doing this particular job at a fraction of the cost compared to unionized local companies and all legal with a legitimate and well trained work force.
To understand the last mile phase dilemma we only have to take a look at AT&T's uverse FTTN. Uverse FTTN subscribers have a fiber as close as 5,000 ft from their homes but guess what? They can't have access to it.They simply can't get AT&T to run fiber to their homes, but why? For the reasons stated above, it would cost more to run fiber to each and every uverse subscriber than to run fiber to every VRAD cabinet in that area, especially when the job is being done by highly paid unionized workers with no incentive on finishing the job on time. Just imagine Google outsourcing this phase of the project, Google doesn't have to worry about highly paid workers, Google doesn't have to worry about pension, health care, insurance, bonding plans as the outsourced company will take care of that.
It is going to be very interesting to watch Google handle this very critical phase in their 100% pure fiber experiment.
A reader and friend ( thanks to Thomas, L ) sent us this link.
Uverse's FTTN supposedly low cost of deployment and the 'speed to market' advantages over 100% pure fiber offerings like Verizon's FIOS, local municipalities fiber and now Google's fiber is one of the key points that uverse FTTN pundits make when promoting their uninspiring product.
In countless occasions we read that 'uverse is on the other side of the street but not in my side' that 'uverse stops two houses down the street' that 'I'm too far away from the VRAD to get service' and many more.
The 'speed to market' was AT&T's main argument back in August, 2006 when promoting their feeble and uninspiring FTTN product, so what happened? Here we are in 2010 and the projected 20 million uverse subscribers by 2008 have not materialized, as a matter of fact back in 2008 uverse subscribers were much less than 800,000. So what happened to the tremendous uverse FTTN penetration map when compared to the 'slower to deploy' Verizon FIOS product? Sadly it is not here and the irony is that today Verizon FIOS have more subscribers than Uverse. Even in uverse strongholds like San Antonio, TX or Houston, TX uverse's footprint is not consistent with embarrassing large coverage gaps. Even when uverse FTTN is available the service quality is not the same across it's footprint. As we like to call it the haves and have not's.
Recently Robert had an email exchange with the guy in this entry and one very interesting claim was that:
AT&t has basically said they plan to continue expanding uverse as the did dsl. DSL now covers about 90% of ATT territory.
Considering that ADSL barely works at 8,000 ft away from a remote terminal (RT) or central office and that not even today Tuesday 23 of March 2010 everybody can get ADSL the above statement is an empty exaggeration. Let's not forget that uverse FTTN barely works at 3,000 ft... well if you can call the 19 Mbps profile as 'working'.
Verizon's superion FIOS product failure is money and slow deployment. AT&T's inferior uverse FTTN product biggest failure is all of the above plus the underlying technology in the form of twisted pair copper cables. Even FTTN pundits agree that uverse's underlying technology is 'not ideal'... well, actually it sucks but also claim that uverse has the 'best package' whatever that means. Even if this is true, which isn't the analogy is like having a multi million Formula 1 car with all the latest aerodynamic packages, the best Ferrari, Renault or Mercedes engine, all the electronic gadgets all on top of four B.F. Goodrich tires... the ones that used to laminate and disintegrate at high speeds.
Uverse undeniable most important weakness is the underlying technology in the form of last mile twisted pair copper cables. Uverse maybe have the best prices, set-top-boxes, programming, video recorder but it has the worst underlying infrastructure and this is what counts most.
This morning we came across this Multichannel news article.
Anxious uverse subscribers had been waiting for the 24 Mbps internet tier since 2009 and today AT&T delivered it... well sort of. A few gateways using the not so new 32 Mbps profile will be able to upgrade to the 24 Mbps internet tier unfortunately the have nots those stuck in the 19 and 25 gateway profile will not be able to upgrade to the new internet speed tier, 25 is the new 19.
As expected all the web sites reporting the news see this as another desperate measure to keep uverse FTTN not so far behind close to the competition.
AT&T expanded the availability of its fastest DSL-based broadband tier -- at 24 megabits per second downstream -- to 120 markets in 22 states, which is still less than half the top speeds offered by major cable competitors.
The telephone company's U-verse High Speed Internet Max Turbo, advertised as providing up to 24 Mbps downstream and up to 3 Mbps upstream, is available for $65 per month to qualifying residential customers as part of a bundle with AT&T U-verse TV. The 24/3 tier is available to eligible small business customers for $95 a month.
By contrast, cable operators including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Cablevision Systems currently offer broadband packages with at least 50 Mbps downstream, using the next-generation DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem technology.
Some MSOs are even farther ahead of DSL-based services: Cablevision and Mediacom Communications already top the 100-Mbps mark, and Comcast this year expects to begin offering 100-Mbps to residential customers.
AT&T's Max Turbo is based on Very High Bit-Rate DSL 2 (VDSL2), which provides a theoretical maximum of 50 Mbps at 1 kilometer distance from the central office. However, U-verse TV uses a portion of the VDSL2 connection to deliver video.
AT&T first launched the Max Turbo tier in St. Louis and Austin and San Antonio, Texas in December 2009. The telco had 2.1 million U-verse broadband connections as of the end of 2009. According to the company, more than 90% of U-verse TV customers bundle U-verse High Speed Internet.
AT&T U-verse Internet customers have access to more than 20,000 Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide for no additional cost.
First, 1 Kilometer is 3,280 feet, there is no way AT&T can offer 50 Mbps at that distance theoretically or not. Our data report uverse FTTN gateways beyond 2,800 ft with a 'theoretical' max sync rate of no more than 30,770 Kbps and all this in just the best of the cases.
Uverse FTTN has become increasingly irrelevant when compared to the cableco juggernauts' real, not theoretical internet speed tiers of 50 and 100 Mbps. Nevertheless AT&T has to keep uverse subscribers happy and this is the only way left to do it.
As we mentioned in our March 23, 2010 blog entry uverse penetration is sporadic at best so 120 markets in 22 states means nothing and should look worse than a Verizon's commercial showing AT&T's wireless coverage map.
Update: A reader sent us this link.
We keep hearing the same stories 'everywhere'.
'Everywhere' is really not everywhere.
'They mean everywhere uverse is available. But you knew that. sheesh.' Really smart.
24 Mbps is really 'up to 24 Mbps' which is really 18 Mbps.
'Why is the upload so slow?' Really slow.
'No U-Verse in my area. You city folks have all the choices'. Not really.
'read the u-verse forums...AT&T is pulling a PR blanket out on this one. Many users are reporting that this is truly not available today for "all" markets.' Really?
'It is available locally, in Milwaukee,WI.. used to only be 18 Meg available. [Unfortunately, the cut off is my neighbor across the street- this side of street - U-verse not available.]' This really sucks.
'I would drop Comcast HSI with their bullshit ass 250GB cap in a heartbeat if AT&T actually offered something faster than their regular 6mbps down DSL offering here.' You can't, really.
'its *still* distance sensitive. 24mbps is good but remember if you're watching television, that will take away some bandwidth!' Really misleading.
'Live in Austin and AT&T has decided our subdivision doesn't get U-Verse. Heck they haven't even upgrade the switch on our POP so we can get Voice Mail or Call Waiting-Caller ID. That's why I'm nolonger an AT&T customer, TWC gets my money'. Good choice, really.
'What's the % of at&t customers don't even have DSL? Where I am at it's quite abit'. 'Everywhere' is the same, really.
'So, what % of the Uverse footprint has customers NOT within 2500-3500 feet of a vrad?' Really high.
'can you only be within 3,500-5,000 FT to get decent speeds?' No!
For AT&T and their feeble uverse FTTN contraption the only shot left is pair bonding and this is where the line really ends. Considering AT&T uverse's history we can predict a new gateway profile of around 40 Mbps and internet tier of 'up to' 30 Mbps. The difference between 19 and 25 Mbps is 31%, the difference between 25 and 32 Mbps is 28% by extrapolating these figures we can predict an increase of 25% for a new gateway profile or 40 Mbps... if any. All this while the cableco Juggernauts move toward 100 Mbps or more with real internet tiers... not gateway profiles. Some uverse FTTN pundits like to ask rhetorical questions about uverse's FTTN costs and speed to market strategies so here are some rethorical question for them.
Has uverse FTTN lived up to the consumer expectations? Our answer is definitely no.
This morning CNBC's opening buzz reports that Apple (AAPL) is ready to announce the availability of their new CDMA iPhone for Verizon's (VZ) networks. Apple and Verizon stock are trading sharply higher. The losers on the news is Reseach in motion (RIMM), Palm (PALM) and of course AT&T (T).
We are keeping a close eye on the news.
Update:
Well, well, well, something is definitely cooking!
Apple and Verizon stock continue to rise on the iPhone and possible iPad deal, on the other hand AT&T's stock continues to fall. David Faber of CNBC's Faber report commented on what happened to European iPhone sales when Apple decided to diversify to other wireless carriers... sales of iPhones quadrupled! If this is an indication of what it is going to happen in the US it will give Apple's stock a boost as well as Verizon. Pssst! Hey Verizon here you have a bunch of guys and gals ready to buy your iPhone as soon as it becomes available.
More news on the deal:
Biz Break: Apple iPad vs. iPhone: Verizon rumor propels stock price.
Report: Apple Designing CDMA iPhone, Could Work on Sprint, Verizon.
Is Apple Producing an iPhone For Verizon?
Apple and Verizon consider iPhone deal.
Apple Working on CDMA iPhone for Verizon?
An many, many more.
The Apple/Verizon deal must have felt like a bucket of freezing water over AT&T's face as the decline of their stock shows. We always felt that AT&T's success in the wireless business was in great part to Apple's innovation, elegance and sex-appeal, now it's Verizon 'et al' turn.
Hey, AT&T... can you hear me now?
It is amazing the growth that the Cupertino, Ca company has achieved over the years, a few more ticks up on the stock and Apple will reach Microsoft!
The insatiable demand for the iconic Apple products is just amazing, this is a company that has the Midas touch. This is why so many analysts are re-thinking their positions when dealing with AT&T's stock and this is why AT&T's stock dropped like a rock fell on the Apple/Verizon news.
AT&T's crown jewel is their wireless growth, a growth mostly based on guess what? Yes, the iPhone! AT&T's wireless division grew as the result of 3.1 million iPhones sold in the last cycle up from 2.7 Million from the previous cycle. For AT&T to loose the exclusivity of the iPhone can be considered a disaster. Some analysts estimate AT&T's iPhone subsidies from $450 to $600 while selling the iPhone for as low as $199.99.
Verizon is the number 1 wireless carrier in the US with 91 million subscribers. If/when the deal is finished it could draw millions of subscribers away from AT&T and steal some.
Looks like AT&T is going to fight many wars on different fronts:
It is evident that if AT&T looses the iPhone exclusivity it will loose a significant part of their luster and income. Time will tell what the Dallas, TX mediocre and uninspiring company will do to regain their once privileged position.
Recently the number of posts to our 2Wire 3800HG tool have increased significantly. The interesting part is that we have seen an increase of uverse subscribers placed in the 19 Mbps gateway profile. Unlike the 32 Mbps profile most of the 19 Mbps profile subscribers have released their distance from the VRAD and the numbers are very interesting.
We have seen posts as close as 2,000 ft and as far as 3,610 ft away from the VRAD using the 19 Mbps gateway profile. From the results we conclude that the transition from VDSL (G.992.1) to VDSL2 (G.993.2) has not produced the good results that AT&T wanted. Yes, some gateways specially those very close to the VRAD have seen less errors but the reach has not changed significantly and this is what matters most.
After AT&T's original estimate of 5,000 ft later revised down to 3,000 ft away from the VRAD we had not seen too many 19 Mbps subscribers. Today AT&T seems to be making desperate decisions by adding subscribers even at the expense of service quality. From our data it seems that 25 Mbps at 3,000+ ft will not happen, much less 32 Mbps unless pair-bonding arrives and if pair-bonding works as planned.
To answer our rhetorical question: Yes AT&T is pushing FTTN too hard to it's limits. It is more likely that 19 and 25 Mbps subscribers will cancel uverse and switch back to the cableco juggernaut than subscribers using the 32 Mbps gateway profile.
We came across this hilarious Stephen Colbert report video.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Stephen Gets a Free iPad | ||||
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As the shock wave of the 3D-HDTV explosion propagate and expand across other bandwidth hungry 3D-TV programming it is evident that AT&T's uverse FTTN is not properly positioned to compete on yet another area, this time is in the 3D-HDTV front.
Today Comcast (CMCSK) announced that their company will be broadcasting the Augusta's masters tournament in full 3D-HDTV. As we mentioned in our January 8th 2010 blog entry the bandwidth demands for 3D-HDTV are almost 6MHz. Currently AT&T's uverse severely compress their video streams (SD and HD) to the point that compression artifacts in the form of macro-blocking and pixelation defeats the concept of spending thousands of dollars in a new HDTV set.
See also this comcast voices link.
For the first time ever, consumers with new 3D televisions and 3D-enabled PCs will be able to watch the next evolution of 3D in their homes on television and on the Internet when the Masters broadcasts live in 3D from April 7-11. This historic broadcast will be a glimpse at the future of entertainment, and we couldn't be more excited to bring it to consumers first. In fact, this event will mark a series of industry firsts - the first live national next-generation 3D broadcast of a major sporting event on TV, the first live simulcast of a next-gen 3D event online, and the industry's first live multi-camera next-gen 3D production. We'll be providing consumers with access to a never-before seen Masters coverage of the Tournament through a dedicated 3D channel that will show about two hours of live footage per day. This channel will show customers a unique viewing experience from the traditional Masters coverage using different camera angles produced by the Masters for this rare 3D experience. Our engineers in Comcast Labs have been testing transmission of footage from Augusta National over the past few weeks and I can tell you that it's nothing short of spectacular. You can see how 3D can dramatically enhance the viewing experience, giving a unique, immersive perspective of the golf environment. The challenges to the players represented by the varied contours of the course come alive and I particularly liked one shot where the sand flew from the bunker. Wow.
As soon as AT&T use it's service improvement 'dropper' there is always some piece of news that further eclipses uverse's uninspiring and unimpressive toddler handicapped steps. 'Look guys! we've managed to squeeze 7 Mbps more out of this copper pair' and then WHAM! Comcast to offer a 100% increase to 100 Mbps real internet tier and broadcast the Augusta masters on true multiple 3D-HDTV screens.
All this would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
A good friend and reader (thanks Stephen, P) sent us these links
AT&T looks to rebrand as a lifestyle company.
Insider Tells Us Comcast Will Shake Up Speed Tiers This Year.
Some of us are old enough to remember these beautiful mid 90's AT&T TV commercials.
We all remember watching these commercials and wonder about what the future would bring to us. The AT&T 'You will' commercials were inspiring full of hope and expectations. The once visionary company whose slogan was 'You Will' has turned into a company adrift without a vision and well defined goals whose slogan is now Rethink Possible'
Those of us who deal every single day with people with different personalities have learned to read body language and speech to help us identify the right person for the job. The same is true when dealing with companies, the AT&T of the 80s was a leader in its field and the 'You Will' TV commercials correctly reflected that image.
You Will is a definitive answer, it told the public that AT&T was going to deliver... at any cost. You Will is a direct statement, it means that no matter what AT&T was going to 'deliver the goods'.
Today AT&T has transformed themselves into a maybe, a what do our investors think into which path should we take company. Today AT&T is a company adrift in a sea of young, visionary, sharply focused and aggressive companies and AT&T's new motto is... 'Rethink Possible'? What we all want from AT&T is to rethink period. Not possible, just do it!
Now we read that AT&T wants to transform themselves into a 'lifestyle' company and keep their pretty orange color and portray themselves as an 'innovation' company. A lifestyle? Innovation? Pretty orange color? Sounds like the Home and Garden channel or the Oprah network or the Heaven's Gate cult.
AT&T should't portray themselves as an 'innovation' company they should become one and the only way to do it is by showing us results, good results and products. AT&T's wireless network problems, the imminent loss of the iPhone exclusivity, the gigantic losses in land lines and the stubborn support for FTTN is not a good way to show the world that AT&T is an 'innovation' company.
The goal is to move AT&T's brand perception among consumers from telecommunications company to innovation company. "There's so much innovation happening at the company that I think people don't know," said Ms. Lee. "We spend an average $18 billion to $19 billion a year on our network, our technology and our inventions in order to drive the future of how people are going to live on our network."
Perception is not reality but in AT&T's case their perception is their reality. Basically what Ms. Lee is saying is that AT&T is going to present to the public a completely different, good AT&T than it really is. Basically they are 'pumping' AT&T's image up so the public don't see the company's flaws and lack of vision.
Over the years AT&T has gone from:
We wonder if fiber to the premises is part of this new rethinking process and possible in our future?
Rethink Possible?
All this happen on the very same day of this news.
An insider at Comcast informs Broadband Reports that Comcast users should expect a shake up in the company's speed tiers sometime during the next eight months. The changes should arrive as Comcast continues to push their "Xfinity" rebranding effort into different markets. According to the source, the new Comcast tiers will be 12/2 Mbps, 20/4 Mbps, 50/10 Mbps, and 100/25 Mbps. Current 22/5 customers will be grandfathered, according to the source, and Comcast apparently hopes to get that 100 Mbps tier into about 20% of their footprint this year.
The source notes that these speed tiers could change before final launch.
Verizon, Comcast and others are the real 'innovators', as for lifestyles and pretty colors there is no substitute for Victoria's secret catalog.
After reading this interview with Senior VP-Brand Marketing and Advertising Esther Lee, it is clear that AT&T has no clue on what their company is all about. AT&T has no specific goals other than to be used by the US government as a tool to spy on their citizens, which by the way we admit this is something they do very well.
Apparently AT&T's wireless 'hit back' campaign against Verizon has not yielded any fruits. Instead the 'hit back' campaign have managed to annoy the public more than AT&T's inadequate wireless network.
So who or what is the new AT&T?
AT&T standbys such as rollover-minutes spots might disappear if they don't fit under the new framework. A new design will also roll out from Omnicom sibling Interbrand that, among other things, trades in the $125 billion company's characteristic orange coloring on retail locations and packaging for more colors. The AT&T globe will also now appear alone without the copy "AT&T" beside it. Other agencies handling work include Publicis Group's Razorfish and design consultancy Frog Design.
Packaging for more colors? How nice! Uverse FTTN sucks but the orange coloring scheme is like... like so cool. What in the world is happening inside AT&T's management? Is this interview for real?
The new AT&T's globe logo without the 'AT&T' words? Why? Are you ashamed of the company name? How about this logo?
Notice the pretty orange color in the lettering. That will be $25,000 for our time, please make all checks payable to Dohrenburg Systems Thank you.
The TV campaign from Omnicom Group's BBDO introduces the tagline during the broadcast of the Masters golf tournament, which begins today. Ms. Lee declined to provide specifics on creative, media mix or spending, but said the rolling launch is the beginning of an integrated campaign that includes print, outdoor, digital and "non-advertising marketing." AT&T spent $1.87 billion on measured media in 2009, according to Kantar Media.
Do you mean AT&T is going to advertise in the Augusta's master golf tournament? The very same tournament that Comcast is broadcasting in full 3D-HDTV? Oh, the irony!
The goal is to move AT&T's brand perception among consumers from telecommunications company to innovation company. "There's so much innovation happening at the company that I think people don't know," said Ms. Lee. "We spend an average $18 billion to $19 billion a year on our network, our technology and our inventions in order to drive the future of how people are going to live on our network."
We wonder what marvelous 'inventions' are in AT&T's patent portfolio? We found a good one here. 'Backlighting scheme for a multimedia terminal keypad' Hmm, very interesting patent for... a LIGHT BULB! No wonder why so many people consider the US patent process broken and corrupt.
This is the first major shift in AT&T messaging since Ms. Lee, a former global chief creative officer for Coca-Cola, took the lead on brand marketing, ad creative and media strategy last summer. Prior to AT&T, Ms. Lee was CEO-North America of global brands for Euro RSCG Worldwide. Even with that resume, Ms. Lee calls this move to recast AT&T as a lifestyle company in many ways the "most complex thing I've ever done."
With this mentality we now know why it is so hard for AT&T to deploy fiber to the home or offer decent wireless network services.
While browsing our visitors logs we stumbled upon a very interesting and amusing thread.
I live 3,600 ft from a VRAD in Guilford, CT (2,600 ft to our mailbox plus 1,000 feet of driveway) and tried to get Uverse a year ago but was told that I was too far away for service. I received a flier in my mail box yesterday saying we could get service. so I contacted the rep. today who came over to sign us up. I told her of our experience a year ago and that the only way Uverse could be available is via pair bonding. She told me that our VRAD had been updated with pair bonding and that even those customers in the 'RED' zones were now able to be provisioned. She said she would contact me tomorrow (Sun.) with an installation time/date. Surprising that we received pair bonding before many others in the country. We are only 15 min east of New Haven, CT along the Long Island Sound but Guilford is a very rural area. Loose cows, horses, sheep, goats and the occasional bear sighting are not uncommon. Stay tuned for more.
Like we did, skeptical subscribers questioned the veracity of the post.
chunk73 I will be very interested to see how this plays out. For some reason I smell sales rep BS. However I do hope I am wrong. Please keep us updated during the entire process. Very curious to see what type of gateway or inid you get if this does pan out. CyrusDaVirus Im glad people far from the vrad will have a chance to try u-verse. But will this also bring faster profiles/tiers? or is AT&T just looking to extend their reach? vengance01 I am guessing a first to extend service to those who can't due to distance, but maybe we can see this trickle down. Nuckfuts I just want more bandwidth for HD streams. 6 mb is not cutting it. MyDogHsFleas That is not going to happen. Pair bonding is to increase the distance from which a residence can be served, not to increase bandwidth for serve-able customers. Also AT&T is going to use any additional bandwidth to make more HD streams available, not to increase the bitrate for individual streams. It's "good enough" for most people now. If you want a higher bitrate service, switch to someone else. MyDogHsFleas Absolutely. I think it's 98% likely this is bogus. Like when they insist it's all fiber when it's not. Nuckfuts I know what they are using pair bonding for. Did not really need that kind of rundown. I was just "wishing". And I know I would need to switch. I had DishHD before U-Verse. I am more educated on services than you think but thanks anyway. And whose to say they might never? You never know what AT&T is up to next.
Actually many of us don't know what AT&T is doing now much less what it will do next.
doublea
I'm no getting the first taste of what the people stuck on the 19 mbps profile were tasting a year ago. The fact that then they could not order the 18mbps service.
I'm seeing all of these ads on TV for speeds upto 24mbps. Ads in the mail and so on. Yet there is nothing I can do to get it, and no details on when that may change. (TBQH, all I care for is more upload.)
I know that's the way the ISP world goes, we cant all have the same service. But its a bit more frustrating to know someone two blocks away from me can, what makes my house so special :P.
It would be in ATT's interest to offer pair bonding to those of us willing to pay the $$ for it. I would be more than willing to wait untill the initial rush of new signups are over, from the people whom it could not reach before.
Again who am I to complain, I'm not on a 19 meg profile. I'm not stuck on 784k (like my friend in the next town just 10 miles north of me.) And I'm not stuck on Huges net :P
But I do live in a city of 50,000 so I expect more....
We live and work in a city with 78,000 residents (2000 census data) and in a large metroplex with around 1.5 million residents (2000 census data) and no uverse available in any of the cities so the above comment comes with no surprises.
VDSL2 medieval age alchemists are still hard at work trying to transform lead into gold.
A reader sent us this link.
nishiko7 ... as per this recent thread on BBR/DSLR I started: »Is AT&T investigating use of Vectored VDSL or cuPON? Not to say fiber wouldn't be better (though more costly) or to further debate that dead horse. Just wanted to make sure people knew twisted pair can already deliver up to 100 Mbps at 3000 feet lengths. So that means probably around 70 Mbps of average stable sync for most people at 3K. Whether Big T (and maybe Qwest, others) decide to go that route is another story. If at&t, it would require a modest investment to their current VDSL2 architecture (a natural evolution to it). Even counting the video load of up to 4 HD streams, I think that gets them by for at least 5-10 years for the speeds MOST people will WANT TO PAY FOR. Price matters too, and I doubt MOST people will want to pay for more than about a 40/5 Mbps Internet connection for some time. FTTH is better, and is the ultimate end game, but doing it opportunistically over time and in stages may make some sense from a financial perspective, especially when you're talking about this kind of scale. In this discussion, I almost sound like an industry wonk, but I'm in no way tied to any of the telcos or cables, and FULLY support net neutrality, open access, etc (though I won't hold my breath for ever having open access back again). I was devastated with the recent Comcast ruling, and hope the FCC can dust itself off and move forward aggressively. What I AM is just fascinated by the technology involved in cramming so much data over networks never originally envisioned to handle it. I just don't want copper to be sold short nor that investment unnecessarily wasted. Ultimately, all we really care about is: can we get the speeds we need to accomplish the things we want to. Are the speeds evolving fast enough to foster innovation. Those types of questions. How the bandwidth is delivered should be mostly of no consequence to the end user it would seem. etaadmin Very inspirational post but... do you have any hard evidence to support your claim of 100 Mbps at 3,000 feet? At least the site posted above your response »adslm.dohrenburg.net/tools/demographics.php is based on real world data and frankly I don't see anything that supports your claim. In addition 100 Mbps of what? Maximum sync rate, real gateway profile or Internet tier? The graph in the previously posted link show 'maximum rates' and not gateway profiles as they are represented by colors. Definitely FTTH is far superior and the end game. I would be willing to pay for it so I guess I'm not like 'most people' As for doing it 'opportunistically' what a better opportunity to compete with 50/5, 50/10 or 100/25 DOCSIS3.0? Comcast's top tier (100/25) offer more in upstream than uverse offer in downstream (24/3) and that is if the subscriber qualifies for the high uverse profile. I don't see uverse surviving more than 2 years with their current technology, just look at what Comcast has achieved in just 18 months of DOCSIS3.0. twill I think what the poster is suggesting is that if GDSL can deliver gigabit speeds at 300 meters, the service might be able to provide 100 Mbps or more at 1400 feet. It all depends on the dropoff rate of GDSL. Unfortunately I don't thinkthe articles go into that. If the service is capable of ADSL like long reach and users toward the end of the loop are able to receive more than say 50 Mbps then it's certainly worth investing in. As much as we lime to think it is, copper isn't dead. Although fiber will eventually be the norm, the fact that we are able to do all this is astonishig and speaks to the ingenuity of human intelligence. And in the end it does make more sense to get more out of the already established network than completely build a new one etaadmin I understand but... »hd.engadget.com/2009/03/17/erics···ay-exci/ using SIX bonded lines? Come on! Just install fiber. There is a limit for a practical solution, why not sixty pairs and that would be 5,000 Mbps!
It is interesting to note that the ink is not yet dry on VDSL2 and the VDSL alchemists are already promoting a new technology that has not been proven and is as impractical and complicated as a Rube Goldberg machine.
As etaadmin said 'Come on! Just install fiber' There is no doubt that 'this is astonishig and speaks to the ingenuity of human intelligence' but we agree with etaadmin and there must be limits to what it is considered a practical solution.
Update:
In this blog we have discussed vectoring in VDSL2, the concept is not new at least outside VDSL's context. Equivalent physical and mathematical models can be found in optics in the form of active optics, in electronics in the form of the CMRR or control systems, in wave interference physics in the form of interferometry and in many other mechanical and physical systems. We call this 'new' VDSL convoluted and complex techniques the Rube Goldberg machine. As mentioned in our December 30, 2009 blog entry vectoring use several techniques designed to mitigate crosstalk, RFI (radio frequency interference), EMI (electro magnetic interference) and spectrum management. As previously mentioned the computational power needed to perform these chores is high and the results can't always be guaranteed or predicted especially in aleatory and chaotic systems.
For example; In the case of active optics in an earth based astronomical telescope. Active optics compensates for a number of factors ranging from the effect of the atmosphere on the light of a distant star reaching the telescope to the effects of temperature and humidity in the instrument optics. Active optics compensate for these detrimental factors by physically modifying the geometry of the optical elements inside the telescope therefore making the image reaching the instrument more stable. There are other factors that can't be controlled or predicted like the passing of a plane or bird or cloud in front of the telescope, earthquakes or telluric movements among many other things.
The equivalent in the VDSL2 context is similar to their optical counterpart. Vectoring compensate by measuring each wire pair in a bundle for crosstalk, interference and other factors and actively modifying the transmitted and received signal. The demands are not the same for upstream and downstream as these two bands require their own signal processing adding to the complexity of the system. Other techniques include INP (impulse noise protection) and is the equivalent to telluric phenomena. Impulse noise can be and often is aleatory or random in nature, it cannot be predicted and this where DSM (dynamic spectrum management) comes into action. Chunks of spectrum can be disabled, moved or swapped in real time depending on noise conditions. All these techniques are teamed together to help mitigate the problems that affect VDSL2 today.
All this looks great on paper and under pristine lab conditions but remember that VDSL also looked very good on paper back in 2006. Remember these claims? AT&T is going to deliver 27 Mbps to users up to 5,000 feet, shortly after the introduction of uverse the profile was lowered to 25 Mbps and the distance limit was revised down to 3,000 feet. That AT&T is going to give uverse users multiple crystal clear HD streams, it took AT&T a long time to deliver just one severely over compressed HD stream and today the video streams are still severely compressed.
We all know that AT&T is still struggling migrating some of their 'qualified' uverse subscribers to the 32 Mbps gateway profile and lets not forget that pair bonding is desperately late... about two years late?
The implementation of vectoring and all the VDSL 'goodies' is expected to hit the field in 2012. Considering how things really work and AT&T's track record of missing deadlines or time schedules we can expect to see trials perhaps by 2013 if not later (this is if Nostradamus or the Maya calendar are both wrong and humanity is still here) Considering the miracles transformation that DOCSIS3.0 have done to the cableco juggernauts in just 18 months of existence we wonder what will DOCSIS4.0 be offering us 3 years from today?
There is no doubt that new technologies can squeeze a little more out of copper cables, for example one could devise a method to super cool the copper pairs and make them super conductors like this Manhattan power line project Hydra but is this practical? The short answer is NO! All these convoluted and complex steps can easily be eliminated by deploying fiber to the customer FTTH/FTTP and problems with RFI, EMI, crosstralk and distance limits solved!
AT&T's FTTN, the Rube Goldberg machine of the telecommunications industry.
Yesterday after recovering from Apple's amazing 1Q 2010 financial results we came across AT&T's 1Q 2010 results. Today Apple's (AAPL) stock is sharply higher gaining more than 6.3% while AT&T's (T) stock is down more than 1.3%
This morning the David Faber report reports that AT&T's profits are 20% down but margins are up. This is due to... you guessed it right, to their wireless division. It came as a no surprise that AT&T activated 2.7 million new iPhones. AT&T's leeching effect have done wonders for their wireless division but that is about to end as the iPhone migrates to Verizon and others later this year.
According to AT&T's financial disclosure the company added 231,000 uverse victims subscribers and according to our data more than 30% of them placed in the 19 Mbps profile.
David Faber stated that AT&T's stockholders are not all that satisfied with the results and in particular with AT&T's stagnant stock price. 'Here is a stock that... well, has benefited a lot from Apple'
As previously mentioned the lackluster 1Q 2010 and somewhat misleading AT&T's economic health caused AT&T's stock to drop 1.2% for the day following the 1Q 2010 report. This morning while reading the economic news we came across a very interesting 'talkback THE BUZZ' CNN video.
Gregory Vartanian
-- Verizon and AT&T want to roll out technology on their terms not what the consumer wants or needs. -- What Verizon and AT&T need is a good kick in the behind by someone like Google or a satellite phone company to come in and steal a few million customers... -- ... maybe then these guys will wake up.
While we agree that Verizon is in the same boat as AT&T no one can deny the merits of their FIOS product especially when compared to the far inferior uverse FTTN product.
We have been saying this all the time, it also extrapolates to AT&T's internet and TV business. While Verizon's FIOS Internet, TV and phone have no equal in the industry AT&T's uverse FTTN product is last of the pack. Perhaps offerings from 'that other forward looking company' named Google will make the difference.
Dean Tavaras
-- Verizon and AT&T = the most expensive wireless calling plans in America... -- Now we know where Verizon and AT&T get all that money to run commercials 24x7, pay out huge executive bonuses and hire armies of lawyers and lobbyists. Tony D' Andrea -- Just go buy an unlocked phone and walk from anyone who tells you you need to sign into a contract -- Who wants to surf the internet or watch a movie on 2x4 inch screen anyway?
We have been saying this all the time.
What Apple need to do is to bring the iPhone to other wireless carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint etc.
Philip Acree
-- Opening up the iPhone to millions of new customers: Verizon wins; Consumer wins with lower phone prices due to competition etc. -- Its a win win for everyone but AT&T.
Absolutely! Opening the iPhone to other wireless carriers will be a win win for everyone... except AT&T. This will put the final nail in AT&T's coffin with a lackluster and mediocre uverse FTTN product, a dying land line market and an inferior wireless network and then without the iPhone exclusivity.
We have always questioned the concept of owning AT&T stock, it has been hovering in the $25 range for years. We agree that this is a stock that pay dividends but even with dividends this stock has nothing more to offer and when 'that' time arrives (saying good bye to the iPhone exclusivity) it will reach the end with no distinctive or revolutionary products to attract investors. AT&T's stock will become just another stock in a sea of other similar mediocre stocks. For AT&T to match what Google or Apple have done to their investors AT&T would have to pay a yearly dividend of more than 100% of the stock price... ain't gonna happen.
On the other side of the coin we have leaders, visionary companies like Google and Apple. There always has been a point of contention with Apple's stock in that it won't pay dividends to their investors but who needs dividends when everyday the stock climbs 1% or 2% or 160% in a year?
AT&T stock is a dead end street with no exits. Here we have a mediocre company making big bucks out of Apple's ideas. Here we have a company with no new revolutionary or inspiring technologies or products. Here we have a company that is about to loose the 'goose that lay the golden eggs'. Here we have a company that is loosing landlines right and left. Here we have a company stuck in 20th 19th century technologies and want to deliver 21th century information services. It makes no sense... just dump the stock!
In news unrelated to AT&T and the telecommunications industry Rube Goldberg machine aka. uverse, Apple yesterday surpassed Microsoft as the number two in terms of market cap.
Our congratulations to Apple on this milestone. Think different!
A reader ( thanks to Gabe. M. ) sent us his intelligent commentary and this link which points to the original Multichannel news article here.
As the furor over uverse's uninspiring 32 Mbps profile (not to confuse it with internet speed) settles down the news of DOCSIS3.0 100 Mbps real internet speeds keeps popping everywhere there is a coaxial cable and as usual uverse FTTN remains relegated to the back of the pack.
The multichannel news article states that
cable operators deliver extremely high speeds downstream, of up to 5 Gigabits per second -- or even more.
This is just another of the cable juggernaut options... and there are many, many others like this one including 100% fiber solutions like this one. Not to mention the already proven and still in its infancy DOCSIS3.0 deployments that completely obscures uverse FTTN and even successfully competes with the enviable Verizon's FIOS 100% pure fiber network.
The tsunami of bad news just keeps coming and coming like this one.
AT&T's U-verse TV service -- as it is currently implemented -- would not be able to meet the Federal Communications Commission's proposed requirements for an "AllVid" IP gateway that would let third-party consumer electronics access pay-TV services, according to a Multichannel News analysis. The FCC on April 21 issued a "notice of inquiry" concerning a potential regulation that would require AT&T and other providers to supply every video subscriber with an IP home gateway capable of providing at least six simultaneous video streams in the home. The proposed regulation would go into effect no later than the end of 2012.
One way AT&T's uverse can deliver more TV streams is by reducing picture quality and increase compression unless AT&T deploys pair bonding before the proposed date.
Needles to say those pundits that touted VDSL/2 and copper twisted pair cable as the future find themselves in an awkward position without a viable upgrade path and with a service plagued with problems, malfunctions and nonexistent limited potential.
This morning we came across another amusing video from Jon Stewart.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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If you want to breakdown someone's door why don't you start with AT&T for God sakes they make your amazing phone unusable as a phone. I mean seriously. how do you drop four calls in a one mile stretch on the westside highway, there is no building around. What? Is the open space confuse the AT&T signal?
Looks like everybody is making fun of poor old AT&T with their crappy products and services... 'rethink possible'?
Yesterday the cable industry juggernauts' stock got a boost shortly after TWC announced their excellent 1Q 2010 results.
Shares of TWC, Comcast and Cablevision were among the winners with gains of more than 7% for the day. The amazing results came as a surprise considering that the cable industry procastinator poster boy TWC has been so lazy in deploying DOCSIS3.0.
TWC is not even trying and they got these amazing results? TWC must be doing something right or the competition must be doing something really dumb.
Anyway, congratulations to TWC on their wonderful 1Q 2010 results.
AT&T continues wasting spending their hard gouged money in their new 'rethink possible' TV ad campaign.
As we are bombarded by AT&T's new (2.3 billion?) lifestyle ad campaign we've come to the conclusion that the new TV commercials are a cacophony of unrelated ideas, false optimism and profiling.
The new commercials have no brand retention, product description or a logical script, they are basically a collection unrelated images and ideas with no identifiable plot or structure, something that a person on meth would create or fabricate in his/her mind.
For example, the spelling bee commercial where all kids win first price because none of them made a mistake. Here is another the orange blanket . Another one ripple effect with a hispanic couple meeting in the train 40 years before his son becomes the 57th president of the United States... don't AT&T know we already have a black president? Why is AT&T constantly torturing us with crap? Do they hate us so much as to constantly bombard us with these commercials?
While watching these commercials we thought... What is this commercial all about? Who made this commercial? What are these people trying to sell us? A soft drink? Food? Join a new age church? A male enhancement product? What? Only 3 seconds before the end we know who is responsible for this crap... surprise! It is AT&T! OK brain place the previous seconds in short term memory and reboot.
We sincerely hope AT&T is not spending another 2.3 billion dollars in this crap but probably they are spending even more which bring us to the sanity of AT&T's rationale. We've always considered AT&T's Luke Wilson commercials the lowest of the lowest but once again AT&T have managed to surprise us.
The bottom line is. Do the new 'rethink possible' commercials make us feel good? Tell us what AT&T sells? Give us an idea of the services that AT&T offer? Portray AT&T in a positive way? Implant brand recognition in the public's mind? No, no, no, no and NO!
It's all about nothing.
Just bring back the 1990's 'you will' commercials. That will be 2.3 billion dollars for our consulting services. Make all checks payable to Dohrenburg Systems, thank you.
It was just a matter of time before the cableco juggernauts started to implement some of AT&T's 'good' decisions.
This Light reading article exposes a Time Warner Cable (TWC) IPTV pilot project that promises to bring the gadget functionality to the cableco juggernaut. Cable companies are the perfect candidates for this type of technologies considering the huge bandwidth available to them from 860 MHz to over 1 GHz in some markets. This is a case where we have a 21st century protocol technology riding on a 21st century physical link technology (coaxial cable) unlike uverse FTTN which rides on 19th century copper twisted pairs.
Comcast has a similar IPTV project in the works called Excalibur.
Comcast is going to change the way America looks at television. Sound exciting? Then be a part of our next big thing. Our customers want access to entertainment from every source and we are going to bring it to them! Whether it is their TV, PC, smartphone, or the next cool device, we are building a next-generation platform that will serve them all and provide a seamless experience. It is the converged world we have all been waiting for.
The relatively few advantages that uverse FTTN had over the cableco juggernauts are being slowly but steadily eroded.
As the announcements of new uverse deployments slow down the cableco juggernaut continue to push DOCSIS3.0 technologies deeper and deeper into new territory. Last week in a conference metting Charter announced that more than 50% of their customers will be able to upgrade to the 60 Mbps internet tier by the end of 2010.
But is uverse FTTN irrelevant? Over the last year we have seen a dramatic reduction in new uverse deployments. AT&T touted G.993.2 (VDSL2) and pair bonding as the magical solution to extend uverse FTTN to subscribers as far as 6,000 feet away from the VRAD, unfortunately this has not happen as our demographics page show.
The interesting part is that we have seen a dramatic increase in our 2Wire 2700 statistics form which could be an indication that AT&T is desperately seeking other ways for adding new internet subscribers. The easiest and cheapest way to do this is by using ADSL2+ and not VDSL2. It is no secret that uverse subscribers order the sub par TV part of uverse just to avoid the installation fees and then drop it at the end of the trial period and then go back to cable or DBS for their TV needs.
The advantage of using ADSL2+ instead of VDSL2 is reach and reach or the lack of is one of the many things that is killing uverse. Back in August 2006 AT&T's engineers (if you can call them engineers) said that uverse FTTN (then the 27 Mbps gateway profile) would be available to anyone up to 5,000 feet from a VRAD... we all know the rest of the story and if you don't please read our blog.
To us it seems that as the cableco juggernaut advance forward to new and better technologies like DOCSIS3.0, RF over glass (RFoG) and other technologies AT&T is moving backwards from the original gateway profile of 27 Mbps to 25 Mbps to 19 Mbps to 13 Mbps and now ADSL2+. It is perfectly evident that AT&T's uverse FTTN doesn't have the desired market penetration to make it highly profitable. Yes there are 2.3 million uverse subscribers today but remember that AT&T originally estimated 20 million uverse subscribers by 2008! The deadline was two years ago and in 2008 AT&T uverse had only around 700,000 subscribers... 19,300,000 subscribers or 97% LESS than anticipated. Definitely something had to be done to correct this small difference.
For AT&T to sell ADSL2+ internet under the uverse brand is just another example of AT&T's deceitful marketing practices. It's no secret that uverse door-to-door salespersons and employees often lie when selling uverse FTTN (copper twisted pairs) as 100% pure fiber installations (see AT&T's uverse door knob flyer below.)
ADSL2+ can make AT&T uverse numbers look good to shareholders and potential investors as the reach of ADSL2+ can be up to 5,000 feet away from a VRAD also ADSL2+ internet speeds can be reasonable good up to 24 Mbps... again depending on distance.
In conclusion: As uverse ADSL2+ penetrates more and more uverse FTTN will become more and more irrelevant. Subscribers placed in uverse ADSL2+ will still think they have fiber to their homes or VDSL2, uverse subscribers number will continue to grow and everybody is happy. Rethink possible?
There is no doubt that AT&T's crown jewel in their wireless division is Apple's iPhone. AT&T is a company that has benefited a lot from Apple's products, AT&T is a company that is riding on other companies' success and ideas.
The news that android wireless traffic has surpassed the iPhone must have sent a clear message to Steve Jobs to wake up and rethink if possible their exclusivity agreement with AT&T.
For the iPhone to regain market share and grow Apple has to look forward and seek other partnerships with other wireless carriers. This is a matter of survival, this is a matter of expanding an already successful product, this is a matter of principle.
The iPhone growth potential is amazing and every minute wasted by Apple is another minute that the competition will take advantage of. This is why the idea of a Sprint or Verizon iPhone makes so much sense. This year Apple will have to decide to stay with the mediocre wireless services provided by AT&T or move forward to Sprint, Verizon and others.
Apparently we hit a nerve when discussing uverse ADSL2+. We have received a number of emails from unsuspecting uverse subscribers who thought that their uverse service was: First, VDSL and second, fiber to the premises FTTP/FTTH when in fact it is ADSL2+. One mail asks if we work for or are funded by the cableco juggernauts an in particular by TWC our current cable provider.
As mentioned in our previous blog entry the Enron-esque (9:37) minds working hard at AT&T are trying to make this uverse thingy look good and successful and the best way to do this is to switch from 'mark-to-market' accounting of uverse subscribers to HFV (hypothetical future value) or as we call it 'bait and switch marketing' where potential uverse subscribers are fed false information and then sold a completely different product. Consumers are dumb and who would notice right? Wrong, we do!
Look at it this way. AT&T uverse is an already confusing product that encompasses two and now three very different products. The first one the version that everybody want is a 100% pure fiber solution called FTTP/FTTH. The second version, the version that everybody will get is a service based on existing twisted pair copper wires. AT&T's uverse FTTN is plagued by failures, empty promises and a severely crippled coverage area. AT&T desperately need to do something in a world where perception is considered reality... the corporate world. Nobody wants to buy products or services from a loser company so AT&T needs to look like a winer, a company that cares, an innovation company that spends 2.3+ billion of dollars in ads that say nothing about their products and services.
Back to the ADSL2+ point, so what is AT&T gaining by using ADSL2+? The quick answer is reach or market penetration, AT&T has silently and officially given up on VDSL2 for subscribers on long loops. There is no other way to spin this ADSL2+ thing, it is an admittance of failure period! Why would AT&T use an expensive VRAD (video ready access device) to feed subscribers on ADSL2+? Because VDSL2 has failed miserably in giving subscribers on long loops the advantages of VDSL2 pure and simple.
In theory ADSL2+ can perform well on distances up to 5,000 feet from a VRAD, DSLAM or central office, as with all xDSL technologies similar distance limitations apply. The internet speeds are comparable to what uverse FTTN (VDSL2) offer and the best part is that the Enron-ites working at AT&T had the brilliant idea to sell ADSL2+ under the umbrella of uverse! So ADSL2+ and FTTN are considered uverse... the 100% pure fiber solution. Is 'bait and switch marketing' great or what?
For the second question: Unfortunately we are not being compensated in any way or form for writing, hosting or maintaining this blog. In this blog we don't use any advertisement or any 'intelligent' links. Yes, it would be nice to have some sort of economic support from the cableco juggernaut but unfortunately we are not getting it. As for our current cable and internet provider Time Warner business class it is the best solution available to us. TWCBC is not perfect but it has performed flawlessly since we switched from AT&T ADSL back in May, 2007. We have joined the class action suit against AT&T for their deceptive internet speeds practices, it is not the money that we are interested in it is the symbolism of the compensation. As part of the settlement AT&T did not admit any wrongdoing (surprise, surprise) but having the AT&T's settlement check in our hands... well revenge is sweet.
So will ADSL2+ save AT&T's uverse? Probably yes provided there are no DOCSIS3.0 players in uverse's area but there is a catch. The catch is that AT&T has been successfully sued by deceptive internet speed advertising. These three very different uverse versions have class action suit written all over them, it is just a matter of time for some dissatisfied uverse subscriber tired of paying the same price as those on better technologies or higher profiles to fill a claim.
Over the weekend one reader ( thanks to Tom P.) asked us about VDSL2's future. He asks what do all this ADSL2+ mean, how will all affect current VDSL2 subscribers and if AT&T is abandoning uverse.
AT&T is so deeply invested in FTTN that it will be foolish for them to make a u-turn at this point in the game, AT&T is fully committed and there is no going back. In our discussion with Tom we stated that AT&T had higher profiles in the works but only for the lucky few very close to a VRAD, perhaps 4 HD streams and 30 or 40 ish internet.
Yesterday another reader sent us this link which confirms the information that we already have. The rumor of 80 Mbps (unknown if internet tier or gateway profile) are pretty far fetched considering that none of the people in our database can't even achieve maximum sync rates greater than 71 Mbps much less 80 MBps of internet tier or even gateway profiles. The AT&T 80 Mbps news is as vapor-ware as this link with the exception that in TWC's case they have a working real life model that works with equipment 22 miles away!
“What they’ve got is something in the lab that goes 10 feet, and what we’re showing is live from our headend 22 miles away. We can compete with DOCSIS,”
The way AT&T is going to handle the tsunami of constant DOCSIS3.0 deployments is by putting out something quick and dirty just to brag about in in the media and try to keep their mediocre uverse FTTN and now their new uverse ADSL2+ relevant. The fact is that the idea of uverse FTTN on long loops is basically dead. With the transition to VDSL2 we were expecting to see subscribers as far as 6,000 feet away from a VRAD syncing at 32 or at least 25 Mbps, none of this has happened as we have seen only a couple of uverse FTTN subscribers using the 19 Mbps gateway profile at 4,000 feet... only 400 or 500 feet more than VDSL.
The information that we have and somewhat confirmed in the previous link is that AT&T is going to try to use vectoring, dynamic spectrum management and other Rube Goldberg tricks to increase rates and reach. Other information that we have and it is not mentioned in the link is the expansion of VDSL2 to use higher frequencies and become VDSL2+ but only for very short loops perhaps for subscribers in the low and middle hundredths of feet from a VRAD.
One thing is for sure, that AT&T will aggressively push uverse ADSL2+ as hard as possible because in the future this is where new uverse subscribers will be added to the ranks. AT&T desperately needs to add subscribers and VDSL2 is not the answer. As we stated before uverse ADSL2+ can work as far as 5,000 feet and offer internet speeds similar or slightly lower than what VDSL2 offer today.
Perhaps AT&T should explore the possibility to cool down their twisted copper pair wires to near absolute zero and become superconductors like in project Hydra? Nahh, that would make uverse a Rube Goldberg machine.
While reading our usual liks we came across a very interesting article here.
The thing that surprised us is not the theme or subject of the article but the tone of the responses. Overall the general consensus is that AT&T is not being honest about their supper-duper 80 Mbps of Internet? Gateway profile? Maximum sync rate? What? Even Dave Burstein a well know industry analyst went on a limb an called this AT&T news a 'public relations stunt' and a 'proof of concept'.
Where were the usual uverse FTTN supporters? Even the site's 'local' AT&T shills failed to appear in defense of their beloved uverse FTTN service. So what happened?
Harddrive So if you think your speed is fast enough for me... why am i thinking of canceling and going with one of your competitors? AT&T, you should seriously think about spending some capitol on network infrastructure rather than PACs, lobbyist, etc. radougherty Go ahead AT&T and think that way, that's why I don't have AT&T but TWC for internet/phone and DirecTV for video. Geminimind LOL at&t is too old to get it. I hate at&t and I don't live close enough. Kill DSL RiseAbove Yep, AT&T plays the blame game really well. Everything bad isn't their fault, the bad network speed, the poor deployment, the poor coverage, etc etc is all someone elses problem. When I first moved to Dallas I was looking at two different homes, the first one was in FIOS area and we really wanted it but someone beat me to it. So the second one was a little bit further down the road and only had AT&T DSL which was a big bummer. Well within the first week of moving in Verizon FIOS trucks all showed up and started tearing the neighborhood apart to install FIOS. About 4 months later I was able to switch over and I couldn't be happier. The speed and performance are stellar to say the least. The AT&T was sub par and barely a decent speed (6mb/768kbps up) for the cost considering I got FIOS at 15/5 for only a few bucks more. AT&T needs to stop making excuses and put some really money into fiber to the home and increasing reliability. lohertz I ditched AT&T because their DSL was no where near what I wanted in terms of Speed. Comcast's 15/3 plan is a huge upgrade and for nearly the same price has AT&T's fastest DSL. Not mention uverse isn't even available on my block! Jan Janowski I have had DSL forever... I had 6MB (Throttled back to 3Mb because it simply wouldn't work at 6Mb-- 8K From CO) for a few years, until I could tell (after begging) that I was equaldistant from the CO and/or VRAD..... So I'll never get anything faster than 3Mb Down/384 Up. I do beta work, involving Multi Gb downloads. It got to the point where starting a download and going to work didn't cut it anymore... So I jumped ship.... The Ameritech, SBC, ATT, ____Techs I'd contact here were great... they tried multiple times to get me faster. I'm now at Comcast... 12M Dn / 2M Up... I normally get 14 Dn and 4 Up... I waited patiently..... (about 6 years since I tried to upgrade to 6Mb) and I even thought maybe UVerse would save me.... But I simply can't wait forever.... Sorry ender7074 I got news for ya. Your broadband is crap. I pay for 6 meg and am lucky to get 2 maybe 3 meg on a good day. It used to be so intermittent that it was unusable, until the good people in the AT&T tech forum here fixed the issue. I'm praying every day for Charter (Thats right, I'm praying for Charter. Thats how bad AT&T is.) to put lines in our new subdivision so I can get some decent speeds. This slow, unreliable pile of crap you call DSL is a joke. BillRoland AT&T's statements here are all but an outright admission that they are hopelessly behind cable armed with DOCSIS 3.0, and now they're pinning their hopes on convincing everyone they don't need the speed. If I can get 50/5Mbps cable for a comparable speed to AT&T's fastest offering, whether or not I need the speed is irrelevant to me: cable is the better value for the money. rahlquist All because companies like yourself think that you can bilk more money out of the crappy service you already offer. You dont want to improve, or grow or be better, just find more ways to screw us out of more cash for the same slow service you were offering 5 years ago. Sorry thats not innovation thats stagnation, you have gotten FAT and are sitting on your butt like Bubba and we dont need that if we are to stay the most technically advanced nation in the world. BTW I hope you enjoy feeding your investors because with a attitude like that they will be ALL YOU HAVE as the customers will leave for better service. jeffro Where I am I can get either AT&T DSL or Charter's HSI. It's not even a close comparison. Fastest from AT&T is 6/768. Charter is 25/3 for now until DOCSIS 3 hits my area and then 60/5 becomes available hopefully. AT&T's mindset will be their downfall. Keep up or get the hell out of the way. justlord I am so glad that I'm in a Qwest area and afraid to move to a AT&T area. I checked out my parents place in Fort Worth, Texas. The fast speed in that neighborhood is 6 Mbps, and I'm enjoying 20 Mbps with Qwest (soon to be 40 Mbps). If you have DirecTV, 20 or even 40 Mbps is perfect for on-demand content. Wait until you have 3 or 4 users that like to play video games online, all at the same time. 6 Mbps is not fast enough. AT&T's current attitude reminds me of Gates (founder of Microsoft) response over 15 years ago, "You won't ever need more than so many megabytes of ram." Lucky for Gates, he's not a hardware manufacturer or he would have been out of a job. rgyurko U-Verse. You have got to be kidding! ATT went crazy installing V-Rads in Northwest Indiana 2 years ago. Then they decided not to do installs. Real good business plan. This seems to be common throughout the US reading different posts.
It is evident that the public... at least the technically informed public is tired of all of uverse's FTTN failed promises, limited potential and problematic technology. Even the Enron-ites working for AT&T recycled an old defensive argument... remember this? Compare it to this:
"We’ve been doing wired broadband for 10 years and we have meaningful curves in terms of speeds and demand that are statistically accurate and predictable." Based on those curves Stankey said AT&T knows exactly how much data and throughput are needed as opposed to choosing a "nice round number" to shoot for. "We feel comfortable...based on how we deploy, that we can match the needs of the customer," Stankey said. For example, Stankey said that AT&T could extend fiber further along the local copper loop and then reduce the number of homes served by each neighborhood cabinet and shorten the distance bits have to travel over the last-mile copper.
We all should send those dumb AT&T-nites a clear message and tell them what to do with their 'meaningful curves.'
While AT&T keeps polluting 'covering' 97% of all Americans in a blanket of orange oil Apple is getting ready for next Monday big announcement.
As mentioned before Apple needs to 'rethink' if 'possible' his relationship with AT&T if they want to grow and expand their iPhone and iPad market. The news that Android surpassed the iPhone must have sent chills down Steve Jobs' spine. Here we have a very competitive Google product gaining market share as the amazing iPhone is stuck with a company that is considered the worst in the industry. Here we have the amazing iPhone encaged in a mediocre network competing with another visionary company that will take no prisoners.
Today Apple needs Verizon and other wireless carriers more than they need Apple and the proof is the amazing growth shown by Android. Next week will be the time to make such announcement, Steve Jobs must show the public that he is still on top of things.
Some reports are hinting at a new Verizon iPhone but in the past these reports have come and gone without showing us any results. This time is different this time there are serious contenders inside the octagon and one slip here or there could mean more market lost. On Monday June 7th we'll know the answer to our questions.
Yesterday we received a very interesting email confirming our uverse ADSL2+ observations.
According to the email we hit the nail right on the head when we said that ADSL2+ is going to save the AT&T's uverse product. A product that has three very different meanings or flavors.
The email among many other things state that inside AT&T's 2Q 2010 earning report we will see a dramatic increase of uverse subscribers, the email continue explaining that a high percentage of those new uverse subscribers are... guess what? You guessed it right ADSL2+ uverse!
The email tell us to expect a misleading and artificially inflated 2Q 2010 snapshot of the status of uverse subscribers. Our guess is that AT&T has run out of ideas and technology to successfully compete with the cableco juggernauts.
For current uverse subscribers it has become common practice to abandon uverse and return to cable or DBS for their TV and voice needs. Uverse's FTTN ship is taking up water and as the ship sinks (at least the TV and voice part) the rats start to abandon ship.
For AT&T (as with ENRON in California) the game is in reporting earnings. The way this game is played is by showing investors good numbers regardless if those numbers are from sub par or inferior products... like uverse ADSL2+.
AT&T is scheduled to report their 2Q 2010 earnings at the end of July 2010.
A reader sent us this link (thanks Joel, R).
As AT&T prepares their Rube Goldberg uverse FTTN product to be upgraded with the 'flux capacitor' and the 'continuum transfunctioner' and provide 80 Mbps to customers up to 20,000 feet away from the VRAD Apple's products and stock continue to reach new highs. This link explains how the flux capacitor work... well like uverse FTTN the flux capacitor actually doesn't always work but that is another story.
Looks like AT&T continues to make bad, illogical and stupid decisions, from their latest rant (see top link) we can confirm that here we have a company that doesn't know where they stand. AT&T must think they have a winner in their uverse FTTN product, that everybody loves uverse's highly compressed HDTV streams and problematic technology. Now that the FCC is considering regulation that will affect the future of their sub-par product AT&T reacted by threatening to 'slow down or stop' all further uverse deployments. We are not really sure if this is actually a bad thing or a praise for the American consumer, just like AT&T's TV and printed commercials covering polluting 97% of all Americans we consider uverse FTTN as another type of pollution only in this case polluting less than 5% of Americans.
trparky This company continues, time after time, to show that they are being run by a bunch of complete idiots. They continuously shoot themselves in the foot, I'm surprised they have anything to stand on anymore. What are they standing on, their bloody stumps? Come on, they know that if they continuously do what they are doing they are not only going to hurt their consumers but themselves as well. What are they trying to do? Are they trying to commit corporate suicide? patcat88 When FIOS comes to town, everyone within the zone gets FIOS. With Uverse, if your in the furthest 1/3rd in your cul-de-sac no Uverse. If you have no street level SAIs because your "too urban", no uverse. If you have underground delivery of phones, no uverse. If your SAI doesn't pass enough houses (1 SAI serves 1 block), no Uverse for you. If your in an apartment building, no Uverse for you. I don't really care for Uverse anymore, neither me at 3 different houses in last 5 years, nor any of my friends can get it in this fortune 500 headquarters city of 150K. I see VRADs everywhere, but only in single family homes with aerial plant. But because of how the trunks go, only a 45 degree slice of the radius of homes around the VRAD get Uverse. More people would get Uverse internet speeds if ATT just mounted a 11N antenna on each VRAD box. kaila How's this for slow, I live in the middle of Chicago suburbia where AT&T has had unlit VRAD's installed for years (since 2007 at least). They aren't turned on, and we can't get even basic DSL. Our town (Lincolnshire, IL) has tried for more than a decade to get at least basic DSL here. Then Ameritech/SBC had written our market off completely since Comcast was quickly moving to saturation levels. It took the rumblings that Clearwire was coming to finally get AT&T to move, but they seem to have no intention of lighting up Uverse now that the VRAD's are in anytime soon. axiomatic So.... to speak plainly, AT&T is extorting the FCC. Stay classy there AT&T. Whats next? "Keep DSL regulation down or the puppy dies?" dforan I and my neighbors just got mailings from AT&T that said you can enjoy the wonders of U-verse. Ha last Friday my neighbor took them up on the offer and after several hours, they concluded Oh you are too far away.. Time Warner barely works.
For us it looks that AT&T wants to blame someone else for their own incompetence, AT&T's uverse FTTN coverage and market penetration was abysmal in 2006 and it is abysmal now in 2010 and that with or without any communist government conspiracy. So by using the FCC as an excuse to 'slow down' uverse deployments is plain stupid. AT&T should take advantage of this communist government takeover of the FCC and bail out of the uverse FTTN business all together. Like user patacat88 said AT&T can provide better coverage and speeds by placing a linksys wireless N router on top of each VRAD.
While reading this morning news we came across more indicatations that AT&T's staff is in the best case scenario stupid or incompetent or in the worst case just plain demented.
AT&T Continues To Make Android Handsets Less Useful.
AT&T Microcell 3G Use Will Count Against Your Cap.
Who in the world is running this company?
Like AT&T's uverse we came across the first then second and now third version of Bloomberg's iPhone to Verizon article.
This time looks like the rumor might be right, it makes perfect sense since Verizon will be upgrading their networks and introducing new technology early next year. AT&T's latest iPhone fiasco is related to the iPhone's poor reception... of course this time it is Apple and the user's fault for not grabbing the iPhone correctly. The proper way of handling the iPhone should be with the middle finger fully extended and the rest of the fingers fully retracted.
This new article sheds more light into the rumor. As we stated before Apple has a lot to gain by diversifying their market instead of staying put with the worst wireless carrier in the US. Apple should look for their own interests and growth potential. Like the article stated a Verizon (or other wireless carrier) iPhone could and probably will make customers switch back to Verizon Wireless as they did when the iPhone was introduced in 2007.
Other clues that Verizon will get the iPhone is AT&T's newly revised early termination fees (ETF) which could indicate that AT&T wants to lock in iPhone customers or make the switch to Verizon a lot more expensive.
The winner in this deal is of course Apple by expanding their markets and better competing with Research in Motion and Google. As usual AT&T's stock (T) is eternally hovering in the $25 $24 dollar range and Apple (APPL) is close to its all time high of $279 trading at $255.
One of the arguments that uverse pundits make while promoting uverse is the number of useless gadgets offered by uverse. One gadget that somewhat we find it useful is the ability to watch a movie or show in any room in the home. Any-Room, Whole-house call it what you want, uverse subscribers must live in huge multimillion dollar mansions that make it impractical to walk commute from room to room to continue watching a TV show.
This Light Reading article talks about Comcast's new Any-Room DVR. The gadget divide between uverse and the cableco juggernauts is shrinking fast as Comcast continue their gadget development into web based devices like smart phones, tablets and and web enabled devices.
Any-Room DVR along a new TV guide will work on Motorola and Cisco set-top-boxes (STBs) and it is available in 20+ markets. It is just a matter of time before the cableco juggernauts surpass AT&T's uverse in this area too.
Another news unrelated to uverse or the iPhone is another absurd AT&T product, the femtocell stuff. According to Light Reading AT&T suffered yet another drawback in their femtocell activation, what a bummer! Just what every consumer needs... a femtocell.
AT&T... do these guys ever do something right?
According to this Business Week article AT&T will loose more than one million iPhone customers when the iPhone go to Verizon.
Our estimate is that AT&T will loose more than that and not only in the number of subscribers but also in prestige and new potential wireless customers. The news of a Verizon iPhone will be devastating for AT&T probably hitting their stock prices even further. We have been saying this time after time, that AT&T and their stagnant stock price has benefited a lot from Apple's 'sex appeal'.
We estimate that once the iPhone is sold by other wireless carriers the initial exodus will be around 2-3 million subscribers switching to Verizon and more than half of the new iPhone sales going to Verizon and others.
The lost of the 'goose that laid the golden eggs' will be devastating for AT&T. Mediocre products like uverse FTTN, uverse ADSL2+, femtocells, ridiculous high prices, devastating land-line losses, domestic spying scandals, etc, will severely erode AT&T's earnings... time to short AT&T? We think so.
This is getting very interesting.
While reading our usual morning links we came across these Light Reading and Heavy Reading articles.
As AT&T continue to struggle with their absurd uverse FTTN contraption the cableco juggernauts continue their DOCSIS 3.0 strategy deeper and deeper into the consumer's hearts and homes. We have been saying this all the time, DOCSIS 3.0 is not all about speeds, sure it is nice to get 50, 75 or 100 Mbps internet tiers but the advantages of DOCSIS 3.0 go beyond internet speeds. While AT&T push their uverse product backwards from a handful of uverse FTTP/FTTH subscribers and the idea of fiber to the home to VDSL then to the very old ADSL2+ the cableco juggernauts continue to push their DOCSIS 3.0 technologies forward to 3D-TV, IP video and more interactive services.
According to the Light Reading article DOCSIS 3.0 will pass 75 million customers by 2010 and a whooping 90 million by 2012 our estimates place these numbers even higher. Passed customers is a misnomer considering that a passed customer is a lost customer in addition a passed customer and in particular a FTTN uverse passed customer is a misleading term that like the uverse term has different meanings. Since uverse pushes so many different profiles and technologies depending on consumer distance to the distribution device (13, 19, 25, 32 Mbps, VDSL via FTTN and their latest contraption the new very old ADSL2+) each passed uverse home is radically different from each other.
We agree that as DOCSIS 3.0 technologies become more and more mainstream the number of subscribers will build into a tsunami covering all of the MSO's footprint. Comcast is already 100% DOCSIS 3.0 and as the MSO's recognize the benefits of DOCSIS 3.0 the rest of the cableco juggernauts will quickly follow.
One of our usual uverse pundits stated in one email exchange that 'DOCSIS 3.0 This is a real threat' We were baffled by the use of the term 'threat' as consumers we don't see threats from this or that technology. What we see is advantages of this over that technology, DOCSIS 3.0 is a a threat if you work for AT&T otherwise it is a blessing.
iPhone reception problems continue to haunt AT&T.
This problem is not looking good on AT&T and Apple. When we first discovered the position of the antenna in the new iPhone the first thing that came into our minds and in particular Karl's (our resident HAM operator) mind was the induced capacitance on the iPhone's antenna. We thought this is not good and sure enough a few weeks later the problem became evident.
Add the iPhone antenna positioning to AT&T's mediocre wireless coverage and WHAM! Houston we have a problem. We found a very interesting and detailed analysis here.
The good side to all this is that Apple will have plenty of time to modify their iPhone design for Verizon's network.
A reader (thanks Tom, P) sent us a very interesting email.
Tom's claim (and looks that he is right) that the new iPhone 4 antenna works better than the 3GS version, his observation is congruent with AnnandTech's conclusions. Tom also claims that an AT&T representative confirmed that there are issues with all or the majority of AT&T's wireless cells in the US which was confirmed by this ArsTechnica link. So what is wrong with the new iPhone? Could it be the position of the antenna? The lack of antenna insulation? Lack of antenna coatings? AT&T's wireless network? Buggy Alcatel-Lucent software/hardware? Sabotage?
At first we thought that this was an Apple's iPhone 4 problem but now we are entertaining the idea that after all this might be an AT&T's problem. We will have to wait for a fix before reaching any conclusion but all this fiasco is not making Apple look good. As the day approaches when the iPhone is to be available to other wireless carriers (be Verizon or Sprint or others) the perception of a flawed iPhone lingers in the air. This of course can damage Apple's reputation and most important iPhone sales. Apple care has come with a press release but they need to do a lot more to restore the consumer's confidence.
AT&T giveth and AT&T taketh away. There is no doubt that AT&T's mediocre wireless network can destroy Apple's reputation whether it was unintentional or on purpose. How convenient to have these iPhone problems months before the end of exclusivity?
That says a lot about their gadget product... it is not worth the box that it came in.
AT&T's femtocell, the product that every American need is now free... well only for dumb subscribers that continuously over pay AT&T valuable VIP customers. Looks like AT&T customers that are not happy with the service (probably the great majority of them) have received this amazing piece of engineering in the mail. AT&T's marketing machine resembles 'la conquista de la nueva España' when Spaniards gave the Indians worthless beads and mirrors in exchange for their gold.
Turns out that the iPhone 4 antenna is the main reason for Apple's amazing phone problems. Even consumer reports clueless engineers by using a beautiful and very expensive Rhode&Schwarz data analyzer measured the iPhone 4 signal strength with and without the antenna gap covered. Finally CR engineers found a good use for this nice piece of equipment. To add insult to injury the CR engineers solved the iPhone 4 problem by sticking a strip of duct tape (CR's favorite product) between the two iPhone 4 antennas (antenna gap).
Needless to say this is a disaster for Apple as nobody will buy a definitely flawed iPhone 4. The CR analysis shows an astonishing 20dbm loss in signal strength when the iPhone 4 is handled 'incorrectly'. For those unfamiliar with engineering units decibels (db) are logarithmic units and signal strength doubles every 3db. So for the signal strength to loose 20dbm by covering the antenna gap is a terrible disastrous engineering flaw.
Apple can still recover from this disaster.
The interesting part is how will AT&T be affected and handle this problem? We feel sorry for all of those that 'upgraded' their iPhones and got into very expensive to get out new AT&T wireless contracts. These consumers are stuck between a rock and a hard place with something that does not work as planned and unable to switch wireless carriers.
There is no question about it hang out with losers and you will become one.
Apple's stock (APPL) is 3.6% down for the day.
According to CNN's Money Apple plans to make an important announcement related to the iPhone 4.
The iPhone 4 headaches are not limited to the 'naked' antennas but also to the proximity sensor. The proximity sensor problem seems to be easily fixed by software unlike the antenna problem that may require hardware modifications. This Friday we'll find out what the Cupertino CA based company will have to say about their flawed new iPhone 4.
A couple of our readers sent us emails expecting their iPhones 4 to be recalled and replaced with a newly redesigned model, the alternative is to return Apple's amazing phone for a full refund. This seems to be the general consensus in Apple's bulletin boards.
Unlike this CNN's Tech article we consider that a recall would be the best and only 'honorable' solution, Apple should not behave like AT&T and deceit the public like with their uverse product here, here or here. No! Apple should recall the iPhone 4 or refund a significant portion of the iPhone 4 price, failure to do that will result in numerous class action lawsuits and eventually end up with a larger bill and a loss of credibility and prestige.
After a three year delay AT&T finally deploys pair bonding. The big advantages? Not much, an estimated extended reach of 1,000 to 2,000 feet and around 25%~35% increase of efficiency all this by using a second wire pair. Sorry guys if you where expecting a 100% increase.
Needless to say this is not to impressing by todays standards as DOCSIS3.0 technologies continue to advance in all fronts. As we mentioned in previous posts AT&T had to put something fast and dirty to keep this absurd uverse contraption alive and once again we were proven right.
The above multichannel news article is more realistic placing uverse's maximum limit at 3,000 feet away from the VRAD so by using a second pair we can expect to see the 25 Mbps profile extended to 4,000 perhaps 4,500 feet and above 4,500 feet the 19Mbps profile. Close but not quite the original 2006 estimate of 6,000 feet at 27 Mbps. Of course interference and attenuation is still an issue as pair bonding doesn't cure these problems it only use a second pair to compensate for the marginal deficiencies of the first pair.
Of course the media received the pair bonding news with a big YAWN as the technology is already 3 years late. Only a handful of outlets posted the news.
There are a few questions regarding latency and other issues like crosstalk and interference.
A reader sent us this link and TWC's direct link.
The above link should not be news if you are Cablevision or Comcast but since this is coming from the cable industry procrastinator poster boy aka. TWC this is BIG news. The fact that TWC's DOCSIS3.0 is now available in Charlotte NC which by the way is one of the few neighborhoods markets served by uverse makes the news very interesting.
Another interesting new feature is the announcement of a 'whole house DVR' a feature 'pioneered' by uverse and now becoming mainstream among all the cable operators. As previously discussed the 'gadget' gap between uverse and the cable operators continues to shrink and TWC's whole house DVR is proof of that.
After 3 years of delays and distance gains of only 1,000~1,500 (a 33% increase) pair bonding is not what we had expected. 3 years in the making and 1,000 ~ 2,000 feet on average 1 ~ 2 feet a day? Come on! Just deploy fiber to the home! In contrast in just 20 months after its introduction Comcast and Cablevision are already 100% DOCSIS3.0 ready, COX, Bright House Networks all well above 40% deployment. Even the cable industry procrastinator aka. TWC is well above 15% (read old link) and after 3 years AT&T's response is only 1,000 perhaps 2,000 feet? Is this for real? We were expecting Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind a curtain and tell us that we were Punk'd but unfortunately it didn't happen, this is the real thing... this is AT&T's reality.
The interesting part is that AT&T introduced pair bonding and uverse ADSL2+ in the same period of time (within days or weeks). For conspiracy theorists (ourselves included) this have only one objective. To deceit blur or confuse the real numbers, AT&T can say this: In the last quarter the number of uverse subscribers increased by 350,000 thanks to our pair bonding technology but in reality the majority of those subscribers are guess what? Right! Uverse ADSL2+ The objective (as usual) is to please AT&T investors and in particular special investors. With AT&T's stock now hovering in the $24 range, months before loosing the 'Goose that laid the golden eggs', unprecedented land line losses, iPhone related problems, wireless network problems, unprecedented advertising expenditures and increase of competition in all fronts what's left for AT&T? Pump and dump their stagnant stock price.
The once mighty AT&T has become the Chinese AT&T where their products are cheaply made, where their products are substandard and where their workforce is sub trained and uneducated. We sincerely apologize to the hard working Chinese people and government for comparing China to AT&T but you get the idea.
But what do all this mean to current uverse subscribers?
If AT&T plays this pair bonding thing right they could allocate more bandwidth to the TV portion and reduce compression. Some say that their uverse HD picture quality is superb (they are lying) others say that it is the worst of the worst (they are exaggerating but not by much) in reality uverse's SD/HD image streams are severely compressed and this issue needs to be taken care of even at the expense of internet speed.
Like we said, too little too late as a matter of fact 3 years late.
While reading our morning links we came across this excellent Wired article.
The general consensus is something that we already knew, that AT&T... well to put it nicely sucks! Sadly unlike King Midas everything that AT&T touches converts into a big pile of menure and Apple's iPhone is no exemption. We wonder if Apple did this to the iPhone's antenna on purpose just to screw AT&T as Verizon's share of smart phones jumped to 26% while AT&T declined from 45% down to 40% It is just a matter of time before Verizon's take over and surpass AT&T in this area too.
For all consumers waiting for a Verizon or T-Mobile iPhone their patience is growing thin. With new smart handsets like the HCT or Android consumers now have more choices.
Some uverse pundits say that AT&T saved billions of dollars by deploying uverse services using existing twisted pair copper wires (FTTN fiber to the node) when Verizon deployed fiber to the consumers's home (FTTH/FTTP). The same pundits say that despite the cableco juggernauts' 50 and 100 Mbps internet and much less image compression AT&T's uverse 'package' is a better option. The same pundits say that despite the cableco juggernauts' new whole-house DVR offerings and internet connectivity gadgets AT&T's uverse 'package' is a better option. What AT&T is not spending in their absurd uverse contraption they are spending it in their failed wireless network.
So far AT&T has spent 37 billion dollars upgrading their failed wireless network and they are planning to spend at least 13.5 billion dollars in 2010 and all this for a failed wireless network? In contrast Verizon spends 18 ~ 24 billion dollars in FIOS by 2010. But unlike AT&T at least Verizon has a wireless network that works and a FIOS product that work as a dream.
The public and consumers are not buying AT&T's excuses as Twitter's #attfail upraising shows. AT&T's online army of shills and idle employees have not been successful in changing AT&T's well deserved negative image.
AT&T... do these guys ever do something right?
While waiting for AT&T's 2Q 2010 report to hit the public waves we came across this cultofmac article.
A T-Mobile iPhone? That makes perfect sense and we are sure that a lot of potential and current iPhone customers will switch to T-Mobile (ourselves included) What a perfect add-on for T-Mobile before merging with Sprint. Time will tell if this latest rumor is right.
Back to AT&T's 2Q 2010 earnings report. As usual AT&T's tick-like attachment to Apple has benefited the company a lot, just days after Apple posted an amazing record breaking quarter AT&T comes out and the only positive interesting numbers are in their wireless division... as expected. AT&T, enjoy Apple's iPhone exclusivity while it lasts.
The broadband area is another completely different story. We have been saying this all the time, uverse and in particular the ubiquitous FTTN version is nothing to be excited about. Uverse pundits' uverse 'package' is just a mirage, another way of confuse and trick customers that AT&T's uverse product is competitive. With the cableco juggernaut latest offerings of whole house DVRs, gadget connectivity and most important internet tiers of 50, 75, 100 Mbps AT&T's uverse 'package' was left in the dust a long time ago.
Back to the numbers, some very interesting trends are surfacing. Uverse TV additions were around 209,000 bringing it to a total of 2.5 million, not too impressive but take into consideration that the uverse brand now encompasses two very different versions FTTN and ADSL2+ and traditional ADSL customers are now becoming uverse customers. At the end of 2Q 2010 AT&T had 16 million total wired broadband subscribers up 404,000 from the previous year but down by 92,000 from 1Q 2010. Total broadband connection which includes business, residential and wireless (3G cards) declined by 93,000 in the quarter.
The interesting part is that AT&T attributes this unimpressive numbers to temporarily factors aka. the DOCSIS3.0 tsunami effect. Another interesting trend is that AT&T lost 92,000 wired broadband subscribers from 1Q, this can be attributed to agressive and new feature rich offerings from the cableco juggernauts. Uverse revenues now reach 1 billion dollars for the quarter, triple play uverse subscribers pay on average $160 a month making it in many cases more expensive than offerings from the cable operators and for much less performance. Uverse increased in price by 6.8% over 1Q, if this trend continues uverse costs over one year will increase by a whooping 30%, so much for the cableco price hikes. It's evident that uverse is becoming AT&T's new cash cow product as more customers pay much more for less.
AT&T's stagnant stock managed to gain 3.2% for the day trading at $25.72 13:33:00 CST. Don't get too exited it will come down as we are still bearish on this stock, just short it.
Time to sell? Not yet.
AT&T's stock got an unexpected boost from Deutsche Bank analyst Brett Feldman. Dylan Ratigan once referred to Deutsche Bank as
Think of these ratings agencies as the ones that are rubber-stamping effectively the toxic bonds being sold by the goldman sachs, deutsche banks and merrill lynchs of the world to your pension fund or some dumb german bank.
According to that 'dumb German bank' analyst the price of AT&T's stock already takes into account the possibility of another iPhone carrier later or early next year. Of course the 'buy' upgrade from Deutsche Bank boosted the price 1.8% by 13:16 CST. Nothing in this industry happen randomly, the people that really know this stuff already know the real numbers. So for that 'dumb German bank' to upgrade AT&T's stock to a 'buy' something must be happening behind the curtains.
One of the possibilities is that other carriers are ready to offer the iPhone and these 'dumb German banks' are trying to protect their portfolios as they are heavily invested in AT&T. They are trying to soften the blow as other wireless carriers snatch away iPhone customers from AT&T. A simple case of 'pump and dump' the stock.
In another news AT&T finally fixed the iPhone upload problem something that shouldn't be broken in the first place.
The cableco juggernaut DOCSIS3.0 tsunami just keeps coming and coming and there is no end to it.
This Light Reading article hints at Comcast's new Xfinity branded 105 Mbps internet tier. The amazing part is that while AT&T's uverse FTTN struggles with 'major' upgrades of a measly 7 Mbps in gateway profile (25 to 32 Mbps) not to confuse it with uverse internet tiers which range from 1.5 to 24 Mbps Comcast with the 'flip of a switch' went from 50 to 105 Mbps.
Suddenly Comcast's 50 Mbps internet tier (which by the way is more than 108% faster than AT&T's best offer) just became old news. The beauty is that going from 50 to 100 Mbps has not make any dent on DOCSIS3.0 limits. At 100 Mbps there is plenty of room available for future upgrades if the need arises. Verizon's FIOS is the target of this new internet tier as the crippled AT&T's uverse FTTN product was left in the dust years ago.
Verizon is the only telco able to match or exceed Comcast latest offering, no Rube Goldberg gadget will be able to save AT&T from continuing to be the last of the pack.
A reader from the financial sector sent us a very intelligent email and this relatively old but highly relevant Market Watch link.
The link confirms what we've been saying about AT&T's un-necessary spending. Instead of investing in their wireless networks and infrastructure AT&T has chosen to spend tons of money in Washington lobbyists, a large and inefficient workforce that can't do anything by themselves and usually blame each other of their failures and for an exuberant and irrational advertising campaign that say nothing about their products and ask the viewer how they felt when they were five yeas old... how nice! The rights for the Willy Wonka song must have cost AT&T a pretty penny.
We particularly don't remember when we were five but we do remember when the AT&T's label used to mean something... not anymore.
S&P is considering downgrading AT&T's credit rating as the gigant borrower reach almost 70 billion dollars in debt. Of course AT&T's endless commercials, corporate golden parachutes, lack of investing in infrastructure, large mediocre workforce (see uverse jokes) Washington lobbyists, $200, $300, $400 uverse rebate cards, sponsorships in golf, formula1, the FIFA world cup, this sport that sport continue to add up to their debt. Do we smell government bail out? Is AT&T too large to fail?
Like the Matket Watch link states the only, and lets emphasize the only bright spot in AT&T's balance sheet is in their wireless division. AT&T's wireless division is not the their superior network or this or that phone AT&T's wireless division is the iPhone pure and simple. AT&T's wireless division orbit around Apple as the planets orbit the sun, for all practical purposes Apple is at the center of AT&T's uverse universe.
Standard & Poor's Ratings Services on Wednesday placed AT&T's (T 26.29, +0.09, +0.32%) corporate credit rating of A on CreditWatch with negative implications. "The CreditWatch placement reflects our view that the company may not be able to achieve financial metrics fully supportive of the current rating within a reasonable timeframe; we expect a potential downgrade of the corporate credit rating, if any, would be limited to one notch," said S&P's credit analyst Richard Siderman. The telecom giant has about $70 billion of debt outstanding as of June 30.
In the future when the iPhone migrates to other wireless carriers AT&T's uverse universe will collapse, this is why we questioned that 'dumb German banker' analyst when he upgraded AT&T to a 'buy'. It just doesn't make any financial sense to own AT&T's stock. So what can AT&T do to keep the iPhone exclusive in their mediocre wireless network? Our financial sector reader sent us a good answer, offer Apple a larger slice of the pie (more money). But will Apple accept? Time will tell.
Much like drunk sailors AT&T just keeps spending money that they don't have. Instead of upgrading their infrastructure like Verizon did, instead of upgrading their wireless network AT&T has chosen to spend their money in pretty Willy Wonka TV commercials... now we remember when we were five AT&T used to be a respectable company.
Have you seen any AT&T iPhone TV commercials lately? Looks like the iPhone has completely disappeared from AT&T's TV commercials.
Today in CNBC's The Call we watched research in motion introduce their new iPhone killer named the 'Torch'. Ralph dela Vega was interviewed and asked if the introduction of the Torch changes in any way their relationship with Apple. Ralph dela Vega visible uncomfortable, in casual attire, wearing no tie and with his characteristic going bald 'mohawk' answered that the new Torch is giving consumers another 'choice' to the iPhone.
From Ralph's attitude we are almost sure that the iPhone is definitely migrating to other wireless carriers. When? We are not sure but some rumors say that it could be as soon as this September.
It's no secret that research in motion the manufacturer of the blackberry is loosing market share to the iPhone and Google's handsets. CNBC's Jim Crammer said that research in motion is not what they used to be and that he is no longer bullish on the company. AT&T entered into a exclusive relationship with the Blackberry Torch. The price of the device will be $199 with a two year contract... anyone excited? Interested?
In the past trading days AT&T's stock price seems to be fictitiously manipulated. How would you explain the price increase with the same earning reports as previous quarters? As a matter of fact the last earnings report was not as 'good' as the previous reports. What is the driving force behind AT&T's stock price increase? In our opinion the 'owners' of the system are driving the price of the stock higher in anticipation for the BIG news.
AT&T's quarterly earning reports will continue to show steady numbers for a few quarters after the iPhone migrates to other wireless carriers. Why? Because of all of the iPhone 2 year contracts but the growth in subscribers will start to decline as iPhone customers defect to other wireless carriers.
There is no doubt that both AT&T and research in motion are in big trouble as their world continues to crumble beneath their feet. Research in motion's bad earnings report and his CEO 'speaking in tongues' to AT&T's wireless division CEO Ralph dela Vega in desperate need for a few years supply of rogaine are not in an enviably position.
We have more pieces of the puzzle but not the complete picture... so when will we see a Verizon or T-Mobile or Sprint iPhone? The reality is that a mediocre wireless company like AT&T went into exclusivity contract with a 'dying' handset manufacturer... a match made in hell.
While reading our usual links we came across this very interesting video clip.
Geoff Colvin JPMorgan's analysts estimates that in the first quarter for the first time the iPhone accounted for all AT&T's net new wireless customers. Is that correct and if it is correct or close is it too much reliance on one device? Randall Stephenson Nah If you look at sales [gesture] I don't know the exact number [gesture] it is 30% of sales.
He doesn't know the number? Aren't CEOs suppose to know this information? So 30% is not too much reliance? One third of sales is not too much reliance?
Geoff Colvin Well it was a big gamble when you made it because as you said it it was merely a concept. Randall Stephenson Purely a concept and... and not only was a concept the device... you know I said when we did the deal, that the device itself... you are not betting on the device you are betting on Jobs and his track record is so impressive so the device wasn't a big deal...
The 'device' this and the 'device' that now the iPhone is the 'device'? And it was not a big deal? Definitely this is a sign that the iPhone is migrating to other wireless carriers. Steve Jobs is the iPhone and the iPhone is Steve Jobs, the device is a huge deal it is an engineering and ergonomic marvel and most important it represents more than 30% of AT&T's wireless network sales.
Geoff Colvin The other related topic here that I see all the analysts writing about... is... Ok it is inevitable that the exclusive deal for the iPhone comes to an end at some point... the analysts all seem to think all that happens at the end of this year are they right? Randall Stephenson ... there will be a day when it won't be exclusive but I will tell you the iPhone will always be a significant part of our device line up and so that is not a cataclysmic event when that happen.
Many analysts think that the iPhone migration to other wireless carriers will be a cataclysmic event, the question is which number on the Richter scale?
Geoff Colvin What kind of a dent does it put in your business when... you know Verizon gets the iPhone? Randall Stephenson I think they'll do very well . At the end of the day what is the iPhone? Is a computing device it is a mobile broadband computing device and recognize when this device moves to other networks its going to move to a much slower network the experience will not be as good.
There is no question that the iPhone will do wonders to other wireless carriers' sales and the 'experience' on other wireless networks will be a lot better than what current iPhone customers get from AT&T's mediocre wireless network.
Time will tell what kind of an economic impact will the iPhone migration will have on AT&T's bottom line but according to many analysts it won't be good.
One reader sent us this Light Reading article.
The information in the link came as no surprise as we've witnessed the trend first hand. In the last few years we (our company) have been responsible for tenth's of government and private sector customers switch from telco (AT&T in our case) to cable business services (TWCBC in our area).
About a year ago we helped one client switch from AT&T to TWC business services. We documented the process in order to help other clients and the general public better understand the process.
TWC business class services basically sell itself as the savings can be significant ranging from 50% up to 75%. In the case described in the previous paragraph the company went from paying AT&T around $690 a month for 4 phone lines and DSL elite plus long distance calls to $280 a month for 4 business phone lines and 15/2 Mbps static IP internet. This is more than a 50% savings!
A procrastinating attitude is the main obstacle when selling this idea to a SMB (small medium business) Business usually are reluctant to switch and this attitude is always in favor of the telcos. Other obstacle is the tremendous difference in savings, again another advantage for the telcos. It is hard to explain to SMB owners that switching to cable business services can save their companies more than 50%, the huge price difference usually raise red flags, how is this possible? The business owner of the previous paragraph asked us 'What is the catch?'
Fortunately, as the average age of the workforce and SMB owners become younger and as business profits become more and more hard to come by the telco advantages continue to evaporate as the Light Reading article explains.
As one of our former resident uverse trolls always said, TWC business class offer a much better 'package' than what our local telco (AT&T) has to offer. The interesting and relevant part in all this is that AT&T used to offer a business oriented ADSL solution, it came in the form of ADSL with static IPs and the option to buy your own ADSL modem and router. The previously mentioned client and many other clients usually order internet services with static IPs so our client had a ADSL modem in bridge mode and a business grade Cisco router handling all the traffic. AT&T's new way of doing things is by suppling VDSL2 and ADSL2+ business customers with their own AT&T only approved routers (Motorola and 2Wire) and we all know that the 2Wire is not a very capable device especially when configured to use static IPs and in particular multiple static IPs. Another obstacle is that there is no true bridge mode in these AT&T routers and the firewall is always active and messing things up.
The way that TWC business class handle static IPs is transparent to the user, it is like in ADSL bridged mode. TWC can also bridge the cable router but this step is not really necessary. So there is no surprise that the telcos and in particularly AT&T are starting to wake up to this new threat called the cableco business juggernauts.
An 'industrial-sized can of raid' will not be enough to stop the cableco juggernaut.
But TWC, which generally locks horns with AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) depending on the market, says it has been able to build that part of the business despite those tactics, with commercial revenue growth accelerating to more than 20 percent in the quarter. TWC added 90,000 commercial digital phone subs in the period, up 12,000 year-on-year, and about 12,000 business-class phone subs, extending its total to 90,000 -- about double the amount it had a year ago. Those numbers tie into TWC's overarching commercial services strategy. Not counting the backhaul opportunities, TWC estimates that there are between 2.5 million to 3 million businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees in its footprint. And it has no plans now to go further up-market and compete at the large enterprise level -- a domain that Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) currently goes after via its Optimum Lightpath division. "That's something we may do later on down the road," Hobbs said, estimating that the commercial services opportunity for TWC, including enterprise, is about $25 billion. Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK), by the way, is also steering clear of large enterprise for now, but is staffing up to attack the sector's larger mid-section. (See Comcast Chases Big[ger] Business and Cable MSOs Approach $1B Jackpot .)
... and all this from a company that we consider the cable industry procrastinator poster boy.
... especially on AT&T's bottom line.
The signs that the iPhone will be available on other wireless carriers are undeniable. Mad Money's Jim Crammer said in his show that 'I still believe the iPhone will go to Verizon on 1Q 2011' and that 'the iPhone will take the country by storm' AT&T's iPhone TV commercials (or the lack of) confirm that the Torch now is AT&T's latest darling handset and it is sold exclusively by AT&T... go figure.
Another sign is the 'black hand' manipulation of AT&T's stock price. Somebody, somewhere, some how is manipulating AT&T's stock price higher. With a decaying land line market, loss of ADSL subscribers to the cable juggernaut, a mounting outstanding debt to the tune of 70 billion dollars, endless expenditures in TV/printed media advertising and a huge idle workforce AT&T's stock price have managed to increase in the last few weeks. Considering all the mediocre financial results we have to ask why? Many think that all this tinkering is in anticipation to the iPhone's inevitable migration to other wireless carriers. If the price is artificially pumped higher and build a 'cushion' then when the bad news come out the stock price will be back to it's original number... trading in the $25 range.
There is one problem, the economic impact can be a lot higher resulting in a stock price crash as AT&T's wireless division is the only bright spot in all of AT&T's business. So the artificial 'cushion' may not be enough to sustain AT&T's stock price and worse the price may go even lower. According to some articles like this WSJ article AT&T is downplaying the iPhone impact, at this time AT&T must be in panic mode looking for a way to save their stagnant stock.
It is very amusing to read all these articles, interviews and press releases like this one and this one desperately trying to give the impression that AT&T has a bright future. Of course AT&T employees can't talk about future plans but they sure like to speculate on what they can't deliver.
We came across this Multichannel news article.
While AT&T keeps pushing their absurd uverse FTTN contraption at a snail pace of 1,000 ~ 2,000 feet every three years the cableco juggernauts continue to deploy DOCSIS3.0 like a tsunami.
This time it's Cox turn to make the news, one morning bored Cox engineers woke up and decided to give Connecticut a wonderful surprise... 50 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream and not only that Cox has given each DOCSIS3.0 subscriber three unique external IP addresses. Cox expects to offer DOCSIS3.0 to more than two thirds of their subscribers by the end of 2010.
AT&T uverse FTTN already faces stiff competition (well if you can call competition more than 100% difference in internet speeds and much better HD picture quality offered by cable) from Comcast's DOCSIS3.0 products. But now it looks that in uverse markets in which Comcast is absent Cox will fill that gap. Considering that AT&T's uverse FTTN is more expensive than services offered by the cable companies we can expect quite a few uverse subscribers take the plunge and switch back to the much superior cable offerings.
Cox Communications launched the Ultimate Internet tier -- offering 50 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps up -- to residential and business customers in Connecticut, as the operator continues its DOCSIS 3.0 buildout. The Ultimate Tier, priced at $99 per month for residential customers, provides up to 55 Mbps down with Cox's PowerBoost feature. In Connecticut, Cox competes primarily with AT&T, which offers U-verse TV Internet service (with a maximum of 24 Mbps downstream) in more than 100 communities in the state. Cox plans to offer DOCSIS 3.0 speeds in more than two-thirds of its systems across the country by the end of 2010. The MSO has rolled out DOCSIS 3.0-based services in markets including Rhode Island; Las Vegas; Louisiana; Northern Virginia; Arizona; and Orange County, Calif. (Palos Verdes). The next-generation DOCSIS 3.0 specification provides higher-speed bandwidth by bonding multiple 6-MHz channels together. The residential Ultimate Internet tier includes three unique IP addresses, 10 e-mail addresses and 50 hours per month of remote dial-up access. "The technology powering Cox Ultimate Internet - DOCSIS 3.0 - is the pinnacle of internet speed and reliability," said Doreen Studley, vice president of marketing, Cox Communications New England. "The advantages are significant for Connecticut residents and businesses sharing vast amounts of multimedia content every day."
Robert, N kindly sent us these youtube links... thanks!
Uverse FTTN... 'trying to squeeze cabbage trough a keyhole' and 'heading to the light' The wire ball guy reminded us of this job.
While reading our morning links we came across this very interesting Cable 360 Net article.
MoCA (multimedia over coaxial cable alliance) seems to be morphing into a very reliable home Inter connectivity plattform. In its most recent 2.0 version MoCA is capable of 800 Mbps when using multiple 100 MHz wide channels.
We always wondered why AT&T decided to switch to HPNA instead of MoCA especially considering that HPNA conflicts with the VDSL spectrum. Perhaps because HPNA can use existing twisted pair wires inside the home and MoCA doesn't? The interesting part is that uverse STB installations never use existing telephone wiring for inter connecting devices uverse installers always use existing coaxial or CAT5 cables.
A reader sent us this MultiChannel news link (thanks George, F).
The news came as no surprise FTTH/FTTP is future proof technology, Verizon the visionary saw this from the beginning while AT&T the procrastinator, the mediocre did not.
People with fiber-to-the-home Internet services report higher satisfaction rates than consumers with cable-modem and DSL services, and FTTH video services similarly beat out satellite and cable TV, according to a survey commissioned by trade group Fiber-to-the-Home Council. About 71% of FTTH subscribers said they are "very satisfied" with their Internet service, compared with 53% of cable- modem subscribers and 52% of DSL users. Asked about HD television service, 73% of FTTH TV subscribers said they are "very satisfied," compared with 61% for satellite TV customers and 45% for cable.
A reader sent us this link... thanks Tom, W.
When news like these hit the airwaves one can't avoid to speculate on what is going on.
Verizon's wireline capital spending in the first six months of 2010 was 3.35B down nearly $1B from last year. For the full year that is nearly a $2B drop, which corresponds to their plan to cut the FiOS build in 2010 by 2/3rds. Since they've also cut the post 2010 FiOS build by 2-4M homes, this is probably a permanent drop. The numbers at AT&T are similar but not broken out. AT&T cut U-Verse by 1/3rd last year, one reason they went 92K negative on broadband this quarter.
All this is happening while the cableco juggernauts continue their DOCSIS3.0 build-outs and add new subscribers. Comcast is almost 100% and the Cablevision, Cox, TimeWarnerCable et al tsunami continue to penetrate further and further into our neighborhoods.
The FIOS slowdown news is sad unlike the mediocre and absurd uverse FTTN technology that should be relegated to the third world where it belongs.
As we mentioned before in this entry in our blog that 'dumb German bank' analyst insisted that AT&T's wireline margins were staying up. We all know how Wall Street operates [wink, wink] and we all know the source of the unexpected revaluation of AT&T's stock so for these telco companies to blackmail the US government and request stimulus monies is just absurd.
These multi-billion dollar cuts came after the U.S. enacted a stimulus program and now is talking about huge subsidies supposedly for broadband. Ivan is a smart guy who told investors that he thinks the government will pay up if he doesn't invest. The stimulus, as Tom Hazlett predicted, resulted in fewer new broadband connections as company after company reduced spending hoping the government will pay instead. Verizon is claiming 20-30% of their lines require a subsidy and asking for billions or they might discontinue voice service. Ironically, V & T just reassured wall street their wireline margins are staying up.
Despite all the telco shady backdoor dealings, despite all the US government handouts, despite all the unorthodox franchise agreements the cableco juggernauts' tsunami continue.
Something is wrong with this scenario, as taxpayers are we supposed to be paying into fees and funds (TeleTruth article) to subsidize these parasitic teleco companies?
Also, we estimate that over the last two decades customers paid about $3000.00 per household in customer overcharging, meaning that the customers ended up as ‘defacto’ (*read illegal) investors, as they were charged for a fiber optic service they never received. And, schools, libraries and hospitals in many states were also to be upgraded to fiber optics. Shouldn’t the state investigate whether we’re paying and paying and paying for the same services that never got deployed?
Its time for the US government to stop stimulus monies for these mega corporations and let the market and consumers decide who survives and who doesn't... the strong shall survive and the weak shall perish (Social Darwinism)
While reading our daily links we came across this AT&T announcement.
It is always amusing to read Time Warner Cable highly publicized and exuberant rants when the time comes to renegotiate channel franchise agreements. TWC use their Roll over or get tough web site to keep subscribers informed and also as a way to delegate the the blame to the other parties. At the end the cableco juggernaut always reach 11th hour agreements and service continues.
Not to be outdone by the cableco juggernauts AT&T decided to launch a 'Roll over or get tough' clone called We're fighting for you. As usual AT&T's subliminal wording is superb...'we are fighting for you'. AT&T's uverse FTTN service is already more expensive than most of the cable outfits so negotiating with content providers shouldn't be a problem... just pass the costs to their subscribers.
Adding insult to injury AT&T claims that the content provided by the Hallmark channel can be watched in other channels.
And since several of Hallmark's programs are available on other U-verse channels, customers will be able to find these programs using the U-verse Search feature, by hitting "Menu" on their U-verse remote and selecting "Live TV" and then "Search."
We'll see what comes out of this cable-esque uverse vs the Hallmark channel dispute. At the end of the day AT&T will fold and the additional costs will be passed to AT&T's subscibers in the form of a service price increase.
A reader sent us this Multichannel news link.
How is AT&T feeling now? Was it a good idea to go century old twisted copper pair to the home (FTTN)? At least Verizon FIOS can match and exceed the cableco juggernaut offerings... but AT&T was left in the 20th 19th century unable to compete. With the cableco juggernaut amazing internet speeds, new whole home DVR offerings, online management gadgets, superior TV picture quality and superb phone services, what is left for AT&T? Is AT&T too big to fail?
While AT&T struggles to offer a measly 24 Mbps internet tier to the lucky few very close to the VRAD and for the rest of their uverse subscribers getting 18,12, 6 Mbps or less DOCSIS3.0 with the 'flip of a switch' go from 50 Mbps to 100 Mbps... just like magic unlike uverse's pre-qualification, we'll know which profile you'll get until we actually install uverse, let's hear what the line/premise technician have to say. With Comcast you want the 100 Mbps tier? You got it!
Comcast is starting to roll out their new 100 Mbps "Deluxe 100" business tier in in parts of New Jersey, Philadelphia and surrounding counties, northern Delaware, Washington D.C, Baltimore, Harrisburg, PA, and parts of central Pennsylvania; Augusta, Ga, Washington State, Oregon and Minneapolis/St. Paul. The price for 100 Mbps? $369.95 a month. Considering that we used to pay AT&T $190.00 a month for a static business 6/0.6 Mbps ADSL that dropped sync three times a day $369.95 is a bargain.
Not only that, Comcast's new business Deluxe 100 service includes Microsoft SharePoint and Outlook e-mail as well as Norton Business Suite software for up to 25 PCs, with a range of website hosting and other options available.
The good part is that Comcast is getting ready with a residential 100 Mbps tier anytime now.
Comcast also is preparing to launch a 100- or 105-Mbps residential service. The MSO was rumored to be gearing up to debut "Extreme 105" in June, but it hasn't launched any such tier yet. With download speeds up to 100 Mbps, customers would be able to transfer a 2-Gigabyte file in about 2.5 minutes compared with 3 hours over a typical 1.5-Mbps business-class T-1 line. Other MSOs in the U.S. that offer 100-Mbps or faster service include Cablevision Systems, which offers a 101-Mbps residential service; Mediacom Communications, with 105 Mbps; and Suddenlink Communications, which offers 107 Mbps in select markets.
Kudos to Comcast!
While reading our usual daily links we came across this Light reading article.
Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile the number four carrier in the US in terms of number of subscribers but the number one carrier in terms of customer satisfaction , service reliability and quality is making the news in many fronts.
The first important news is T-Mobile's announcement of 42 Mbps 3G upgrades for 2011 which will require network software upgrades. Of course the T-Mobile speed upgrade leaves AT&T's mediocre wireless network in the dust... which brings us to this PCWorld article. Many analysts think that Apple will port the iPhone to T-Mobile US first. This is a strategic move since T-Mobile already sells the iPhone in Europe and because T-Mobile's GSM network is similar to AT&T's only better... much better.
This bring us to the first Light reading article:
T-Mobile USA 's planned 42-Mbit/s 3G update in 2011 will involve a software upgrade on the network side, according to a Heavy Reading analyst, but it will also require new devices to take full advantage of the HSPA+ speed boost.
Apple has the opportunity to bring the iPhone to a wireless service that really matters and works. T-Mobile US will have the opportunity to 'change the wireless game' as we know it. Which 'new devices' are touted for T-Mobile's network upgrades? Hopefully the iPhone will be one of them.
Other signs that Apple might be getting impatient and actively seeking other wireless partners for their iPhone is the fact Steve Jobs bragged about iOS activating 230,000 devices a day. Job's statement is definitely a jab aimed at Google's Android growing numbers.
Apple is getting into a situation that is becoming desperate, Apple needs to grow beyond AT&T and sell the iPhone trough other wireless carriers plain and simple. Looks like these amazing Andoriod activation numbers hit a nerve inside Apples's corporate pride.
Besides the surprising news that uverse lost the Hallmark channel uverse related news have slowed down in the past few weeks, no new announcements no new build outs... the quiet, boring and irrelevant uverse.
We all expected that with the introduction of century old copper twisted 'pair bonding' everything was going to be kosher with uverse FTTN right? But we're wrong, so far pair bonding have not cured any problems... it just expanded the casualty area by 1,000~2,000 feet.
Our VDSL2 demographics page posts have slowed down to a crawl and our web page search hits have soared with problem related keywords like 'freeze up', 'uverse coverage', 'pixelation', 'uverse image compression', 'uverse coverage area' among others. From the keywords it is evident that pair bonding is not showing the results that we're expecting. While the cableco juggernauts advance by leaps and bounds uverse... well still struggling with pair bonding and other trinkets.
As we predicted (or informed) AT&T is pushing 4HD streams to selected subscribers very close to the VRAD the rest can live with 3HD/1SD, 2HD/2SD or even 1HD/3SD all this while the cableco juggernauts push 100 Mbps internet, whole house DVR, internet management gadgets, much lower picture compression, better phone offerings and in the majority of cases lower prices.
While reading our daily news we came across this Light Reading article.
The cable juggernauts like to get melodramatic when it comes to re-negotiate TV channel agreements like Time Warner's 'roll over or get tough' web site. After all the drama and theatrics the channels we like and watch remain on the air while the negotiations take place unlike AT&T's absurd negotiating tactics. We've read many complaints from angry uverse subscribers blaming uverse for the Hallmark channel dispute, uverse's official web site is one example of this public outcry.
To add insult to injury the usual uverse forum shills mocked the family oriented programming of the Hallmark channel claiming that only older Women watch the channel. The bottom line is that while all this happen the cable juggernauts have the Hallmark channel and uverse doesn't.
Apparently all the bad press have pushed AT&T to go back to the negotiating table as AT&T 'is ready to resume talks with Hallmark' Going back to the table is a 180 degree turn from 'sending a termination letter'
AT&T has said it offered to continue carrying the channel on the old terms without a contract while they continued to negotiate, but that Hallmark declined. A Hallmark spokesperson said an extension was not granted because it received a termination letter from AT&T. Talks broke off two weeks ago, but resumed last week and went right up to the deadline. The rhetoric has gotten pointed at times. AT&T has charged that Hallmark has "refused to adhere to key obligations" under its current deal, while Hallmark Channels president and CEO Bill Abbott countered that he was "stunned" by what he called the "apparent disregard for the facts in AT&T's statement regarding our negotiations."
AT&T... do these guys ever do something right?
A reader (thanks Mike, T) sent us a very funny email with some 'most likely' answers to our search keywords page.
2010-07-22 14:50:37 99.164.57.210 newuverseblog US adsl-99-164-57-210.dsl.akrnoh.sbcglobal.net http://www.google.com/ [how does uverse work] It barely works. 2010-01-01 21:29:35 69.19.14.23 uverse.php US b12webproxy09.direcpc.com http://search.yahoo.com/ [uverse $50] I don't think so. 2010-01-01 17:34:37 99.3.xx.xxx uverse.php US 99-3-xx-xxx.lightspeed.rlghnc.sbcglobal.net http://www.google.com/ [AT&T U-verse freeze] Next question. 2010-01-01 23:06:14 68.123.4.183 uverse.php US adsl-68-123-4-183.dsl.sktn01.pacbell.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [how big is the uverse modem] Mine is bigger. 2010-01-02 01:42:32 76.234.xx.xxx uverse.php US 76-234-xx-xxx.lightspeed.frokca.sbcglobal.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [at&t u-verse troubleshooting for no signal steps] ... OK? 2010-01-02 05:47:20 70.131.102.123 uverse.php US adsl-70-131-102-123.dsl.emhril.sbcglobal.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [uverse hd quality] Nonexistent. 010-01-02 06:09:46 99.40.159.141 uverse.php US 99-40-xxx-xxx.lightspeed.stlsmo.sbcglobal.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [why is uverse so slow] What do you mean slow? Uverse is 100% pure fiber to your home. 2010-01-02 07:53:17 70.225.76.170 uverse.php US ppp-70-225-76-170.dsl.covlil.ameritech.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [what s new for u-verse tv in 2010] Other than no Hallmark channel... nothing. 2010-01-02 09:14:19 74.185.219.139 uverse.php US adsl-074-185-219-139.sip.msy.bellsouth.net http://www.google.com/ [maximum distance from box on at&t u-verse] I already said that uverse is 100% fiber to your home. 2010-01-02 09:42:31 99.35.x.xxx uverse.php US 99-35-x-xxx.lightspeed.milwwi.sbcglobal.net http://www.google.com/ [uverse bit error rate\] High... really high. 2010-01-02 10:27:34 99.59.xx.xxx uverse.php US 99-59-xx-xxx.lightspeed.gdrpmi.sbcglobal.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [need help help uversa box keep freezing up] What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis? Cahnge that gangsta uverse channel and everything will be fine. 2010-01-02 10:36:03 67.167.246.196 uverse.php US c-67-167-246-196.hsd1.il.comcast.net http://www.google.com/ [why does at&t uverse require a diplexer] Because without a diplexer uverse would need a duplexer or a flux capacitor. 2010-01-02 11:40:40 70.253.132.246 uverse.php US ppp-70-253-132-246.dsl.rcsntx.swbell.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [problems with u-verse tv] Yes grasshopper, many many many problems. 2010-01-02 13:20:42 75.33.41.224 uverse.php US adsl-75-33-41-224.dsl.bcvloh.sbcglobal.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [u-verse users] Below 100 IQ. 2010-01-02 13:53:28 198.199.238.78 uverse.php US 198.199.238.78 http://www.bing.com/ [uverse what we need] Fiber to the home. 2010-01-02 16:46:00 75.60.173.251 uverse.php US adsl-75-60-173-251.dsl.bltnin.sbcglobal.net http://www.bing.com/ [at&t uverse coax problems] ... and in-house wiring problems and outside problems and inside problems. 2010-01-02 17:05:22 68.215.140.137 uverse.php US adsl-215-140-137.aep.bellsouth.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [chance of getting u-verse] Astronomically. 2010-01-02 18:10:41 65.0.171.182 uverse.php US adsl-0-171-182.jan.bellsouth.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [how does at&t u-verse works] Again? 2010-01-02 18:25:40 85.124.72.170 bridgetaps.php AT static.xdsl-line.inode.at http://www.google.at/ [Bridge taps] Evil. 2010-01-02 18:48:20 65.0.171.182 uverse.php US adsl-0-171-182.jan.bellsouth.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [how does at&t u-verse works] C'mon! 2010-01-02 19:08:12 76.73.173.81 uverse.php US dynamic-76-73-173-81.knology.net http://www.google.com/ [what is uverse fttn] The same thing as FTTH. 2010-01-02 20:20:11 166.205.11.207 uverse.php US 166-205-011-207.mobile.mymmode.com http://m.yahoo.com/apple/ [AT&T.uverse, prices] High. 2010-01-02 20:37:59 75.1.xx.xxx uverse.php US 75-1-xx-xxx.lightspeed.snantx.sbcglobal.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [moving a u-verse box] You need a special permit from the department of homeland security and the services of a exorcism trained priest. 2010-01-02 21:13:26 69.121.208.13 uverse.php US ool-4579d00d.dyn.optonline.net http://www.google.com/ [macro blocking uverse] Macro, mini, mega... you name it uverse has it. 2010-01-03 00:32:35 99.7.xx.xxx 3800hg-stats.php US 99-7-xx-xxx.lightspeed.psdnca.sbcglobal.net http://www.google.com/ [3800hg statistics] Scary. 2010-01-03 07:42:13 68.170.89.110 uverse.php US 68.170.89.110 http://search.yahoo.com/ [att u vers vs direct tv] In one the signal travels at the speed of light in the other at the speed of sound... I can't remember which is which. 2010-01-03 11:10:43 63.167.xxx.xxx uverse.php US bcp3.cbp.dhs.gov http://www.google.com/ [how fast is u-verse] Comming from the department of homeland security you should know. 2010-01-03 11:49:45 199.46.199.231 uverse.php US dfw-gate2.raytheon.com http://www.google.com/ [att uverse distance limitation] Limited, very limited... coming from Raytheon you should ask the homeland security guy. 2010-01-03 12:06:41 76.206.xx.xx 3800hg-stats.php US 76-206-xx-xx.lightspeed.sntcca.sbcglobal.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [2WIRE MDC-dsl-Diagonstics] According to House MD. in critical condition. 2010-01-03 16:44:47 75.32.xxx.xxx uverse.php US 75-32-xxx-xxx.lightspeed.enctca.sbcglobal.net http://www.google.com/ [uverse recording playback freeze issue] It is a feature not a problem according to House MD. you should be outdoors burning that pizza you ate yesterday instead of playing with uverse's DVR features. 2010-01-03 18:26:23 99.20.xxx.xxx uverse.php US 99-20-xxx-xxx.lightspeed.brhmmi.sbcglobal.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [at&t u-verse 24 customer service number] Para español oprima el numero uno, para hablar con uno de nuestros representantes ignorantes por favor permanezca en la linea. 2010-01-03 22:07:03 67.181.247.31 uverse.php US c-67-181-247-31.hsd1.ca.comcast.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [at&t u-verse good?] No! 2010-01-03 23:33:16 99.57.xx.xxx uverse.php US 99-57-xx-xxx.lightspeed.sntcca.sbcglobal.net http://www.google.com/ [uverse node locations] It is easier to find the 'chupa cabras' 2010-01-04 06:15:55 69.7.186.253 uverse.php US 69-7-186-253.cyrusone.com http://www.google.com/ [uverse fttn 19/2] Inferiority complex syndrome. 2010-01-04 09:11:15 12.37.32.254 uverse.php US etan.creditprotect.com http://www.google.com/ [how much is uverse late payment] A poor fellow. 2010-01-04 09:26:54 65.210.129.209 uverse.php US 65.210.129.209 http://search.yahoo.com/ [what's involved u-verse installation] Three AT&T technicians, two monkeys, one Priest or Rabi (sorry no Imams since... you know the rest of the story) one lucky charm and one rabbit's foot. 2010-01-04 11:53:01 38.112.23.146 uverse.php US 38.112.23.146 http://www.google.com/ [uverse sports macroblocking] Macro, mini, mega... what is the difference uverse is fiber to the home. 2010-01-04 13:43:54 64.140.21.7 uverse.php US wkyc-lclnscvi.wkyc.com http://search.yahoo.com/ [att uverse prices going up] Did I mention uverse is fiber to the home? Fiber to the home is costly. 2010-01-04 16:25:30 64.160.31.238 uverse.php US adsl-64-160-31-238.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [att u-verse versus fios] Don't make me laugh. 2010-01-04 17:19:16 66.25.95.48 uverse.php US cpe-66-25-95-48.satx.res.rr.com http://search.yahoo.com/ [how does att uverse connect customers without copper] Using ESP (extra sensory perception) and remote viewing... ask the department of homeland security guy. 2010-01-05 03:19:41 75.48.xxx.xx uverse.php US 75-48-xxx-x.lightspeed.hlldoh.sbcglobal.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [att u-verse sucks] Yes... I know. 2010-01-05 09:40:20 170.97.167.60 uverse.php US 170.97.167.60 http://www.google.com/ [uverse pair bonding] Sounds like 'Ménage à trois'... tasty. 2010-01-05 21:55:20 74.176.33.97 uverse.php US adsl-176-33-97.asm.bellsouth.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [where can you get at&t u-verse] Call Comcast. 2010-01-06 00:39:25 99.20.x.x uverse.php US 99-20-x-xx.lightspeed.elgnil.sbcglobal.net http://search.yahoo.com/ [why is my att uverse freezing] Because we are in Winter. 2010-01-06 13:33:33 66.93.2.120 onlineform.php US dsl093-002-120.det1.dsl.speakeasy.net http://www.google.com/ [dohrenburg iceland] Yes, we have relatives there too and in Germany and in... well you get the idea. 2010-01-06 14:32:50 99.9.xxx.xxx uverse.php US 99-