6 ms·

AT&T is phasing out the U-verse TV service

42 points by esaym 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago
Wow. We pay for U-Verse TV, but solely as an account login for online streaming services. I haven't turned on the DVR in over 6 months.
DrScump 11y ago
Having already built the infrastructure, it's odd that they would just abandon all of those users who cannot use DirecTV either because they're in a multi-unit dwelling or otherwise lack clear view to their satellite slots.
- jdmichal 11y ago
  From the article: > "To realize the many benefits of our DirecTV acquisition, we are leading our video marketing approach with DirecTV," said Brad Burns, an AT&T spokesman. "However, our first priority is to listen to our customers and meet their needs, and if we determine a customer will be better served with the U-verse product, we offer attractive and compelling options."
  - jldugger 11y ago
    Not only do I not know what that means, I'm pretty sure the person who said it doesn't either.
    - jdmichal 11y ago
      I don't understand the confusion. It reads pretty straight-forward: They will lead with DirecTV, but if that's not going to work for the customer, they will then offer U-verse.
      - jldugger 11y ago
        The customer should be the one determining that, not AT&T, right? Because I'm pretty sure what that blockquote _means_ is "we'll look at which service would bill them more, and eliminate the less profitable option for them."
- bloaf 11y ago
  Its not clear from the article what they're doing for internet access going forward. It sounds like the may actually be increasing the bandwidth, since they no longer have to deliver TV channels on the same line as the internet. What really surprised me, though, was that DirecTV was actually growing. I thought there was a trend towards watching TV shows via the internet and away from traditional cable/satellite.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > What really surprised me, though, was that DirecTV was actually growing. I thought there was a trend towards watching TV shows via the internet and away from traditional cable/satellite. DirecTV is probably largely cannibalizing other traditional cable/satellite (AT&T has been very heavily promoting it and offering big incentives since they purchased it); there's nothing inconsistent between DirecTV growing while the overall cable/satellite market is shrinking.
  - deelowe 11y ago
    I think DirectTV is stealing dish customers. I doubt Dish's consumer offering will be around much longer. It's got so bad that they are going to be releasing a set top that supports netflix this year.
- rhino369 11y ago
  It's probably just cheaper to lose those customers than run two separate TV distribution networks. Plus I bet the future of satellite TV is "satellite" over the internet. I had DirectTV's NFL sunday ticket this past season. SlingTV is already doing it. IF I were DirectTV I'd get into that game yesterday.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - jeffdubin 11y ago
    U-Verse TV is basically just that -- except it's only over AT&T's Internet. They run it like a cable TV system, but it's really just IPTV. But what happens if they lose a satellite or two? Haven't we been told that it's only a matter of time before an errant satellite crashes into another, causing widespread damage via domino effect? I bet they'll dearly miss their FTTH subscribers at that point!
    - labster 11y ago
      You're thinking of Kessler syndrome: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome No, we haven't been told it's inevitable, as it is highly evitable with tracking and controlled descent. Eventually we'll be able to shoot down space junk with frickin laser beams ("ablate" it) and it will be a complete nonissue.
- gscott 11y ago
  I do not like the Direct TV DVR interface. The DVR interface for U-Verse is much better.
diogenescynic 11y ago
How strange. My parents just signed a 2-year agreement with U-Verse about a week ago. It's can't be that dead if they're still signing up customers.
- dsmithatx 11y ago
  Is it installed yet? Either they got on last minute or as typical AT&T didn't mention that they are getting DSL and DirectTV. Trust me I have U-verse. Was told we were getting 1 Gig fiber. It's a 17 mb/s DSL line which routes internet and 3 cable boxes through one DSL.
  - diogenescynic 11y ago
    It's installed. They even got a new cable box with it. Really odd strategy at AT&T.
pgrote 11y ago
Will Verizon stick with FIOS? Verizon installs FIOS (fiber to the house) and rips out your copper network. ATT runs fiber to the pole and leaves your copper network. If ATT can't make it with the copper as the last step, I wonder if Verizon will continue to invest in fiber?
- rayiner 11y ago
  Verizon has stopped building out FiOS to new areas beyond those it already has commitments to. They may never make their money back on it.
  - jseliger 11y ago
    Verizon has stopped building out FiOS to new areas beyond those it already has commitments to. They may never make their money back on it. Given some of the deals they're offering, I see why. I live in a FiOS area and was eager to get it... until I realized that RCN offered 330 Mbs down for substantially less: http://www.rcn.com/330 http://www.rcn.com/330. FiOS is symmetrical, which is nice, but RCN is about $50 per month cheaper compared to FiOS, and upload speeds are not of critical importance to me. FiOS also has lower latency, but, again, the price delta is large. My impression is also that Verizon makes money off FiOS, just not as much as it would like, but some searching hasn't brought up any good data on it.
    - untog 11y ago
      I had the opposite - FIOS is cheaper than Time Warner for me.
  - shmerl 11y ago
    > They may never make their money back on it. That's not true. FiOS is actually pretty profitable for them (this data is public). It's pretty much the only thing that is profitable there. Their copper networks are not proftiable. The reason they don't want to invest in it is the conflict of interests and shortsighted stupidity of their current top management. They want to spend money on wireless, from which they expect to get more profit margins short term. Investing in landline networks is a longer term investment and they simply can't think in such categories anymore.
simplicio 11y ago
I'm pretty sure AT&T has spent more money over the last year trying to get me to sign up for Uverse then I would've sent them to pay for a year of the service. I got a mailer every three or four days, and had salespeople knock on the door every few weeks. Plus a random scattering of inserts, stuff hung on the door etc. I can't think of another marketing campaign that's been quite so aggressive.
- ewmailing 11y ago
  AT&T kept trying to get me to sign up for years, and I would have done so, except every time they kept finding out they had not built the service into my zone.
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  Try cancelling.
shmerl 11y ago
All that money which they spent on buying Direct TV ($48.5 billion, and with debt estimated as $67.1 billion!) they could spend on building out fiber optic networks and upgrading their inferior DSL and U-verse to proper fiber to the house technology. But no, it's AT&T for you. They have money to buy obsolete TV technology, but they don't have any money to actually upgrade their network to something up to date.
- cwilkes 11y ago
  Went into an ATT store to upgrade an iPhone and they were pushing directtv pretty hard. CenturyLink Prism fiber just became available here as well. It was amusing as I didn't know att bought directtv and I keep up on tech events. I probably filed it under "dinosaurs mating" and ignored it. I can't imagine directtv internet access being that fast and it probably suffers from a lot of latency.
  - spike021 11y ago
    Yeah. My parents went to deal with a phone at an AT&T location a couple weeks ago. They walked in with U-verse and apparently walked out with DirectTV. I wasn't there but I'm going to assume they're pushing it hard.
- rhino369 11y ago
  Fiber isn't very profitable either. There is a reason why AT&T and Verizon have so little interest in building it out. They could spend a bunch of money building it and then the local cable co will just offer a lower speed, but still very useable, for less money. And almost everyone takes that deal. Verizon Fios is struggling to get 40% of the potential subscribers to actually sign up. That means 60%+ of people are willingly using comcast or time warner over Fios. Very few people are willing to upgrade their internet connection beyond whats needed for basic internet service.
  - shmerl 11y ago
    > Fiber isn't very profitable either. There is a reason why AT&T and Verizon have so little interest in building it out. It is profitable (Verizon is steadily making money on fiber network, unlike their copper one). Fiber optic network maintenance is just significantly cheaper as Verizon admitted multiple times. The trick also is long term perspective. With common TV gradually dying out, more and more people switch to Internet video. Which means that owners of extensive networks won't lose business - they'll only get more. So investing in better networks is a good investment. But it's long term. And most these telco execs can't think long term anymore. Previous Verizon CEO was from the their landline division, and he invested in fiber all the way. But once he was replaced with wireless execs, things changed for the worse. > Very few people are willing to upgrade their internet connection beyond whats needed for basic internet service. If someone offered those people something comparable to Google Fiber, they would switch. Verizon can do it. They just don't want to.
droopybuns 11y ago
I don't think anyone in power really recognizes the day of reckoning that's on the horizon w/r/t the copper in America's soil. The telcos are in a managed descent on all of the wiring that could easily deliver Internet. It is too fucking expensive to maintain. So the telcos are instead focusing on acquiring spectrum and hoping to deliver broadband over wireless. But companies like Google, MSFT & others are interfering with all of the spectrum moves of the carriers because they are (reasonably) concerned about WIFI interference that affects their product strategies. So how will this play out? Carriers will need the spectrum to deliver the Internet people want, but non-carriers are going to fight to prevent them from acquiring that spectrum. I think we have a problem where the conflict over spectrum peaks specifically because of the rotting copper plant. It is a very slowly percolating crisis.
- revelation 11y ago
  Wireless has rather fundamental latency and of course shared medium issues, not convinced at all it will take over from wired as peoples expectations are in lockstep with mobile standards evolution. On the spectrum issue, I suspect we'll see some old users kicked out for wasting space that could enable economical growth in the billions (and indeed net states billions directly, through auctions).
- yborg 11y ago
  I don't understand this issue of "rotting copper plant". My home has original Illinois Bell wiring. It is 40 years old. My phones (and DSL, when I had it) work fine. One of the things my ever-increasing phone bill is supposed to go to is maintenance on the plant in the ground. The fact that AT&T or Verizon would rather spend this maintenance money on new wireless hardware doesn't automatically make it "too fucking expensive to maintain". This is the line of b.s. used to justify letting the copper plant decay.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - esaym 11y ago
    To really rub it in, after Hurricane Sandy hit the north east 3 or 4 years ago, ATT said it wasn't realistic to replace the damaged copper[1]. They instead handed out wireless gsm devices that could be plugged into your household phone lines and supply "land line" service. This of course (since GSM is lossy), meant fax machines and many other land line data devices stopped working. ATT didn't care. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/22/technology/verizon-wireless-sandy/ http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/22/technology/verizon-wireless-...
bachmeier 11y ago
> U-verse subscribers fell 4%, the worst loss ever, as 240,000 customers canceled service I was one of them. I cancelled my U-verse TV service a few months ago. They did all they could to lose my business. I had a price quote in writing and they refused to honor it. I've dealt with some bad companies in the past, including several pre-reform credit card companies, but I've never encountered one that was so in-your-face about it. Even when I called to cancel, when they tried to keep me as a customer, they weren't willing to say "Yeah, we quoted you a price in writing, so we'll refund the overcharge."
jeffdubin 11y ago
With the DirecTV acquisition, AT&T's greater leverage over the networks and studios would allow them to better negotiate for true, Internet-based IPTV distribution, ala Dish's SlingTV. They've got the infrastructure in U-Verse video, already an IPTV product. Not much would prevent them from opening the firewalls and allowing subscribers from outside the AT&T network. Who needs STBs? Just have subscribers purchase a Roku-type device. They're throwing away a ton of potential here. Satellite TV, in its current form, is not the answer.

42 points by esaym 11y ago

Wow. We pay for U-Verse TV, but solely as an account login for online streaming services. I haven't turned on the DVR in over 6 months.

DrScump 11y ago

Having already built the infrastructure, it's odd that they would just abandon all of those users who cannot use DirecTV either because they're in a multi-unit dwelling or otherwise lack clear view to their satellite slots.

jdmichal 11y ago
From the article: > "To realize the many benefits of our DirecTV acquisition, we are leading our video marketing approach with DirecTV," said Brad Burns, an AT&T spokesman. "However, our first priority is to listen to our customers and meet their needs, and if we determine a customer will be better served with the U-verse product, we offer attractive and compelling options."
- jldugger 11y ago
  Not only do I not know what that means, I'm pretty sure the person who said it doesn't either.
  - jdmichal 11y ago
    I don't understand the confusion. It reads pretty straight-forward: They will lead with DirecTV, but if that's not going to work for the customer, they will then offer U-verse.
    - jldugger 11y ago
      The customer should be the one determining that, not AT&T, right? Because I'm pretty sure what that blockquote _means_ is "we'll look at which service would bill them more, and eliminate the less profitable option for them."
bloaf 11y ago
Its not clear from the article what they're doing for internet access going forward. It sounds like the may actually be increasing the bandwidth, since they no longer have to deliver TV channels on the same line as the internet. What really surprised me, though, was that DirecTV was actually growing. I thought there was a trend towards watching TV shows via the internet and away from traditional cable/satellite.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > What really surprised me, though, was that DirecTV was actually growing. I thought there was a trend towards watching TV shows via the internet and away from traditional cable/satellite. DirecTV is probably largely cannibalizing other traditional cable/satellite (AT&T has been very heavily promoting it and offering big incentives since they purchased it); there's nothing inconsistent between DirecTV growing while the overall cable/satellite market is shrinking.
- deelowe 11y ago
  I think DirectTV is stealing dish customers. I doubt Dish's consumer offering will be around much longer. It's got so bad that they are going to be releasing a set top that supports netflix this year.
rhino369 11y ago
It's probably just cheaper to lose those customers than run two separate TV distribution networks. Plus I bet the future of satellite TV is "satellite" over the internet. I had DirectTV's NFL sunday ticket this past season. SlingTV is already doing it. IF I were DirectTV I'd get into that game yesterday.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jeffdubin 11y ago
  U-Verse TV is basically just that -- except it's only over AT&T's Internet. They run it like a cable TV system, but it's really just IPTV. But what happens if they lose a satellite or two? Haven't we been told that it's only a matter of time before an errant satellite crashes into another, causing widespread damage via domino effect? I bet they'll dearly miss their FTTH subscribers at that point!
  - labster 11y ago
    You're thinking of Kessler syndrome: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome No, we haven't been told it's inevitable, as it is highly evitable with tracking and controlled descent. Eventually we'll be able to shoot down space junk with frickin laser beams ("ablate" it) and it will be a complete nonissue.
gscott 11y ago
I do not like the Direct TV DVR interface. The DVR interface for U-Verse is much better.

diogenescynic 11y ago

How strange. My parents just signed a 2-year agreement with U-Verse about a week ago. It's can't be that dead if they're still signing up customers.

dsmithatx 11y ago
Is it installed yet? Either they got on last minute or as typical AT&T didn't mention that they are getting DSL and DirectTV. Trust me I have U-verse. Was told we were getting 1 Gig fiber. It's a 17 mb/s DSL line which routes internet and 3 cable boxes through one DSL.
- diogenescynic 11y ago
  It's installed. They even got a new cable box with it. Really odd strategy at AT&T.

pgrote 11y ago

Will Verizon stick with FIOS? Verizon installs FIOS (fiber to the house) and rips out your copper network. ATT runs fiber to the pole and leaves your copper network. If ATT can't make it with the copper as the last step, I wonder if Verizon will continue to invest in fiber?

rayiner 11y ago
Verizon has stopped building out FiOS to new areas beyond those it already has commitments to. They may never make their money back on it.
- jseliger 11y ago
  Verizon has stopped building out FiOS to new areas beyond those it already has commitments to. They may never make their money back on it. Given some of the deals they're offering, I see why. I live in a FiOS area and was eager to get it... until I realized that RCN offered 330 Mbs down for substantially less: http://www.rcn.com/330 http://www.rcn.com/330. FiOS is symmetrical, which is nice, but RCN is about $50 per month cheaper compared to FiOS, and upload speeds are not of critical importance to me. FiOS also has lower latency, but, again, the price delta is large. My impression is also that Verizon makes money off FiOS, just not as much as it would like, but some searching hasn't brought up any good data on it.
  - untog 11y ago
    I had the opposite - FIOS is cheaper than Time Warner for me.
- shmerl 11y ago
  > They may never make their money back on it. That's not true. FiOS is actually pretty profitable for them (this data is public). It's pretty much the only thing that is profitable there. Their copper networks are not proftiable. The reason they don't want to invest in it is the conflict of interests and shortsighted stupidity of their current top management. They want to spend money on wireless, from which they expect to get more profit margins short term. Investing in landline networks is a longer term investment and they simply can't think in such categories anymore.

simplicio 11y ago

I'm pretty sure AT&T has spent more money over the last year trying to get me to sign up for Uverse then I would've sent them to pay for a year of the service. I got a mailer every three or four days, and had salespeople knock on the door every few weeks. Plus a random scattering of inserts, stuff hung on the door etc. I can't think of another marketing campaign that's been quite so aggressive.

ewmailing 11y ago
AT&T kept trying to get me to sign up for years, and I would have done so, except every time they kept finding out they had not built the service into my zone.
unclebucknasty 11y ago
Try cancelling.

shmerl 11y ago

All that money which they spent on buying Direct TV ($48.5 billion, and with debt estimated as $67.1 billion!) they could spend on building out fiber optic networks and upgrading their inferior DSL and U-verse to proper fiber to the house technology. But no, it's AT&T for you. They have money to buy obsolete TV technology, but they don't have any money to actually upgrade their network to something up to date.

cwilkes 11y ago
Went into an ATT store to upgrade an iPhone and they were pushing directtv pretty hard. CenturyLink Prism fiber just became available here as well. It was amusing as I didn't know att bought directtv and I keep up on tech events. I probably filed it under "dinosaurs mating" and ignored it. I can't imagine directtv internet access being that fast and it probably suffers from a lot of latency.
- spike021 11y ago
  Yeah. My parents went to deal with a phone at an AT&T location a couple weeks ago. They walked in with U-verse and apparently walked out with DirectTV. I wasn't there but I'm going to assume they're pushing it hard.
rhino369 11y ago
Fiber isn't very profitable either. There is a reason why AT&T and Verizon have so little interest in building it out. They could spend a bunch of money building it and then the local cable co will just offer a lower speed, but still very useable, for less money. And almost everyone takes that deal. Verizon Fios is struggling to get 40% of the potential subscribers to actually sign up. That means 60%+ of people are willingly using comcast or time warner over Fios. Very few people are willing to upgrade their internet connection beyond whats needed for basic internet service.
- shmerl 11y ago
  > Fiber isn't very profitable either. There is a reason why AT&T and Verizon have so little interest in building it out. It is profitable (Verizon is steadily making money on fiber network, unlike their copper one). Fiber optic network maintenance is just significantly cheaper as Verizon admitted multiple times. The trick also is long term perspective. With common TV gradually dying out, more and more people switch to Internet video. Which means that owners of extensive networks won't lose business - they'll only get more. So investing in better networks is a good investment. But it's long term. And most these telco execs can't think long term anymore. Previous Verizon CEO was from the their landline division, and he invested in fiber all the way. But once he was replaced with wireless execs, things changed for the worse. > Very few people are willing to upgrade their internet connection beyond whats needed for basic internet service. If someone offered those people something comparable to Google Fiber, they would switch. Verizon can do it. They just don't want to.

droopybuns 11y ago

I don't think anyone in power really recognizes the day of reckoning that's on the horizon w/r/t the copper in America's soil. The telcos are in a managed descent on all of the wiring that could easily deliver Internet. It is too fucking expensive to maintain. So the telcos are instead focusing on acquiring spectrum and hoping to deliver broadband over wireless. But companies like Google, MSFT & others are interfering with all of the spectrum moves of the carriers because they are (reasonably) concerned about WIFI interference that affects their product strategies. So how will this play out? Carriers will need the spectrum to deliver the Internet people want, but non-carriers are going to fight to prevent them from acquiring that spectrum. I think we have a problem where the conflict over spectrum peaks specifically because of the rotting copper plant. It is a very slowly percolating crisis.

revelation 11y ago
Wireless has rather fundamental latency and of course shared medium issues, not convinced at all it will take over from wired as peoples expectations are in lockstep with mobile standards evolution. On the spectrum issue, I suspect we'll see some old users kicked out for wasting space that could enable economical growth in the billions (and indeed net states billions directly, through auctions).
yborg 11y ago
I don't understand this issue of "rotting copper plant". My home has original Illinois Bell wiring. It is 40 years old. My phones (and DSL, when I had it) work fine. One of the things my ever-increasing phone bill is supposed to go to is maintenance on the plant in the ground. The fact that AT&T or Verizon would rather spend this maintenance money on new wireless hardware doesn't automatically make it "too fucking expensive to maintain". This is the line of b.s. used to justify letting the copper plant decay.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- esaym 11y ago
  To really rub it in, after Hurricane Sandy hit the north east 3 or 4 years ago, ATT said it wasn't realistic to replace the damaged copper[1]. They instead handed out wireless gsm devices that could be plugged into your household phone lines and supply "land line" service. This of course (since GSM is lossy), meant fax machines and many other land line data devices stopped working. ATT didn't care. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/22/technology/verizon-wireless-sandy/ http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/22/technology/verizon-wireless-...

bachmeier 11y ago

> U-verse subscribers fell 4%, the worst loss ever, as 240,000 customers canceled service I was one of them. I cancelled my U-verse TV service a few months ago. They did all they could to lose my business. I had a price quote in writing and they refused to honor it. I've dealt with some bad companies in the past, including several pre-reform credit card companies, but I've never encountered one that was so in-your-face about it. Even when I called to cancel, when they tried to keep me as a customer, they weren't willing to say "Yeah, we quoted you a price in writing, so we'll refund the overcharge."

jeffdubin 11y ago

With the DirecTV acquisition, AT&T's greater leverage over the networks and studios would allow them to better negotiate for true, Internet-based IPTV distribution, ala Dish's SlingTV. They've got the infrastructure in U-Verse video, already an IPTV product. Not much would prevent them from opening the firewalls and allowing subscribers from outside the AT&T network. Who needs STBs? Just have subscribers purchase a Roku-type device. They're throwing away a ton of potential here. Satellite TV, in its current form, is not the answer.