# AT&T U-verse-Any good?



## williammck (Jul 2, 2010)

Hello! We are thinking of switching our Internet and Phone to U-verse (keeping D* :lol. Is it any good? We want faster internet and cheaper phone. We are in the Austin-Tarrytown area, if that helps. How does the 2wire gateway work, and is it buggy? What are the features in the 250 minute Home Phone plan?

Thank you so much!
William


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

Most of the folks that post here are "power users" of TV and would NOT be happy with Uverse, as it has several important limitations that most of us would not accept.

First, Uverse has a hard limit of about 24 Mb/s of data for TV service. This is fixed because Uverse is delivered via your old copper phone lines from a point in your neighborhood where the fiber terminates (VRAD). Those phone lines have limited bandwidth, and that bandwidth also has to carry phone and Internet service.

The result of this limitation is that you can have a max of 4 TV streams in your system at any one time. This includes live TV, recordings, and DVR playback. Read that again: a max of FOUR streams system-wide. So, if you are recording two shows, and playing back a third show, on your main TV, there is only one more stream available for the entire rest of the house. That limitation might be livable for a single person or a couple, but most households have more than 2 people these days, and you quickly get to the point where you are fighting over TV.

Then, there is a limitation on how many of those streams can be HD. In most areas, you are limited to 2 HD/2 SD, but if you are too far away from the VRAD, you might only get 1 HD/3 SD. A few areas offer 3 HD/1 SD right now.

No matter what mix you have available, though, it all still has to fit into your MAX of 24 Mb/s (with folks further away from the VRAD getting less bandwidth), so in order to achieve this, the HD channels have to be heavily compressed, and the more HD channels you can get at once, the more compression has to be used to squeeze those streams into the available bandwidth. The result is that picture quality suffers, often badly. Washed out colors and tons of motion-based macro-blocking is common.

Finally, you only get one DVR for the whole household, which has a very small hard drive in it (around 30 hours of HD, IIRC), and is not expandable.

So, evaluate VERY carefully before you decide to switch.

Many folks wisely had Uverse installed alongside, rather than in place of, their sat service, often only to a couple of TVs, and then canceled the TV service after 30 or 60 days, depending on their contract, and just kept the phone and Internet portions. You can either keep your sat service going or suspend it, but do NOT *cancel* it unless you've lived with Uverse and can deal with its limitations. And do NOT let Uverse use or modify your satellite wiring (they tend to chop it all up, often on purpose, to try to keep you from switching back).

About 20-30% of my customers are folks switching BACK to satellite after trying Uverse for a while...


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

BattleZone said:


> Most of the folks that post here are "power users" of TV and would NOT be happy with Uverse, as it has several important limitations that most of us would not accept.
> 
> First, Uverse has a hard limit of about 24 Mb/s of data for TV service. This is fixed because Uverse is delivered via your old copper phone lines from a point in your neighborhood where the fiber terminates (VRAD). Those phone lines have limited bandwidth, and that bandwidth also has to carry phone and Internet service.
> 
> ...





billybob64 said:


> Hello! We are thinking of switching our *Internet* and *Phone* to U-verse (*keeping D** :lol.


..


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## williammck (Jul 2, 2010)

All i need to know is... does the internet work constantly? how does the gateway work/does it work constantly? what are the 250minute home phone features?
Btw: thanks spartanstew:lol:!
Edit: Can they use an existing TWC cable run? The people that lived here before us used TWC, and there is a cable from the TWC box OUTSIDE to the TWC switch INSIDE (in the communications room).

thank you!
william


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## Getteau (Dec 20, 2007)

My Uverse works perfectly for me for Internet. I use Vonage for phone, so I can't comment on that part. I've had it for about 1.5 years and haven’t had an outage yet. The 2wire modem is OK. I like the flexibility I get with my Linksys WAP, so I have that connected to the 2wire device and use the Linksys for wireless and for my various PC's.
Overall, I'm really happy and I like the speed increase I received from my old DSL line.

On the connection, they used the green pair of wires on my existing phone wiring. My house is almost 20 years old, so my phone run to outside is an old 3 pair cable (probably cat 3 cable).


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## williammck (Jul 2, 2010)

I saw that they charge a BIG fee for Professional install because we have a Monitored security system. Is there any way we could waive the fee?
Thank you!


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## Getteau (Dec 20, 2007)

I don't remember their being an install fee on the U-Verse side. Granted, I had U-Verse and my alarm system installed around the same time (when I moved into my house 1.5 years ago). Maybe I didn’t have a fee because I was just getting the Internet side connected and not the phone part.


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## Paul Secic (Dec 16, 2003)

billybob64 said:


> Hello! We are thinking of switching our Internet and Phone to U-verse (keeping D* :lol. Is it any good? We want faster internet and cheaper phone. We are in the Austin-Tarrytown area, if that helps. How does the 2wire gateway work, and is it buggy? What are the features in the 250 minute Home Phone plan?
> 
> Thank you so much!
> William


The Internet part is good, but the television part is horrible.


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## williammck (Jul 2, 2010)

Hi, again, after two months!
Here's how our order went.

We ordered U-verse yesterday, 12/1.5 Internet, unlimited phone. The salesperson said she could waive the professional installation fee because of a holiday offer, which basically she set up the self installation instead:nono2:! We call AT&T back, they said it is easy to get the alarm working with U-verse. So we called the alarm company and asked if our alarm system and intercom would work, and they said our alarm system and intercom would work with U-verse. 

Fast-forward to today. We call the alarm company, they say, NO the alarm won't work with U-verse voice. Wha?!?!? We call U-verse. They canceled the switch to U-verse voice, and they are keeping the landline we had, but they reduced the price on the landline :hurah:! We kept the Internet, though! We got the equipment today, and they are going to get U-verse set up for our house on Wednesday, January 5th.

William


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## Paul Secic (Dec 16, 2003)

billybob64 said:


> Hello! We are thinking of switching our Internet and Phone to U-verse (keeping D* :lol. Is it any good? We want faster internet and cheaper phone. We are in the Austin-Tarrytown area, if that helps. How does the 2wire gateway work, and is it buggy? What are the features in the 250 minute Home Phone plan?
> 
> Thank you so much!
> William


The Internet part U-verse is fast enough for me. But U-verse TV doesn't work good at all. I had it in 2009 and had all sorts of trouble and went back to Dish.


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## paja (Oct 23, 2006)

Paul Secic said:


> The Internet part U-verse is fast enough for me. But U-verse TV doesn't work good at all. I had it in 2009 and had all sorts of trouble and went back to Dish.


I agree with Paul and I had the U television for over a year. It sucks!!


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## Hutchinshouse (Sep 28, 2006)

I have U-Verse Internet. Very fast! 2wire rock solid!

I have Vonage, so far rock solid!

Go for it...


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## Paul Secic (Dec 16, 2003)

paja said:


> I agree with Paul and I had the U television for over a year. It sucks!!


I'm glad you finally agree!


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## Hutchinshouse (Sep 28, 2006)

paja said:


> I agree with Paul and I had the U television for over a year. It sucks!!


When I signed up for U-verse internet they pushed hard to get me on their TV plan too. I could not say no quick enough. I've heard bad things about their TV service.


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## Pete K. (Apr 23, 2002)

I Signed up for U Verse and "self installed" this week. I have internet and phone but like the OP I kept my satellite (Dish). Before the install, a tech came out and installed new wiring (Cat 5) outside. I plugged in the gateway and wired it to my network. I had problems with the wi fi dropping out and losing the dial tone but later figured out it was some sort of conflict with my adapter.
Once that was resolved, the internet and phone have been rock solid. Very fast internet, much better than the DSL it replaced. I have the internet connected to my TV via wi fi. Along with Dish, it gives me an infinite # of choices. I give AT&T a gold star for quality.Avoid the TV service and you are good to go.


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## bt-rtp (Dec 30, 2005)

The AT&T U-verse Internet service is rock solid and so is the 2-Wire gateway/firewall/Wi-Fi device. I've had it for a year and a half and never experienced an outage. Downloads are super fast. The VPN tunnels I use while working from home stay up for extended periods of time. When I had a cable modem and used Time Warner for Internet access the VPN tunnels would drop up to several times a day.


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## paja (Oct 23, 2006)

Paul Secic said:


> I'm glad you finally agree!


I waited and waited to get more than 2 HD streams. They promosed this and that(pair-bonding) but it never materialized for my area. Some areas are getting 3 HD streams. The signal is highly compressed meaning the HD PQ is not as good as other services HD. Even worse if you are using 2 HD streams on television and someone is also using the internet. I got Comcast now-Much better HD PQ.
Then there are the channels. They dropped Hallmark, a channel my wife likes. They refuse to pick up MLB Net, which I want.NO EI, either. And the VOD selection from Comcast XFINITY blows U-verse out of the water. But if I had to choose between U-verse and DISHJ, DISH would now win out.


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## Paul Secic (Dec 16, 2003)

paja said:


> I waited and waited to get more than 2 HD streams. They promosed this and that(pair-bonding) but it never materialized for my area. Some areas are getting 3 HD streams. The signal is highly compressed meaning the HD PQ is not as good as other services HD. Even worse if you are using 2 HD streams on television and someone is also using the internet. I got Comcast now-Much better HD PQ.
> Then there are the channels. They dropped Hallmark, a channel my wife likes. They refuse to pick up MLB Net, which I want.NO EI, either. And the VOD selection from Comcast XFINITY blows U-verse out of the water. But if I had to choose between U-verse and DISHJ, DISH would now win out.


I wish you luck with Comcast, four years ago I ordered Comcast, but I couldn't use the remote at all. The next day I dropped Comcast & went back to Dish. You're correct about U-verse's VOD, not much content.


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## prushing (Feb 14, 2007)

Comcast and Uverse internet are probably close to being equal in speed per price. Comcast may be able to get some faster speeds with boost, but you also are sharing a line, so it won't be constant. Uverse also doesn't have the monthly use cap at least for now.


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