AT&T

Spotlight: MI-Connection vs. Ma Bell

Dan O'Shea — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:41:57 -0500

AT&T announced this week that it will begin offering its U-verse IPTV service in the Charlotte, N.C. area, which may sound like just another in a long list of market launches. However, Davidson, N.C.'s DavidsonNews.net offers a detailed local view of the potential competitive battle developing between AT&T and MI-Connection, a cable TV and Internet provider serving 16,000 customers, and operated by the towns of Mooresville and Davidson. The municipalities bought the former Adelphia system last year from Time Warner Cable.

AT&T said last year it would invest $350 million to upgrade its North Carolina network. Meanwhile, Davidson and Mooresville have initiated a $22.5 million upgrade to their network, and also plan to offer voice next year to compete against AT&T and other service providers. Can the local cable venture contend with U-Verse TV features like Total Home DVR? Or will customer loyalty to the local hero keep AT&T IPTV success to a minimum in these markets?

For more:
- DavidsonNews.net has this story

DirecTV looking up after 3Q

Dan O'Shea — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:54:35 -0500

Satellite TV company DirecTV, which recently re-captured a long-term resake partnership with AT&T and continues to have strong affiliations with large telcos, posted a 14 percent increase in profit to $363 million, and a 15 percent increase in revenue to $4.98 billion. The company added only 156,000 net video subscribers in the quarter, which was a slip of 35% from same quarter last year, but that drop was attributed in part to the fact that AT&T earlier this year dropped DirecTV as a resale partner, a few months before announcing a new commitment with DirecTV to begin early next year.

It has never been clear to us how long telcos will continue to rely on satellite TV partnerships, but with telcos committed to DirecTV, and more customers potentially ready to lock into money-saving triple play service bundles that include the service, things are looking up for at least one satellite TV player. DirecTV now has about 17.3 million customers nationally.

For more:
- The Wall Street Journal has this report

AT&T agrees to pay FCC pay-TV fees

Dan O'Shea — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:37:30 -0500

AT&T has agreed to fork over Federal Communications Commission fees charged to other cable TV operators, perhaps realizing that having more than 750,000 TV subscribers would lessen the effect of any arguments against having to pay the fees.

It is not yet clear how much AT&T will contribute, but agreed in an FCC filing last week that it should pay an "equitable share." Cable TV operators have suggested in the past that telco TV providers should have to contribute to the fee base that helps the FCC with the cost of regulating the cable TV industry.

For more:
- IPTV News has this post

Q3: So far, so good for telco TV

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:36:20 -0400

So far, telco TV services are coming through one of their most critical quarters with flying colors. Verizon Communications and AT&T posted nearly identical net additions of TV subscribers during the third quarter, and together accounted for 465,000 customers signing on to telco TV offerings during the quarter. That's far more than the two largest telcos in the U.S. collected during the second quarter of 2008.

A number of smaller telco TV service providers and large cable TV companies are set to report their numbers in the days to come, so we will soon find out not only if telco TV is still succeeding across the board, but also how much of a bite the newer TV service providers are taking out of the cable TV companies.

Meanwhile, yesterday's announcement of rural telco CenturyTel's acquisition of Embarq could have some interesting TV-related implications. The buyer has been a believer in having its own TV service offering, while Embarq, like larger telco Qwest Communications, has shied away from investing in its own, branded TV service in favor of encouraging customers to use their broadband pipes for online video. Will CenturyTel change Embarq's TV strategy?

If it does, everything from service bundle competition to staightforward TV competition in Embarq's current markets will be affected. Also, the combined company could present TV technology and equipment vendors with with a larger sales opportunity, as well as the trade-off for that opportunity--a larger telco with much more purchasing power to leverage at a time when network operator across the board already may be tightening TV-related capex.

-Dan

AT&T on track for 1 million IPTV subs

Dan O'Shea — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:23:49 -0400

Heading into AT&T's third quarter earnings report, I was starting to doubt that the telco was going to reach its goal of 1 million U-verse IPTV subscribers by the end of this year, especially with the economy and consumer spending suffering and getting worse by the week. But AT&T came up big, reporting a net gain of about 232,000 subscribers during the third quarter. The telco now has 781,000 TV customers, and reiterated that it's on track to hit 1 million by the end of 2008.

For more:
FierceTelecom has the full earnings story

New AT&T retail partner may close stores

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:38:35 -0400

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that retailer Circuit City is considering closing 150 of its stores, possibly as a way to stave off bankruptcy. The Journal attributes the report to unnamed sources, and the retailer declined to discuss its plans with the paper.

What does this have to do with IPTV? For starters, if it happens, it could be a blow to AT&T's plan to market its U-verse IPTV service through Circuit City stores. The telco announced just days ago that it would start selling the service through retail partners Circuit City and Wal-Mart, a plan that intended to make the service available in about 600 stores total.

Second, it may give other telcos who were considering similar IPTV retail partnerships reason to proceed with caution. Retail partnerships seem to have great potential as a way to help telco TV providers advance their service to mass market adoption levels. But, they still need to be careful about who they choose as partners.

For more:
- see this story at The Wall Street Journal

AT&T to sell IPTV through 'big box' retailers

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:17:12 -0400

If you were beginning to wonder what sort of additional effort AT&T would require to meet its goal of 1 million U-verse TV customers by the end of this year, the telco has provided at least part of the answer with new agreements to sell the service through "big box" retailers Wal-mart and Circuit City. This appears to be the first time an IPTV operator will sell its offering through national retails chains. The service will be available starting this month in about 600 stores stationed in markets where AT&T already has rolled out U-verse.

The telco had 549,000 U-verse TV customers at the end of the second quarter, and despite slowing growth amid uncertain consumer spending, AT&T has a goal of surpassing the 1 million customer mark by the end of 2008. The partnerships will encourage one-stop shopping for consumers looking to satisfy their home entertainment needs--at least for consumers brave enough to continue their buying ways.

For more:
- see this post at TheStreet.com

J.D. Power: FIOS, U-verse lead TV rankings

Dan O'Shea — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:12:31 -0400

The CFI Group's customer satisfaction survey released earlier this week showed an edge for telcos in the competition with cable TV companies to sell consumers bundled services. Very few of the 1,200 household surveyed, however, were customers of telco TV services. Now, a new residential TV satisfaction survey from J.D. Power is showing that the TV services from big telcos Verizon Communications and AT&T have scored very high.

The survey findings placed AT&T as top-ranked for customer satisfaction in three regions--North Central, West and South--and Verizon has the highest score in the East.

In the last few years, cable TV companies, specifically Cox Communications, have started scoring high in telephony customer satisfaction surveys, so the aggressiveness that both kinds of companies have shown in entering one another's businesses seem to be paying off in customers' minds.

For more:
- see this story at Multichannel News

AT&T chooses DirecTV over Dish

Dan O'Shea — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:16:46 -0400

AT&T, perhaps looking to head off speculation about its satellite TV plans after last week's extension of its resale partnership with Dish Network, has announced that DirecTV will be its sole satellite partner starting in February 2009. It may seem like a surprising choice, given that AT&T just extended the Dish arrangement and previously had stopped re-selling DirecTV in the former BellSouth region, but the carrier had maintained a stance all along that it was evaluating its options.

With the ongoing success of IPTV, it is not clear how much longer a satellite TV partnership will be important to the telco. It sells bundles that include satellite TV and has way more satellite TV customers (2.1 million) than IPTV customers (549,000, as of the second quarter), but IPTV has been closing the gap.

Meanwhile, as cable TV and telco TV players knock heads, and DirecTV benefits from ongoing partnerships with the big telcos, you have to wonder what will come of Dish Network. The company's parent, EchoStar, last year was rumored to be close to getting acquired by AT&T, and now Dish has no major U.S. telco partners at all.

For more:
- read this story at The Wall Street Journal

California group: U-Verse diminishes PEG programming

Dan O'Shea — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:23:38 -0400

California's Division of Ratepayer Advocates says that AT&T's U-Verse IPTV service diminishes public, educational and government programming by putting it on a single channel and transmitting it at a lower quality level. The agency posted a consumer alert and YouTube video to highlight the issue and give customers information that supposedly will help them choose their video service provider. Is PEG programming part of the buying decision for any cable TV/IPTV customers?

For more:
- read this story at Multichannel News

AT&T to resell Dish a little longer

Dan O'Shea — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:37:54 -0400

AT&T had confirmed earlier this summer that its reseller arrangement with satellite TV firm Dish Network would end at the end of this year, but now the companies have agreed to extend their partnership through Jan. 31, 2009.

AT&T previously had ended a resale deal with DirecTV, seemingly in favor of selling Dish service. However, when AT&T and Dish acknowledged their resale deal would end this year, industry observers were left to wonder if that meant that AT&T was done with satellite TV, or if it would allow both Dish and DirecTV a shot at becoming its long-term partner. AT&T has said it is still trying to decide who to partner with next year. The telco now has more than 2.2 million satellite TV customers, but growth in that area has sharply dropped in recent months.

However, AT&T still has more satellite TV customers than IPTV customers. The U-verse TV service had gathered 549,000 subscribers at last count following the second quarter of 2008.

For more:
- read this story at Multichannel News

The fourth screen era begins

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:59:27 -0400

AT&T has announced HomeManager, a touch-screen broadband base station that, as the name suggests, manages and consolidates several communications functions. It leverages the U-Verse broadband connection and supports voice calling, e-mail and access to internet-based information services.

AT&T and other carriers have been talking for the last few years about three-screen strategies, and how to better integrate broadband communications functions via the TV, the mobile phone and the PC. HomeManager looks to be a step toward making that happen, though HomeManager itself also looks like a fourth screen being added to high-tech households. Will that be one screen too many?

At a cost of $299, 3Screens.net blogger Alan Weinkrantz wonders why AT&T doesn't offer a rebate, which is a good point. HomeManager requires customers to sign up for a two-year contract for AT&T High Speed Internet or sign up for AT&T U-verse TV, Internet and voice.

HomeManager doesn't have any further monthly service charge, and it looks like a pretty sleek and useful device. However, there are an awful lot of broadband appliances out there now vying to be positioned near consumers' TVs or other devices. Some of them provide online video, some of them provide converged wireline/wireless voice access, and others, like HomeManager and a similar offering Embarq announced earlier this year, look to bridge the gap between traditional landline voice and Internet-based communications and information services.

Will the fourth screen help consumers manage the first three screens, or is it destined to become another under-used resident in increasingly crowded household entertainment centers?

-Dan

For more:
- see this story at Telephony
- check out photos and AT&T's press release at Gizmodo
- read this blog post by Alan Weinkrantz

AT&T pushes MPEG-4 to full HD potential

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:43:06 -0400

AT&T did not pursue the same fiber-to-the-home IPTV plans that some others carriers have relied on, but John Donovan, the telco's CTO, said at a conference last week that increasingly efficient MPEG-4 compression will help AT&T continue to grow its high-definition channel line-up.

Donovan said MPEG-4 video compression for the company's U-verse TV service will improve to around 5 Mbps next year from its present rate of about 6 Mbps to 8 Mbps. That efficiency gain also will help AT&T support more simultaneous streams with its new whole-home DVR service in use--three live streams and four recorded streams.

MPEG-4 equipment was slow to come to market, but the protocol now can give IPTV service providers some help against their cable TV competitors, who mostly use MPEG-2 compression.

For more:
- read this coverage at Multichannel News

Multi-DVR homes are increasing

Dan O'Shea — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:39:43 -0400

About 27 percent of TV households in the U.S. now have a DVR, and about 30 percent of those DVR households have at least two DVRs, according to Leichtman Research Group. Though both are still modest numbers, this is just what telcos rolling out whole-home DVR services wanted to hear, as it is a clear indicator of interest in having the capability on more than one TV. AT&T just announced broad availability for its whole-home DVR capability, and such an offering should be among the hottest IPTV features in the coming year.

"The number of US households with DVRs has essentially doubled in the past two years, and-with a continued push from cable, DBS, and Telco TV providers-will likely double again over the next four years," said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman, at Multichannel News.

(Editor's Note: This post has been corrected from its original text, which included a mistake.)

For more:
- check out this press release from Leichtman Research Group

AT&T debuts whole-home DVR

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:04:13 -0400

AT&T's whole-home DVR trials produced a new service for U-verse customers that allows them play back standard and high-definition recorded programs on up to seven TVs within the same household. The service capability comes through a free software upgrade to existing home equipment and will be made available to all U-Verse subscribers by the end of this year. Many carriers have discussed whole-home DVR offerings, and demonstrations of how a user could pause a movie on one TV in one room and pick it up where they left off on another TV in another room have been common at industry trade shows.

For more:
- read this story at Telephony

Connecticut: AT&T needs muni OK for VRADs

Dan O'Shea — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:43:54 -0400

Connecticut's Department of Public Utility Control says AT&T must get permission from municipalities in the state before deploying its video-ready access devices on utility poles and in other areas. The statement came in the form of a draft ruling that will be finalized on Sept. 29. The ruling follows an earlier ruling from the DPUC that ordered AT&T to get retroactive permission from residents whose properties were adjacent to areas where AT&T already had deployed its VRADs. This decision comes after three Connecticut communities filed petitions to have the DPUC look at the telco's deployment of the boxes for safety reasons. In the past, there have been reports of the gear catching fire because of a battery problem, though the telco had committed to replace the potentially faulty batteries.

For more:
- check out this coverage at Multichannel News

AT&T expands IPTV in Florida, shuts down cable in Alabama

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:08:45 -0400

AT&T continues to expand into new IPTV markets, already announcing this week that it is rolling out U-verse TV service in South Bend, Ind., and in Jacksonville, Fla. The Jacksonville launch is of particular note, as its one of the few former BellSouth markets to get AT&T's IPTV treatment--Atlanta and the South Florida area around Miami being the others.

As the carrier tries to lure 1 million IPTV customers by year's end, it will not be surprising to see more markets in the former BellSouth region get access to the service. Meanwhile, AT&T also reportedly has shut down a cable TV service that originally had been operated by BellSouth in one Alabama community, following up on an intention it announced earlier this year. The affected Alabama municipality of Vestavia Hills, however, already has approved AT&T as an IPTV provider, so expect a launch there sooner rather than later.

For more:
- read this post at DSL Reports
- see this report at DSL Reports

Related articles:
AT&T is aiming for 1 million U-verse TV subs this year. AT&T report
AT&T added 148,000 U-Verse TV subs in the first quarter. AT&T report

AT&T plays on fantasy gridiron

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:46:49 -0400

AT&T has integrated features of Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football with its U-verse IPTV service's U-Bar toolbar, in what fantasy football maniacs are sure to call the best IPTV application ever invented. The new offering will allow armchair Jerry Joneses to track their teams and players--while watching all the games, of course.

It might be a no-brainer, but this service is a good example of how IPTV players can use interactivity and value-added features to engender loyalty from specific customer segments interested in certain types of content.

For more:
- check out this report at IPTV News

Related articles:
AT&T is aiming for 1 million U-verse subscribers this year. AT&T report
AT&T started focusing more on content last year. AT&T report

AT&T tests voice over U-verse

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:06:21 -0400

IPTV and VoIP over the same network is closer to becoming a commercial reality for AT&T. The telco, which now has 549,000 IPTV customers on its U-verse broadband network, has started testing a VoIP offering over the same network facilities in San Antonio, Tex. The company is preparing two different U-verse VoIP plans according to a story at Network World. U-verse Voice Unlimited will cost $40 a month for unlimited local and nationwide minutes, and U-verse Voice 1000 will cost $30 a month for 1,000 call minutes.

Perhaps AT&T was waiting for U-verse IPTV to cross the 500,000 customer mark before it added voice to the same network, but this move actually has been a long time coming. The telco giant said last fall that it wanted to bundle IPTV and VoIP by the end of last year. Then, just weeks ago, it had affiliate marketers stop selling its CallVantage VoIP offering.

For more:
- see this story at Network World

Related articles:
AT&T discussed its IPTV/VoIP bundling intentions last fall. AT&T report
AT&T stopped marketing CallVantage through affiliates last month. AT&T report

U-verse TV aims for 1 million subs this year

Dan O'Shea — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:54:33 -0400

If AT&T has anything to do with it, Verizon Communications soon will not be the only U.S. telco TV player with more than 1 million customers. AT&T said in its second quarter earnings report yesterday that it added 170,000 U-verse TV subscribers during the quarter, and that it still expects to surpass 1 million customers for the IPTV offering by the end of this year. The telco giant ended the second quarter with about 549,000 subscribers.

The company's U-verse service is available to 11 million households in about 53 markets. AT&T officials said the TV service has achieved 10 percent penetration in a handful of markets, and they also made the case that access line loss is not as severe in those markets as it is in other. Still, AT&T's landlines are down about 8 percent since the second quarter of 2007.

For more:
- see this coverage at Multichannel News

Related articles:
AT&T added 148,000 U-verse customers during the second quarter. AT&T report
AT&T U-verse landed in the Chicago area earlier this year. AT&T report