U Verse

TelcoTV tidbits

Dan O'Shea — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:00:55 -0500

Here's a brief follow up on notes from TelcoTV 2008's opening day keynotes:

- AT&T has completed its rollout of its Total Home DVR solution, according to Dan York, executive vice president of content at AT&T. York added, "With U-verse, you can record up to four programs at once. No one else is doing that." York also said that U-verse now passes 14 million "living units" and is still on track to reach 30 million by the end of 2010.

- John Harrobin, senior vice president of marketing and digital media at Verizon Communications talked quite a bit in his keynote speech about on-screen widgets, and he let slip that Verizon currently had a Facebook widget in its lab that will allow TV viewers quick on-screen access to all of their Facebook functions.

For more:
- Multichannel News reports from the show

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

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 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

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

Conn. ruling leaves AT&T with cable TV designation

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:18:05 -0400

It has been nine months since AT&T got the green light for a statewide video franchise in Connecticut, but the saga of its search for the right legal and business conditions to operate in the state continues to play out. Late last week, a Connecticut judge dealt the telco's efforts another blow when she backed an earlier court decision that defined AT&T's U-verse offering as a cable TV service.

This controversy has been playing out for the last two years, when Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control declared that AT&T's services should not be defined as cable TV because they are based on Internet technology. AT&T has argued that the statewide video franchise given it by the Connecticut legislature last fall renders the debate over definitions moot. That franchising law does not take into account whether a service is defined as cable TV or something else.

The issue likely will remain hot until the Federal Communications Commission weighs in on whether or not AT&T's video efforts fall under the governance of federal Cable Act.

For more:
- read this report at Multichannel News

Related articles:
AT&T's path for a statewide video franchise was cleared last fall. AT&T report
AT&T recently targeted Tennessee for a U-verse roll-out. AT&T report