U-Verse from Comcast--anyone have experience?

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ceolstan

Weaksauce
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Sep 19, 2004
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I finally got an AT&T representative who understood that I was looking for a competitive offer to make it worth my while to move to U-Verse from Comcast cable. I was quoted a phone/ 10 mbs Internet/television package that's $20 less than I'm currently paying for the combination of 10 mbs Internet/television. The price is to increase in a year, but it'd still be less than my current bill, and given that it includes the phone service (for which I pay separately), the savings would amount to over $50 the first year and $40 the next.

My question is whether people have had good experiences with U-Verse v. Comcast.

I'm leaning toward getting U-Verse partly because the new promo package also comes with professional installation + wiring when needed. Yes, wiring. We just bought a house in the summer, and since it was built in 1979, it's not the most networking friendly home. Outside, it looks as if there are some coax connections that come from nowhere and lead nowhere. A lot of the coax wiring is bad DIY. The main cable comes in from the bedroom, but is patched along the wall through a hole drilled in the closet, which leads to my study, where it's plugged into a modem/router. My husband's office is on the lower level of the house, but there's no jack in his office, and we've installed a wireless network. The wireless works, but he's getting dropped connections for some reason. I'd planned to get someone out to take a look at our wiring, our outlets, etc., but the AT&T guy said that this is what they do with the U-Verse installation. Furthermore, they'll even put in outlets for free!!!!

I didn't think AT&T did anything for free, and I've not heard of any free interior wiring for over 20 years!

However, on the back of the agreement (which I've not yet signed), it states they'll install a limited number of outlets as part of the package. Cool! Even so, I plan to call up to see exactly what this entails since I've not heard of AT&T doing anything for free. I also will see if we're getting the 10 mbs connection, and what the 18 mbs connection would cost.

As I said, my question is whether anyone's had experience with U-Verse, and especially how it compares to Comcast. I'm also interested in knowing whether customer support is responsive.

Thanks!

--ceolstan
 
sicne it sounds like this is all over a DSL line, I can understand some of the wiring being free.

For an example, the ISP I used to work for also offered a DTV service over a DSL signal.
Since 99% of the houses were not network-ready, and the feed from the gateway to the STB's needed CAT5, the wiring was part of the free install. If this is the case with U-verse, then I can see why some wiring would be free.

Now, they could do a little over coax, but depending on the age and condition of the coax, the customer would end up with a lot of problems, and either the coax would need replaced, or CAT5 would need to be ran anyway (which is what usually happend).
 
I bought a new home in December 2005, and upon returning from Iraq last May I asked AT&T to set me up a land line for local phone service. Been using Vonage since then. Apparently the home builder forgot to run a phone line to the street. So AT&T wants to charge me about $200 to run the line. I said no thanks I'll run it myself. But it also tells me they don't care too much about my service so I won't be buying from them.
 
Free installation usually involves drilling straight through your floors and being ugly/wrecking things...... you get what you pay for :)
 
ambientZ said:
Free installation usually involves drilling straight through your floors and being ugly/wrecking things...... you get what you pay for :)
Click to expand...

Yes, if you have hardwood, nice walls, or inner rooms... be prepared for the drill and staple gun.
 
Yeah, I got drilled by them once... it hurt! (my house)

My neighbor is an electrician and has much more finesse. (with cabling)
 
Thanks to folks so far. Yes, the hardwood floors are a bit of a concern, but right now, we've holes drilled through closets. It's a very weird wiring!

Another issue is that of the TiVo. My husband loves our TiVo, and wouldn't be parted from it no matter if there's a DVR included. I haven't yet looked up whether the TiVo and DVR would play nice together. I told the ATT rep that the TiVo programming, from what I know, beats all other DVR interfaces for ease of use hands down.

I also had a look at the current offer. I'd have to check to see if the price quoted is really all three or just Internet + television. The rep quoted the price I see under Internet + TV, and while that gives me more channels, I'd not be nearly as impressed since I'd not be saving anything substantial.
 
I've been very happy with uverse. Performance, reliability, and customer service have been top notch.
I've not used a Tivo but I would bet that it will not work with U-Verse service, however, the uverse DVR is very very nice, easy to use and nice looking interface, and you can record up to 4 shows at the same time. I've seen some of the other cable company's DVRs after using mine and they look horrible compared to the uverse one. I also have the 10Mb/s service which is also 1.5Mb/s upstream - which is great, 10Mb connection has been solid, no slowdowns and it has gone down one time in the last year, I called customer service, and they told me exactly where and why there was maintenance, and had a 4 hour down time, his time estimate was dead on. Not to mention that he was american, and only took about 2 minutes to get a hold of, much better than any experience I had with Comcast - although they werent terrible... Good luck!
 
Do you get the full 1.5 up? Their site says "up to 1.5 up" which makes me hesitant. How about bandwidth cap?
 
I do infact get the full 1.5 up, I ran a call of duty 4 server off it for a couple of months with no issues at all, and I can upload at about 192KBps which is accurate for a 1.5Mbps line.
 
Nice... they're not in my area yet but I'm glad to see more and more fiber optic services available and comcast going to docsis 3.
 
Thanks guys.
This thread helped a lot.
I'm buying a new house and my choices are Time Warner or U-Verse.
The U-Verse looked nice on paper, but I have not read much about it. The recording up to 4 shows at once is sweet as I sometimes get locked out when recording 2. I can only get the 10mps in my area, not the 18 . . . yet :p

One question on their DVR if you happen know.
Can it be expanded with an external eSata or is it firmware locked?

Thanks for the info folks. Will make my transition from trouble free Charter easier to deal with.
 
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