U-verse

[MoeRon]

I'm ready to tell Comcast to pound sand.....anyone use ATT? How is their service?  I was thinking of the          300 plan.

[Getback]

I use the ATT DSL. So far, and that's been 5 or 6 years, so good. Really like it.

[Dos Equis]

It's a good game changer. It's made Comcast do spin control around the fact they were rate-shaping bitTorrent.

UVerse is mostly FTTN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTTP) with twisted pair down the phone line path to the home. The cable looks like mini-coax. You get a set top box, and unlike Cable, the video is IP all the way to the set top box, using MPEG-4 vs. the MPEG-2 encoding seen in dish networks.

Verizon FiOS is actual fiber to the home. UVerse is twisted pair. AT&T has serious limitations because the spec they are working with is rate-adaptive like DSL, it is SUPPOSED to be able to do FastE (100Mb/s) speeds - but only in select neighborhoods do they offer the 10Mb down Internet option. They need the bandwidth for the video. Currently, they can only do ONE Hi-Def feed into a home, and that feed cuts off all other feeds. Non Hi-Def allows 4 different set top boxes in the home.

As to how many Hi-Def channels AT&T offers vs. rivals - I do not know. I wasn't really interested in that. I keep my normal VDSL, running 1Mb up and 5Mb down, and don't have normal tv. I just download shows and watch them on my Phillips player with a USB stick. But my neighbor got U-Verse.  I was interested in the technology. He had to have 3 different visits by the tech to work out RF issues, but that is atypical (or so I was told).

There is probably more to debate, like how good does Hi-Def look using MPEG-4 vs. other methods, I don't have an opinion on, I haven't been privileged enough to do any side-by-side comparisons using similar TVs, etc.

[BMathis]

I've had ATT DSL for a year now...  I'm using their Modem to my Router, to my laptop upstairs. Works great.

 

Mathis

[Mak333]

I heard Verizon FIOS is pretty nice....

I'm on Comcast as well and I think its priced a little high in my area for the speeds we are getting.  The website is very misleading.  At Comcast.com it says that you can get up to 12Mbps for a low rate.  In actuality, they are only referring to the SpeedBoost feature for the initial 6 seconds of downloading a file, then it drops down to 6Mbps.  What a load of very misleading advertising.

However, the service for Comcast has been pretty decent in my area.  It's rarely ever down and never goes in and out.  We use it for internet and cable TV.

[DiabloTX]

I've had U-verse for 12 months now.

Service - 5 out of 10, constant STB problems.  Internet has been bullet proof.
Billing - Every freaking bill has an error, or at least every other one.  I'm tired of calling these fuqs back about it, too.
Overall experience - Less than thrilled.

Who did I use before?  Time Warner for 5 years.  I wish I had them back.

[Denholm]

Not using U-Verse, yet their High Speed Internet is priced nicely and works great for us. Too bad our community (Just outside of the third largest city in Texas) only supports AT&T's 1.5 Mbps DSL.

[Masherbrum]

I use AT&T DSL (formerly SBC Yahoo DSL) and DirecTV.   I was seriously looking into U-Verse, but they were too high pressure for "commission", she told me they weren't paid by commission.   I could see through here.

I've had DSL (the fastest one they have) for about 4 years and DirecTV for almost 9.   I'm happy.   Cable is not much better than the speeds I have.   

[Enker]

I use the AT&T cheap DSL. At 40 kb/s its not so bad. And not only that, but if you are lucky it gets to 42.7 kb/s! It really makes a difference when it gets that high. Still, At&t's customer service has been pretty lame in the past (no unacceptable troubles yet), so I think At&t would be a pretty good idea.