I and my roommate were at the apartment complex office renewing our lease when someone mentioned to another, new, tenant that she didn't have to go with Charter cable–AT & T's new U-verse was now available in our neighborhood. When we got home, we received the announcement from AT & T in the mail. (Endgadget also announced St. Louis availability yesterday.)
The work being done on corners all around the area and which tore up part of our parking lot for two months earlier this summer was not new sewer pipes, which I had assumed, but AT & T putting in the infrastructure for U-verse, its IPTV competitor to cable television.
I already have AT & T for phone and DSL, and after chatting with my roommate, we decided to try out U-verse, which I ordered this morning and will be installed on the third. We have three televisions, only one of which is HD. I did splurge on the HD connection–a case of having a new dress and no place to wear it–and will give the DVR to my roommate, so he can record his favorite daytime sci-fi shows.
The installation will take between 5 and 8 hours, as I gather new phone wiring will probably need to be put into place. I also gather, if I read this correctly, that we will most likely be among the first dozen or so people with this service in this area. That makes us guinea pigs, but it also pretty much assures that AT & T will be on hand to help, quickly, with any issues.
We received a free month of service, a $100 rebate, and a bundling discount which will cover most of the HD fee for a year. There is no contract, and we can get all money back if we're not happy within 30 days. AT & T even recommends people keep their existing service during this time, just to ensure no down time. I didn't go with the fastest internet, but did upgrade to the next faster. I'm pretty happy with my internet now, but thought the extra download speed would be nice for my online television viewing. I automatically get faster upload speeds with UVerse.
I've reviewed the reports of people who have had the service. Most seem very happy, a few are not happy at the HD service, and some have had problems with pixelating broadcasts. It is a risk subscribing to a new kind of service, but I expect the problems will resolve over time. One person did say that other wiring in the house can lead to the pixel problem, and to have AT & T replace the wires. Another pointer I picked up is to test everything while the technicians are here, including all computers AND any networked printer. This shouldn't be a problem, because we yanked all wireless and I run ethernet directly from the DSL modem and the computers, and one computer acts as the hub for my photo printer, another as hub for the office printer. I'm assuming that even if they replace the modem, which I don't think they will, I should be able to continue with this setup.
Best of all, as my roommate put it: we're sticking it to Charter by going with U-verse. We've had nothing but problems with Charter, and satellite is not a solution when you live in a townhouse and have television sets on multiple floors. No, the townhouse management is not amenable to multiple drilled holes. Charter believes it has a lock on apartment complexes like ours just because of issues with satellite installation. Fool them.
Be interesting to see how this goes.
