Today I'm attending the IPTV World conference near San Francisco. A good many in the growing IPTV industry are gathered here to talk about ways to improve the IPTV experience for viewers.
AT&T's VP of programming, Amy Friedlander (shown below), is here to talk about the state of her company's IPTV product, U-verse TV. Along with Verizon's FiOS TV, U-verse is the IPTV service you've most likely heard about or considered buying.
It was interesting talking to AT&T after I gave U-verse fairly low marks in a review of the service for PC World.com. In the review I complained that U-verse looked and acted like just another cable service.
IPTV, we are promised, should be able to do much more in the way of giving us choice and control over our TV watching time. There should also be much more integration of the TV service and all the content that's available on the public Internet, I argued.
After chatting with Friedlander, I got the impression that it will be awhile before U-verse starts living up to its IP potential. AT&T still has not made any meaningful moves to offer Internet TV or user-generated video in the U-verse service. Nor has it figured out how to suggest shows to viewers based on their previous content choices.
Friedlander says the immediate goal of U-verse is to "get the basics down," and to reach all the markets in AT&T's 13-state territory. Then, she says, the company will begin adding features and content that will make U-verse a clear choice over cable.
To be fair, AT&T has introduced a couple of new services that cable, for the most part, has not. U-verse customers can use their cell phone to order U-verse to record a certain program at a certain time. U-verse is now rolling out something called U-bar, a crawl" at the bottom of the TV screen with weather, traffic and news information selected by the user.
And it's true that the speed at which U-verse is spreading is impressive. Friedlander says that by the end of the year her company will be installing new U-verse customers at a rate of 10.000 per week. Today the company is installing about a thousand new customers a day. Compare that to the number of U-verse customers U-verse had at the beginning of this year--3,000, total.
The U-verse service is fed by new fiber optic cable planted in our neighborhoods by AT&T. Friedlander says that fiber is now within reach of about 5 million households in 9 states. By the end of the year, the fiber will pass 8 million homes, she says.
U-verse has also been criticized for being able to deliver only one HD stream into the household at a time. That's because unlike Verizon FiOS TV, AT&T does not bring the fiber optic cable all the way to home; the TV signal must travel from a "node" in the neighborhood to the household over old-school copper cable. So only one TV in the house can watch HD, while the other TVs must watch standard definition TV. Friedlander says AT&T will soon increase its HD capacity from one to two, probably some time next year. How? Better compression technology, she says.
Finally, I asked Friedlander if AT&T has gained access to any premium content that the cable companies can't get. She says not yet, although they've been trying to do so every day for quite a while now.
So is there any really compelling reason to choose U-verse over the local cable provider? No, not really, not yet. But I expect AT&T to focus all its resources on that after it finished its initial push, which should be completed by the end of 2008.
HD for only one TV for an entire home?!!! That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Being an A/V professional, that little hiccup is a deal breaker. How could AT&T even roll this service out without a solution for this obvious problem. I signed up for the Verizon FiOS service two months ago and haven't been happier with a TV and Internet provider. Being a former DirecTv customer I have been done with Cable for some time now, but even satellite could learn a few things from Verizon. Man, I sound like I get paid by them!!! Guess that's a sign that Verizon's doing something right.
It took two months and 4 appointments to get me setup. After tons of frustrations I'm actually reporting as a satisfied customer.
First of all, their customer service was stellar. They handled me, a frustrated and upset potential customer, with true professionalism. When other major corporations would shun complaining potential customers, AT&T followed through on their promises. I put them through the ringer and they responded with true professionalism. They convinced me, after I vowed to never be a customer of AT&T , to give them one more chance and on their last shot they succeeded by delivering a great product.
The service is awesome. Much better than what I had with Time Warner. The quantity/selection of channels is amazing and the internet connection is nearly flawless.
I'm recommending the service to everyone I know.