The Observation Deck

AT&T made a huge bid for folks to get their U-Verse services on my street and I am assuming all of Lakewood. They came by 3 times in one day, even when I told them to not return after the first.

That said, I am having trouble with my DSL getting above the minimal speed you can get and I want more (Netflix and Xbox are the selfish reasons, but I digress...). They are currently evaluating the line that would prevent this DSL service they offer from working to the rated speed (which currently it isn't reaching and there are a lots of drops of service when used for Netflix online viewing right now).

AT&T keeps suggesting that this wouldn't be a problem if I just ponied up for the U-Verse set up and frankly if they are letting their DSL services slide to promote that I am pretty upset about it. I am tempted to do Cox Cable modem just to get out of my time with AT&T even though I would rather use DSL overall.

Any one using U-Verse? Is it worth their hubub? I won't discount a service necessarily just because their sales pitch was heavy handed (though I am sorely tempted) but I don't want to make the leap if I can keep what I am supposed to have at the price they set (which is good right now and comparable to cable).

Just wondered where high speed users are with all of this. I only know of one U-Verse user and he isn't in Lakewood and he is using it for everything and I really don't want their digital tv as I enjoy my Dish right now.

Ugh!

I would just like to know when u-verse will be available in Lakewood. My mother switched a few months ago and she loves it, she is happy with the speed of her internet and is very pleased with the television programming.

I don't see how Uverse would be any faster in terms of the Internet. I switch from ATT-Yahoo to a combined UVerse Phone/DSL/TV package. Speed for the Net is about the same. I'm happy with the service overall. Far fewer drops on the TV signal than with my prior satellite provider. Their DVR is probably about 65% as good as TiVo though.

If they can't get your DSL working, don't buy more services from them til it's working to your satisfaction, though.

Wow, so you still can't edit your own posts here, eh?

Jerry Ritcey wrote:Wow, so you still can't edit your own posts here, eh?

Jerry

Sorry, we are planning on doing the switch during the down time for the paper. The forum will take a couple days and the front of the website, or non-forum a couple days as well.

This has become a pretty big leap in programing as we are still using the stuff we started with while our customers are using version 3. It will have the ability to post and load any form of document, mpeg, mp3, wma, pdf, etc. As well as our new calendar system, photo galleries, dashboards, and widgets.

Sorry for any inconvenience.


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Looks like Uverse from ATT has some competitive prices and maybe a few more features for what you pay for.... however...

I found a comparable Uverse TV/internet package to my existing Cox TV/internet bundle and called Cox Customer Service/Sales Dept. They lowered my bill by 20% and then threw in an extra DVR and extra channels just to keep me!

My favorite quote from the Cox rep was: "Thanks for calling us to allow us to wheel and deal with you."

As a consumer, you gotta love competition.

Geoff Wopershall wrote:My favorite quote from the Cox rep was: "Thanks for calling us to allow us to wheel and deal with you."

As a consumer, you gotta love competition.

Geoff

Something i found out last month was that you can wheel and deal with Cox. I asked for a representative, and now have a personal rep! He cut my package by $70 a month, giving me more channels and said, "This deal will be over in 6 months. i will email after 5, and call, maybe we can even do it for cheaper next time."

I had never thought of wheeling and dealing with them.

FWIW


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Interesting that the wheeling and dealing would come up at this point. I guess having competition finally is helping to get things back in line. I too would like to know when AT&T service is going to be available throughout Lakewood. I called them recently and they had some story about delays in running lines. I don't expect or demand much from my cable and internet connection at home but I would like to have a choice. It always surprised me when I see rates advertised for other parts of Ohio then compare them to what we pay here. So glad this monopoly is coming to an end.

Any new information to share about AT&T's U-Verse? It's been marketed pretty heavily in my nieghborhood. I was wondering how people like it.

It's not bad. What I like about it is the speedy channel changing, the video on demand and the ability to record up to four programs at once. What I really really hate about it is that you only record, pause and rewind/ff live tv from the main box. With AT&T's previous product, Homezone, I was able to instantly record and timeshift from any television in the house. Now, if I'm watching something in the bedroom that I want to record, I have to run downstairs to set it up.

Reliability has been good, and the voice over IP has been better quality than I expected.

I wished I had thought of calling Cox before going though the mess I was involved with, with an AT&T "reseller". Naive me assumed they would have been honest. Long gory story, but the bottom line is I'm am EXTREMELY unhappy with the way AT&T did business.

Personal tip. Don't do business with anyone that calls YOU from AT&T. Call THEM if you want to investigate any better plans and see if they might wheel and deal too.

Mark Allan Crnolatas

Mark, sorry to hear about your unfortunate experience.

Our experience with AT & T U-Verse has been great. We are saving quite a bit of money (we have bundled cable, internet & phone) and the quality of products as well as reliability are much improved from Cox.

As a footnote, Cox called AFTER we canceled them and offered us a "deal" to reinstate but where were they with a deal while we were their customer for the previous many years?

Hi,
I was talking to my son the other day and said the future is everything on the internet. But that scares some and so they want to price things such that it isn't cheaper to get TV or phone on the internet without paying for the other.

In support of that notion, I read an article yesterday in the NYT about a cable provider in Japan delivering 160mb service and it cost the provider about $20 a house and the house needed a new high speed cable modem which cost about $60, The article said how the phone companies were spending thousands of dollars per house and not getting near the results. But it said the scare for the cable companies was that people would take the hi-speed service and drop their traditional cable. If this happens then their revenue drops. I think the phone companies are jumping into cable because they are afraid traditional phone service is going away. I think they are right. Once you can get hi-speed internet why pay for phone or TV? You can get that cheaper off the internet when you want it.

I've had friends with both phone based services and cable based services and there is an occasional problem with both. My personal preference is cable as a source for TV and internet and just get phone off the internet.

Donald Farris wrote:But it said the scare for the cable companies was that people would take the hi-speed service and drop their traditional cable.

That's exactly what I've done.

I love Cox for internet, but until they let me choose to pay only for the channels I want, I won't be getting cable again (or from anyone else for that matter). I'm tired of having to buy packages of crap channels I never watch only to see my cable bill increase what seemed like 2 to 3 times a year. So bye bye cable television.

I've been without it for almost 18 months now. Everything I want to watch is available online or via Netflix, which now has on-demand video streaming. I save a ton of money and am happier. The sooner the cable companies wake up to a la carte pricing, the better off they'll be.