AT&T U-verse: A Consumer Report

On Wednesday,  I hung my head, put my tail between my legs, and crawled over to the Bright House Networks office on Carmel Drive, in Carmel, Indiana.  I begged to be reunited with my previous cable and internet provider.  Thankfully, they don't hold grudges, welcomed me back, and proved it by upgrading my contractual internet speed for free for 12 months.  My previous contract was for up to 7 Mbps and now I get up to 15 Mbps.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I was so grateful I added HD service and picked up two HD DVR's.

Yesterday, the Bright House technician arrived in the morning and within three hours our home was Bright again. 

Bright with:   Gorgeous Digital, HD reception on two TV's
Bright with:   Two HD DVR recording our favorite shows
Bright with:   Cable Television on four more TV's
Bright with:   Blazingly Fast Internet of up to 15 Mbps
Bright with:   X-Box Live action
Bright with:   WoW Adventures

See how bright life can be.

I was duped by the snake oil salesman!!  How you ask?  Because I was so-o naive to associate AT&T with honesty and integrity. 

The salesman came door-to-door through our Carmel, Indiana neighborhood (suburb of Indianapolis, Indiana) and pitched the AT&T U-verse snake oil.  He told me about the television and the internet and the great prices.  I told him we were tired of slower internet speeds at peak "traffic" times like after work and on weekends. 

He said, "No fear, AT&T is here!" (not really, I'm embellishing:) He did say AT&T U-verse would eliminate our internet problems because we wouldn't be sharing a line with our neighbors.  He went on to explain that cable companies provide their service based upon 'hubs' and we share our hub with our neighbors; thus, the slower internet experience when everyone gets online at the same time.  He said that AT&T would run a dedicated line directly to our home and would provide consistent internet speed with no fluctuations due to 'traffic' from our neighbors.  We discussed our set-up- 6 televisions and 3 computers, two of which are wireless. 

No worries . . . AT&T U-verse includes "installation of a High-Speed Wireless Gateway that turns your entire home into a wireless network."

What they don't tell you is, The AT&T Wireless Home Network is incapable of delivering consistent internet speed and service to your wireless home computers.  As a matter of fact, the internet speed fluctuated wildly from "slow as mud" to "only barely adequate".  I still think this was a problem perhaps could have been solved, but they gave up.

The reality is the AT&T U-verse gateway and home network cannot provide consistent speed and service to the wireless computers on the network - even if a wireless computer is located within 10-12 feet of the gateway. 

Note here that I work from home and therefore am potentially less inconvenienced by numerous, lengthy service calls.  If you need to leave your home to work, you should think 10 times more about whether or not you want to schedule off work to be at home (it is required that an adult be at home while AT&T experiments to get their service running, even if it just runs badly)

AT&T will, or at least should, tell you the initial installation will take up to 8 hours.  They aren't kidding.  Our initial install was 7 hours and they were unable to hook up our primary television set so I scheduled a future date to install the last TV. 

What they don't tell you is it could take many service calls and many hours to complete the installation in a satisfactory manner all while suffering through sub-standard internet service from AT&T.

I immediately noticed the dial-up level internet speed while the installation tech was still at our home.  I mentioned it and he shrugged.  I then assumed it was a temporary glitch they would repair.

You know what happens when you assume . . . .

The installation took several more service calls to our home (I spent a lot of time home-bound waiting for and monitoring technicians) over the next two weeks.  Additionally, the internet refused to work with our X-Box, caused tremendous lags and frequent disconnects in World of Warcraft (WoW), and made surfing the web and/or reading e-mail unbearable.  

Needless to say, but,  I became a very, very unpopular family member!  Everyone was upset -  couldn't IM, couldn't e-mail, couldn't surf, couldn't play games.   They just kept asking me, "Why did you change??  Everything was fine!"