History of Failed AT&T U-verse Installation
8/6/2008 Installation scheduled. Technician arrived and spent 7 hours installing external boxes to each television and setting up the AT&T wireless network for the computers. One of our main televisions is wall mounted and the technician needed to come back a different day to install it.
8/7/2008 Television is working "OK" with only occasional freezes. However; the internet speed and efficiency is . . . in . . . slow . . . motion . . . . - like mud - remember dial-up?. (Currently signed up for 3.0 Mbps downstream speed)
8/8/2008 I spend three and 1/2 hours on the phone with technical support only to have the technician decide they need to send someone out to the house to resolve the internet speed issue. I also tell the technician to go ahead and increase our contractual internet speed to 6.0 Mbps downstream speed because I have full confidence AT&T can deliver on their promises.
8/11/2008 Technician at our home to work on inconsistent and low internet speed.
8/14/2008 Technician at our home to work on inconsistent and low internet speed.
8/15/2008 Telephone technical support.
8/18/2008 Technician at our home worked on exterior phone lines with noticeable improvement to the internet speed and consistency to one of the computers- the hard-wired computer. However, our office computer and our son's computer continue to vascilate between dial-up speed (think 20 - 40 seconds to load a web page) and inability to maintain a server connection to World of Warcraft or X-Box and about one-half the contractual speeds.
8/20/2008 Technician at our home to install the final wall mounted television. I tell him the internet speed and consistency has improved on our hard-wired computer but that we are still having so many problems on our other computers that we cannot use them for the internet without extreme frustration. I show him the following speed tests that I conducted on our home office computer the prior evening and current morning utilizing two different speed test providers:
AT&T U-verse wireless internet speed tests:
Contractual speed is 6.0 Mbps
8/19/2008 8:50 PM www.speakeasy.com
Atlanta server = 546 kbps (that's 0.5 Mbps) Agonizingly Slow
Seattle server = 3.0 Mbps (1/2 contractual speed)
Wash DC server = 1.3 Mbps
Atlanta server = 3.7 Mbps
NYC Server = 613 kbps (about 0.5 Mbps)
8/20/2008 8:45 AM www.speakeasy.com
Seattle server = 3.0 Mbps
Atlanta server = 365 kbps (slow, slow, slow)
Wash DC server = 5.5 Mbps (wow- there must be hope!)
NYC server = 408 kbps (oh no, slow mo! the ups and downs of AT&T U-verse internet speed are almost as dramatic as the current volatility of the stock market!)
8/20/2008 10:49 AM Let's try another speed test provider- www.speedtest.net
Cincinatti server = 925 kbps (confirmation of the dial-up level speed)
Wash DC server = 4.7 Mbps (Hope again - something good coming out of Washington DC!)
Portland Maine = 849 Kbps (and . . . back to dial-up speed)
The AT&T technician looks over the above numbers and tells me that in reality, that's the best they can do for customer computers utilizing the AT&T provided wireless home network. The AT&T technician said they are unable to control the consistency nor the speed of internet service provided using the home wireless network they provide and install. Furthermore, he indicated that the best consumers can expect is an average of one-half of the contractual speed on wireless computers.
Now I agree that internet speeds on wireless computers can be somewhat less than the speeds on the wired computer. However, it is reasonable and common for wireless internet speeds to be relatively consistent, albeit less than maximum speed. Furthermore, when internet speeds vary wildly and frequently from 350 kbps to 5.5 Mbps, the result is extreme lags in performance and frequent disconnects from the server. as a result, our wireless system was effectively "down" for two weeks.
AT&T U-verse fully expected us to continue paying for substandard internet service via the AT&T U-verse Gateway. In our case, the wireless network didn't even work well enough to read e-mail consistently.
We switched back to Bright House and immediately experienced the following wireless internet speeds:
Read more about our return to Bright House here
www.speakeasy.net
Seattle server = 3.3 Mbps
Atlanta server = 5.5 Mbps
Wash DC server = 5.3 Mbps
NYC server = 5.0 Mbps
www.speadtest.net
Cincinnati server = 5.3 Mbps
Wash DC server = 5.4 Mbps
Portland Maine = 5.1 Mbps
Note the high level of consistency. These speeds were obtained using Bright House Networks and our Linksys router and wireless network.