U-versity 101: AT&T’s U-verse now available in parts of St. Louis

It’s a fair statement that competition spurs better customer service.

So, while AT&T’s U-verse TV and Internet service might not yet be available to the entire St. Louis viewing area, chances are the company’s local arrival in December 2007, got the local cable and dish providers pondering their own futures with customers.

U-verse utilizes fiber optic technology to install digital TV programming and high-speed Internet connections into homes in the area. While the service is only a couple years old, it already offers more than 40 high-definition channels, including three new HD HBO channels launched in April, for subscribers to that network.

“St. Louis, historically, is a very important market for AT&T; they have a lot of employees here,” Chelsey Ilten, spokesperson for U-verse said. “There was a need for more competition and the product has been well-received.”

Ilten said U-verse will not release any specific numbers for the St. Louis market, or say exactly what specific locations will have access to U-verse next, to keep the competition in the dark. But she did say that as of the fourth quarter of 2007, U-verse had more than 231,000 subscribers in its various markets, with approximately 12,000 customers added per week.

“AT&T believes they will have more than 1 million customers by the end of 2008 across all the U-verse markets,” Ilten said.

She added that potential customers would know when U-verse would be available in their neighborhoods through direct mailings and possibly door-to-door solicitations. They can also visit https://uverse1.att.com and type in an address or home phone number to see if the service is available in their area.

According to the U-verse media Web site, packages range from $69 to $154 per month, depending on the amount of channels and the speed of Internet access a customer requires. U-verse offers five channel packages and four Internet speed options.

For example, a customer who wanted the U300 TV packages, which includes up to 240 channels, including 31 movie channels from Showtime, Starz and others and wanted the Pro Internet speed of downstream speeds of 3.0 Mbps (three megabytes per second) and 1.0 Mbps upstream, will be charged $89 per month. Those who play a lot of online video games may want to choose the Max Internet speed, which has a downstream speed of 10 Mbps.

The U100 package, which includes 100 channels, comes with one HD receiver. Upgraded packages come with up to three HD receivers (one with a Digital Video Recorder or DVR) per home and more can be added for $5 per month. HD service is an extra $10 per month. Other channel packages such as sports and country-specific channels from Japan and others are available for additional charges.

Digital music channels are available in U200 packages and higher, and are distributed by MTV Urge.

Ilten said one popular feature is the ability of the DVR to be recording four standard programs at a time. Currently, viewers can only watch and/or record one HD program at a time, but Ilten said a second HD stream will be available later in 2008, distributed market to market.

“It will just be a software upgrade. The great thing about U-verse is you don’t have to swap boxes,” she added.

U-verse’s catchphrase is “cooler than cable,” and Ilten said one of her favorite features is being able to program the DVR remotely from a computer or cell phone. “I don’t know how many times I’ve run out of the house and forgot to record something,” she laughed.

One of the newer features is a cooperation with the Yahoo! photo sharing Web site Flickr. Now U-verse customers will be able to have slide shows of their online photo albums on their TV screens.

Other U-verse features include local Yellow Pages listings, Yahoo! Games and built-in picture in picture.

Ilten said AT&T also only uses their own employees as U-verse technicians and installers and the company does not plan to contract those jobs out to other companies.

While U-verse is using fiber optic technology to install the service in homes and businesses that do not already have existing cable lines, they do use the existing copper lines in homes that have previously been wired for cable.

As more and more consumers upgrade to widescreen HD TVs, the demand for more HD channels increases. Ilten said U-verse will continually add more HD channels as they are available and contracted with the specific networks.

Current HD channels aside from movie channels like HBO and Showtime include, Animal Planet HD, CNN HD, Discovery HD, Science Channel HD, Superstation WGN in HD, TLC HD, Versus and Golf Channel HD, local affiliate networks, and others, where available.

You can e-mail Corey Stulce at frozo85@hotmail.com.