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AT&T U-Verse now offers 10 Mbps download speed

AT&T announced today that it is boosting speeds for some of its AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet customers and offering AT&T broadband customers access to free Wi-Fi hotspots across the country. AT&T says that more than 10 million of its AT&T Broadband subscribers will soon have free unlimited access to its nationwide Wi-Fi network.

AT&T figures that is a cost savings of $60 annually for its broadband customers and a savings of nearly $240 annually for customers who don’t have AT&T broadband. The free Wi-Fi offer will be available to both new and existing subscribers who have any of AT&T’s broadband services with downstream speeds of 1.5 Mbps, 3.0 Mbps, or 6 Mbps.

AT&T also announced that it was boosting bandwidth choices for its U-verse customers to 10 Mbps. Millions of AT&T subscribers will be able to upgrade to data plans with 10 Mbps downstream and 1.5 Mbps upstream. Customers who upgrade to the new U-verse 10 Mbps plan will also get the free Wi-Fi access in the U.S. as well.

AT&T claims the largest broadband network in the United States with over 13.8 million broadband lines in service as of Q3 2007. AT&T says its U-Verse service is available in millions of homes in 12 different states right now.

With the future of municipal Wi-Fi access questionable, this offer from AT&T may be the best chance of getting free Wi-Fi Internet users get.

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Massive?
By DigitalFreak on 1/24/2008 4:46:31 PM , Rating: 2
I would hardly call 10Mbps "massive", especially when a lot of cable companies and Verizon FIOS beat that handily. That doesn't even take foreign markets into account...




RE: Massive?
By noxipoo on 1/24/2008 4:50:05 PM , Rating: 1
massive for AT&T, their U-verse stuff still sucks.


RE: Massive?
By dubldwn on 1/24/2008 6:42:51 PM , Rating: 2
I was thinking about getting U-verse tv instead of cable. It sucks?


RE: Massive?
By StupidMonkey on 1/24/2008 8:42:48 PM , Rating: 2
Uverse TV is actually great. Cheaper than cable, more hi-def, and more movie channels. In my area its great.


RE: Massive?
By MrSmurf on 1/24/2008 9:25:10 PM , Rating: 2
It only sucks in the regards of how many streams you can receive. Here is Columbus, it's only a total of 4 including 1 HD. So you can only watch 4 different channels in your entire house at any given time... more annoying, you can only watch or record 1 HD channel at a time throughout your house. This may not affect a lot of people but it does me. I don't like limitations.


RE: Massive?
By FITCamaro on 1/25/2008 10:03:22 AM , Rating: 2
Well I can see being able to only watch 1 HD channel in the entire house at a time being a problem but needing to watch more than 4 channels in the house at one time? I mean unless you've got a ton of kids, how many channels need to be on at once?


RE: Massive?
By boobot on 1/25/2008 9:57:11 AM , Rating: 2
If you want more details visit www.uverseusers.com

I have Uverse and here is a quick breakdown.

Positives;
- Price
- HD offerings
- Broadband speeds are great for the price. They are also very reliable and hold peak settings no matter the load from other users
- SD offerings are numerous
- 4 SD recordings at the same time

Negatives
- HD picture is not as good as others (my biggest complaint)
- 1 HD stream per household. You can watch the same HD stream(Channel) on multiple T.V.s but cannot watch 2 separate at the same time
- DVR/STB is still working out the bugs but has improved immensly over the last 6 months

Coming soon(most likely mid/end of '08 no matter what we here):
- Whole home DVR allowing you to watch your recordings on any STB
- Multiple HD streams(2)
- Reduced compression and/or better HD stream.
- Media Center


RE: Massive?
By amanojaku on 1/24/2008 5:00:48 PM , Rating: 2
It IS massive when you compare the current AT&T service to the old. DSL has been famous for having high upload bandwidth and infamous for having lower download bandwidth when compared to cable. I already have 10Mbits/sec download through my cable connection, but my upload isn't even close to 1.5Mbits/sec.

Now, this means nothing to me, but I'm sure AT&T subscribers would love it if they are getting the new bandwidth without a change in their plans.


RE: Massive?
By TomZ on 1/24/2008 5:26:24 PM , Rating: 3
That's one way to look at it, but another is that DSL prices are falling, and so by increasing a customer's bandwidth, they can avoid having to decrease their monthly fees to remain competitive.


RE: Massive?
By xphile on 1/25/2008 4:37:49 AM , Rating: 2
ESPECIALLY (and this is the real kicker) when they know that most customers wont download any more in practice, they will just appreciate getting what they always downloaded faster.

Where overall bandwidth usage isn't increased there is definitely no additional cost, in fact as you say with their wholesale prices falling, keeping the same income from the same plans actually means in all these cases the profit just went up. Meanwhile the customer not only didn't know it, they even thought they were even getting a better deal.


RE: Massive?
By blowfish on 1/24/2008 5:32:16 PM , Rating: 2
I'd call 1.5MB/s download speed "Massive". I'm one of the 13.8 million AT&T DSL subscribers, with a 1.5Mb down 256 kbps up plan. Whereas I can regularly achieve the upload speed, the download speeds rarely even approach the max, even though I'm 100yds from the exchange and DSL Reports shows my connection to be up to spec and the pc optimised for it.

I suspect the AT&T infra-structure struggles to cope with existing customers, so these speeds are merely theoretical.


RE: Massive?
By TomZ on 1/24/2008 5:49:06 PM , Rating: 2
We get nearly 100% of the rated 6Mb/s download speed all the time with AT&T DSL, and we're about a mile from the central office. So either their service varies a lot by region, or else you've got a bad DSL line there.


RE: Massive?
By murphyslabrat on 1/24/2008 6:07:08 PM , Rating: 2
Blowfish might just not be using his DSL to its potentialm, or he might be thinking in terms of Bytes vs. bits. My parents have the 3Mb/s plan, and they regularly max it out. And, that isn't just with torrenting or filesharing, I can easily get 350KB/s+ from Sourceforge or MSDN.


RE: Massive?
By FITCamaro on 1/25/2008 10:08:58 AM , Rating: 2
You can't even get 6 Mbit/sec DSL in my area. I'm paying $60 a month for 7Mbps down/768kbps up cable. Of course I only get anywhere near 7Mbps down early in the morning or late at night when people aren't on the net. I hate my cable company. Comcast here is so much better than them but I can't get them. Comcast here is 12Mbps down for $45 a month and for TV they get far more HD channels than I get. I only get the networks, ESPNs, Discovery, and a few others in HD. Comcast offers all that plus like TBSHD and more.

DSL speeds also vary on how far you are from the switch. The farther you are, the slower it is.


RE: Massive?
By clovell on 1/24/2008 6:03:25 PM , Rating: 2
Well, considering, you won't suffer from network saturation on DSL like you would on Cable, 10mbps is a lot.


RE: Massive?
By skateordie on 1/24/2008 9:54:26 PM , Rating: 2
exactly, im very pleased with how stable my dsl is, on the other hand my comcast tv keeps turning to blocks and has sound cut outs all the time


RE: Massive?
By MrDiSante on 1/24/2008 7:28:33 PM , Rating: 2
It IS massive in Canada. Best you'll get is 6mbps for ~35$. If you don't shop around you'll pay 45-50$ for the same thing.


RE: Massive?
By Chaser on 1/24/2008 7:54:28 PM , Rating: 2
Whatever. 10Mbps is fast. Very fast for the average cable cusotmer. My cable provider upgrades to it last year for $35.00 a month. A lot of cable providers are significantly slower.


Check The Prices, Not Just Speed
By bldckstark on 1/25/2008 12:53:09 PM , Rating: 2
I have AT&T DSL, and I like it. I have had cable also, but the upload speed sucked, but that is not why I am posting.

I had a problem with my phone bill the other day so I call up AT&T. While I'm on hold I look up their site on the inter-webb thingy all the kids are yakking about these days. It says "click here to upgrade your speed" so I did. The link pertains to the speed upgrade reported above. It shows me three plans, including my current plan FOR $15 LESS PER MONTH! When the service rep comes on the line I fix my phone bill, then ask for the speed upgrade. They check my line and say, "sorry, your line won't support that speed". I actually had to ask about the price difference between my current price and the new one. She says "Yes we can adjust your current plan pricing to $24.99 per month for the same download speed, and double the upload. Would you like to make that change to your account?" Duh. So, for how long are they going to make people who don't ask, pay the extra money?

Side note - Did you know you can cancel your home phone and still have DSL with AT&T? I'm thinking hard on it. They charged me $9.16 to cancel a $3 long distance package I didn't even sign up for. 3+ month payback to cancel a long distance plan. What a load of crap.

My main problems with cancelling the landline -
I have dish network and I won't have a way for the boxes to phone home. They charge $5 a month not calling in (per box).
I have kids, and I am worried about the 911 services on Cell and/or VOIP.

Anybody have a solution or advice on these two problems?




By xbeanerx on 1/25/2008 5:07:05 PM , Rating: 2
I have a Superb Solution get your self free to Air Nfusion hook it up to your internet and you will get all channels for Free!


By xbeanerx on 1/25/2008 5:08:42 PM , Rating: 2
You will also save money from canceling dish Net work!


Oh I got an idea...
By sgtdisturbed47 on 1/24/2008 9:13:02 PM , Rating: 1
Maybe they should focus more on customer service, call quality, call reliability, and coverage.

"Raising the Bar" has been a joke for years. I've never had good luck with Cingular/AT&T and neither has any of my friends or family and we are 20 miles south of downtown LA. We should have great coverage here, but there's too many black holes and calls get dropped constantly due to overloaded towers.

I hated Sprint because of their junk customer service and call drops, I hated Verizon because of their prices, and hated Cingular/AT&T for all of the above. T-Mobile has been