[TriLUG] OT: ATT UVerse internet access

[Chris Merrill]

ATT came through our neighborhood a few months ago running fiber along the streets.
I was very excited, but repeated visits to the ATT UVerse website resulted in the
same response - "The address you have entered does not exist".

Last week, the day I have been waiting for arrived!

The AT&T UVerse salesguys came down our street selling their internet/phone/TV
service.  They claimed to be offering a 25Mbps download / 2.5 Mbps upload for just a
little over what I was paying TWC/RR for 7Mbps down / 0.3Mbps up.  They were also
offering 30day free trial period.  I've been desperate for better upload speeds for
quite a while -- I move a lot of big files to/from my office when working from home
and run a web/mail server from home.

They installed it on Friday.  Surprisingly, the installers were quite experienced and
were willing to do a little extra work to get the wiring run the way I wanted.  When
finished, the upload speed tested at 2.8Mbps!  Download speed was in the neighborhood
of 25Mbps...I don't recall exactly.

For anyone else considering the service - there is one "gotcha" to look out for.  AT&T
blocks outgoing connections to port 25.  I need to send work e-mails through our server,
not theirs, so this is a critical issue for me.
You can get this block removed from your account - but this is where I had a very poor
experience.  I spent well over an hour in a chat session with the ATT UVerse support drones
in India (or perhaps Bangladesh) trying to get them to remove the block.  They claimed
that they cannot do that and I need to call ATT ConnecTech services to remove the block.
ConnecTech is a pay-per-incident support service - $49 per incident.  So they wanted me
to pay to remove the block! There was a lot of arguing at this point, and after issuing
me an $49 credit to my account, I called ConnectTech. After 2 minutes explaining the
problem, they sent me right back to a UVerse support "Level 2" tech, who removed the
block in a few minutes.  If you have to jump through this hoop, I suggest asking for
a "Level 2 Technician" the moment that they say they can't remove the block.

So on the upside, the internet services seems to be a big upgrade for about the same
money - I am currently paying $58/mo for TWC/RR with all the added fees.  The ATT
top-tier internet access is $67 without fees or bundle discounts.

I am also trying out their TV service and comparing it to my current service, which
is DirecTV.  I have a fairly new HD DVR from DirectTV and so far, the ATT DVR is
comparable. Better in some respects - for example it can record 4 shows at a time
while the DirectTV is limited to 2.  And it has quicker response in the UI than
DirecTV (which was much better than the Time Warner HD DVR it replaced).  But in other
aspects the UI is a bit inferior.  I can go into more detail if anyone is interested,
but I haven't played with the TV service much - I was waiting to see if they would
resolve the port-blocking issue, which they now have done.

Chris


(BTW, I later called ConnecTech and asked for a refund, which they promptly issued...so
ConnecTech gets an A grade from me, UVerse support gets a big fat F).



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Chris Merrill                           |  Web Performance, Inc.
chris at webperformance.com                |  http://webperformance.com
919-433-1762                            |  919-845-7601

Web Performance: Website Load Testing Software & Services
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