U-verse TV

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AT&T U-verse is the brand name for a group of services provided over Internet Protocol (IP), including television service, Internet access, and eventually voice telephone service. The new services are carried on phone lines (or over fiber to the customer's premises), and are enabled by AT&T’s initiative to push fiber-optic lines closer to customers’ premises. U-verse itself is a laconic colloquialism for "universe", designed to convey the scope the service will encapsulate as well as project an emphasis on the customer ("you").

Unlike traditional offerings from U.S. cable companies, video is delivered over IP from the head end to the consumer's set-top box. Broadcast channels are distributed via IP multicast, allowing a single stream (channel) to be sent to any number of recipients. U-verse uses H.264 (MPEG-4) encoding, which compresses video better than MPEG-2, which is used on traditional media, including DVD. Better compression means simply that less bandwidth is required for a given level of video quality. In this model, the set-top box does not have a conventional tuner, but is an IP multicast client which joins the IP multicast group corresponding to the stream ("channel") desired, so that only that stream is sent over the customer's connection. This contrasts greatly with conventional cable television service, in which all channels (streams) are sent to all customers over very-high-bandwidth connections, regardless of which channel(s) a customer is viewing or recording at any given time; in this case, the customer's line must carry mostly unused data, and each channel can only use a small portion of the capacity of the customer's connection. In the IP multicast model, only the streams the customer uses are sent, so the customer's connection need not have the capacity to carry all available channels simultaneously.

Project Lightspeed

In June 2004, AT&T announced Project Lightspeed, the company's initiative to drive fiber deeper into its network with a planned investment of approximately $6 billion. Alcatel was named as the Systems Integrator for Project Lightspeed. AT&T originally planned to reach nearly 19 million homes by the end of 2008 as part of its initial deployment. In May 2007, AT&T announced that they would only be able to offer U-verse to 18 million homes by the end of 2008 in the original 13 state region that SBC served. U-verse will also be available to additional homes in the old BellSouth region.

AT&T announced the commercial launch of U-verse services in San Antonio, Texas, in June 2006, following a controlled market entry that began in San Antonio in December 2005. AT&T expanded the San Antonio coverage area and launched HD service with 30 channels in November 2006. Houston was added as the second city for U-verse coverage in November 2006. Nine additional cities were launched in late 2006. AT&T is targeting the launch of the service in 30+ additional markets by the end of 2007.

AT&T was known as SBC Communications Inc. before closing its acquisition of the "old AT&T" in November 2005, and adopting the AT&T name.

Following the acquisition of Bellsouth, then AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre stated the company would examine how to best rollout U-verse video services in the former Bellsouth territory.

Phone Company vs. Cable

U-verse is a good illustration of the increasingly competitive telecom marketplace, in which cable companies are offering voice services and telecom companies are rolling out video offerings. Both cable and telecom companies are striving to offer customers a “triple play” bundle of voice, Internet access and video services. AT&T hopes to gain customers with many advanced features of U-verse, including an innovative, easy-to-use program guide, fast channel-changing, the ability to search for programs using title or actor’s name, and picture-in-picture functionality that allows subscribers to “channel surf” without leaving the program they’re watching. AT&T also offers other video products, including AT&T Homezone, a new service combining satellite TV programming with AT&T Yahoo! Internet, and satellite service from AT&T | Dish Network. Other phone companies are also developing similar plans in their service areas or have already deployed them. Verizon has already launched its FiOS service in select areas, though its technology is fundamentally different from that of U-verse.

Network Upgrade

AT&T has chosen to bring its next generation of services via both fiber-to-the-node (FTTN), in which it plans to run fiber-optic cable to within 3,000 feet on average of customers’ homes, and existing copper lines the remainder of the way; and fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP), in which it runs fiber all the way to the home. This access gear is fed using Ethernet switches and routers running the IP protocol suite over a private backbone constructed for Project Lightspeed. Extensive use of VPLS and MPLS have been implemented to provide a resilient network which scales to support the broadcast TV (via IP multicast) and IP unicast applications and functions. After leaving its PIM transport, multiple levels of IGMP snooping and IGMP proxy further make bandwidth conservation possible with IP multicast.

In its more common FTTN version, the network topology of U-verse/Project Lightspeed is similar to DSL; general network traffic travels no further than the FTTN node (analogous to a DSL remote terminal), while only the individual customer's traffic uses the copper wire to the home. FTTP follows a similar implementation where only the traffic destined for users on an FTTP node is forwarded there, then further downstream where only traffic for users on a specific fiber is sent to that fiber. Each user's home has a "Residential Gateway" from 2Wire

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2Wire Gateway Family

2Wire Gateway Family that includes the VDSL modem, a firewall, a wireless access point, an Ethernet switch and an HPNA interface.

Verizon, on the other hand, is deploying FiOS as a FTTP network using a mixure of traditional RF-style video as well as IPTV video for its video on demand service. Thus, the network topology of FiOS is similar to cable; all network traffic in the neighborhood travels over the fiber to the "optical network terminal" (ONT) just outside the home. The ONT is functionally similar to a cable modem, but for fiber instead of coax. FiOS broadcasts video content to each ONT, and uses fixed bandwidth on a separate wavelength of light for each user's voice and data.

Critics state that AT&T's tactic is not practical, due to the increase in HD and Digital channels which use high amounts of bandwidth. AT&T, however, contends that fiber within 3,000 feet of customers’ homes provides more than adequate bandwidth to provide four streams of standard-definition (SD) video and one stream of high-definition (HD) plus high speed Internet access and, in the future, consumer VoIP services. It should also be noted that AT&T's FTTN topology only requires copper bandwidth for the content actually being used by the customer, while cable must broadcast all neighborhood content to each set-top box or cable modem.

Internet Access and Digital Television and VoIP

AT&T U-verse customers can choose from any of five TV packages and three Internet packages.

The five base TV packages include:

Family Package: Includes 50 family-oriented channels
U-100: Includes about 100 channels
U-200: Includes about 200 channels
U-300: Includes about 240 channels
U-400: Includes about 320 channels

The U-200 and up packages include three receivers, one of which is a DVR, capable of recording up to 4 streams at the same time. This would be equivalent to a 4-tuner DVR, but the receivers do not use "tuners", instead they receive IP streams. AT&T is currently working on whole home DVR, which would enable every set top box to act like a DVR, which is slated for release Q3 2008.

AT&T Yahoo! Internet Access, U-verse Enabled offers three tiers of downstream speeds:

Express: Up to 1.5 Mbit/s
Pro: Up to 3 Mbit/s
Elite: Up to 6 Mbit/s

All packages have an upstream speed up to 1 Mbit/s. They are also planning on releasing a new level of internet speed referred to as "Turbo" that includes a downstream speed of 10 Mbit/s and an upstream speed of 1.5 Mbit/s. The internet service includes an AT&T Yahoo! email account along with a suite of security tools. Up to 10 active email sub-accounts can be created, each having 2 GB of storage space. The master account can be used to manage and schedule recordings on the U-verse DVR if available.

AT&T is now offering VoIP service in the Detroit market.

Availability

U-verse is available in the following areas:

Kansas City, KS

Detroit, MI

Jackson, MS

Oklahoma City, OK

External links