HOW YOU GET IT.
Representatives of ATT are knocking on Dallas doors and ringing telephones, all in a big push to get thousands of TV owners to change from whatever receiving service they now use to ATT's. It's called U-Verse.
While these representatives commonly infer that subscribers will get their signals by fiber optics, the newer and more pure method of transmittal than cable, satellite and rooftop antennas, that's not what they are offering.
IT'S NOT TRUE FIBER OPTICS
In an effort to save massive upfront costs, ATT engineers and vendors developed a hybred system. In generalities, the signal does go by fiber optics from the "main office" to large chests of wire in residential neighborhoods, but it travels from that chest by regular copper telephone wire to the homes. It's the same wire that the telephone voice signals have been transmitted to your home for years.
THE PROBABLE REASON FOR FAILURES
Those wires, in most cases, are old and have countless splices in them as phone service has been added, subtracted and modified over the years. So while voice travels them with reasonable intelligence, that's often not the case with the massively more complex television signals.
When the signal reaches its destination along with telephone and Internet signals, it is divided by a splitter that's called a baling, and fed to a modem that directs the signal to the TVs.
THE PROBLEM COMPOUNDED
Here is the problem in a nutshell. The technology apparently works swell in the laboratory where everything is new, where weather isn't involved and where line runs are short. But it often times does not work when applied in real-life situations.
And if that isn't bad enough, the technicians who come to try to locate problems are very limited in their actual understanding of what causes problems and how to correct them. So the manner in which they approach correction is two fold: make sure all of the wires are tightly connected, and change out component parts with the hopes that will solve the problem.
IN A NUTSHELL
The service technicians don't know how or why it works. That's the paradox. If you don't know how or why, what chance have you to know why it isn't?
OUR EXPERIENCE AT WORLD HEADQUARTERS
We added U-Verse at World Headquarters about six months or so ago. It has never worked properly although ATT has sent out at least eighteen different technicians to try to fix it. And oft times a technician has spent well over two hours disrupting our lives while he's making one more attempt to stop the failures.
The common problems are feezing and pixalating. You simply can't enjoy a program because you miss huge chuncks of it as a result of the U-Verse failures. Beginning last evening, our TVs will just freeze on a frame and remain that way. The only way to bypass that malfunction is to turn the modem off and reboot it.
The tech supervisor has promised to come on Monday, but if he can't get it resolved, we are going to immediately change services.
WHAT OTHERS HAVE EXPERIENCED
If you speak with neighbors, read Internet posting and the like, you'll find people either get great service or bad service. And it appears to me that at least in Dallas, it is not evenly divided. Most people seem to wish they had never seen U-Verse.
WHAT'S YOUR EXPERIENCE?
HERE'S AN UPDATE (12-26-2008): Finally AT&T sent out a very experienced technician and who maintained constant contact with the trouble-shooter in Phoenix. The problem was solved when it was discovered that the connections in the interface (the box where the phone line from the pole connects to the lines to your home) were not properly grounded. This seems to have solved the problems. If our count is correct, it took fourteen service calls with fourteen different technicians to get this resolved.
Copyright 2008 - William S. Cherry
BILL CHERRY, REALTORS
DALLAS
Our 44th Year Selling America
214 503-8563
Hi Bill!
Here, we have Dish Network. While I don't know how it works (or shall I say doesn't work) I have found that, as you so adequately described, neither do the technicians. We experience the same freezing (not on a picture frame, but turning a brilliant pink), and the pixeling drives us crazy. We have only had them out twice. The first time they switched out a "box" and the "eye" of the dish. The second time, they switched out another "box". It still pixels and freezes, so now it is a question of do we stick it out or change service? We changed to them because we didn't like the escalating costs of cable. Now...I guess we have to choose the lesser of all evils! Good luck to us all!
Miss Paula --
That's really weird that you're having trouble with Dish Net. I've used them several times in several locations. The only problems I ever had were 1) the thing goes out in bad weather because it can't get the signal from the satellite, and 2) sometimes the dish drifts off from direct line to the satellite.
And the thing on the dish that I call a microphone sometimes goes out, and I decided it was more often than not because birds peck at it.
But turning pink? Now that's a new one on me. Cable has a habit of overpricing their service, and I wonder if it isn't the price we have to pay for reliability. I frequently threaten to throw them all to the wind and go back to an outside antenna.
Interestingly, by the way, the scientists have found that HD TV does far better via outside antenna than it does with cable, dish or U-verse. So much so that many people have two hook-ups. One for the HD broadcasts and a dish or cable for all of the other channels.
Bill
...it just keeps getting more interesting! We now all must be certain that our televisions can handle HD and almost everyone has now taken down their antennae! It's kind of like when they repave the roads and then a few months later tear up one side to put in new pipes!