AT&T's U-verse IPTV Service Ready to Expand with HD

Filed in archive IPTV on October 24, 2006

projections indicate they will get their 3001st customer today!

For those of you keeping score, AT&T has been offering its U-verse IPTV service to a total of 30,000 potential homes in san antonio. So far, 3,000 signed up meaning a 10% adoption rate. Perhaps significantly, that test does not include a high definition offering.


Late next month, AT&T will begin offering its IPTV service in the Houston market late next month with HD service. Then it will launch HD in San Antonio. After that, an HD-capable AT&T U-verse will be rolled out to 15 markets by the end of the year.

From what I've seen of their Microsoft navigation software and IF there is a substantial increase in the number of HD channels over Comcast, I just may make the plunge then. Likely, I will keep both services for a while just to report back differences to you.

One of the reasons that AT&T says it has not rolled out the service faster is that they wanted to wait until it was prepared to offer HD en masse. This is smart marketing but they also wanted to avoid additional costs. For example, in San Antonio, it will incur expenses to retrofit current customers with HD-capable equipment.

On a conference call to discuss AT&T's third-quarter results, CFO Rick Lindner said, AT&T U-verse's "picture quality is excellent, [its] features and user interface, I think, beat cable in side-by-side tests." I actually have seen what they are offering and he just might be right. But a word of caution before buying lots of AT&T stock: cable can make adjustments to compete if they need to.