I think that's what put the pressure on Comcast." "Comcast invested in their network about the same time AT&T decided to launch here. "All I can say is the timing worked out nicely," said Eric McHenry, chief technology officer for Santa Rosa. Though Comcast said the upgrades were planned, officials believe the arrival of AT&T's U-verse rollout helped hasten Comcast's plans. Comcast announced a year ago it would spend $80 million on upgrades, including its Santa Rosa service. For the past five years, Santa Rosa has been asking for upgrades to its Comcast network to handle more capacity. "I haven't had any glitches."įor customers who can't or don't go with AT&T, there are still some potential benefits. It's been incredibly easy to work with," said Jason Parrish, a transit and parking manager with the city of Santa Rosa who recently signed up for U-verse. The network also enables things like fast channel changes and picture-in-picture viewing.įor customers, the service has been a hit. U-verse uses Internet infrastructure, which allows it to offer integrated services like U-bar, on-screen searches and easy remote programming of digital video recorders. It recently began offering 42 HD channels, more than cable, and introduced a service called U-bar, which allows viewers to check news, traffic, weather and sports scores using the television. The company is adding 10,000 customers a week and predicts it will be up to 40,000 a week by the end of 2008.ĪT&T has been making progress with its U-verse offerings. He said the U-verse expansion plan is well under way and is expected to pick up steam. Randy Quebec, local sales director for U-verse, said the problems largely have been "growing pains" that are being worked out. And local U-verse subscribers have lost service twice, including a national outage on Oct. The company originally planned to offer two streams of high-definition TV this year, but delayed that to next year because of difficulty expanding capacity. AT&T doubled its installation workforce in November, but many new workers are still learning the process, meaning the installation times are averaging six hours, about two hours longer than AT&T would like.Īnd there have been some technical problems. The company also is working to find qualified workers to install the service. "We're trying to work with AT&T to minimize the visual impacts of these very large utility boxes, because they attract graffiti and they stick out like sore thumbs." Working out the glitches "Some residents have complained about the boxes," said Hayward assistant city manager Fran David. AT&T missed some early projections for subscribers early this year, and it still needs to work with cities on placing the 4-foot-tall boxes needed for the service, which can be a time-consuming and sometimes contentious affair. Cities are being added regularly, but it's happening neighborhood by neighborhood as AT&T extends its fiber lines to within 3,000 feet of homes to enable U-verse service. The appearance of AT&T as a cable competitor has cheered some residents who have sought a choice beyond Comcast, the dominant provider in the Bay Area, and satellite TV services.īut the rollout has not been without problems. AT&T said it had 126,000 U-verse customers nationwide as of the end of the third quarter, and it expects to have 1 million by the end of next year. Locally, the service is available in parts of almost 40 cities. "And I was very impressed with the picture quality and just the interface on the menu."įleury is one of thousands of customers who have made the move to AT&T since it began television and broadband service a year ago. "U-verse has more channels for the money and the channels are more relevant," he said.
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