Please let me know if anyone knows if uverse plans on expanding to East Atlanta any time soon.

A guy from AT& T was in my yard so I am “assuming their “new” univers is coming soon.

I like comcast’s cable, their internet and their phone occasionally works now too. I HATE their “service”, pricing and lies.

Years ago, I had switched from Direct TV to Comcast due to the outages (weather related) with them ( I need to see the whole program if I am watching).

So, all in all – HATE versus Technology or will I be happy with the U-versie since I use all the “extras” (showtime, HBO, DVR – everything).

Really looking forward to your response (or anyone elses)!!

Alice

If you’re not in a U-Verse area, I don’t think AT&T offers DSL anywhere as close to those speeds (I had 6Mbps DSL).

If you can stand to deal with Comcast, it sounds like you’re getting pretty nice speeds, especially if you’re not paying for their ultra-fast service.

P.S. I thought what I was sold through Comcast is much less than what Speedtest.net shows.

Good to hear from you, btw. We should get lunch.

So when my laptop connex wirelessly to my home network, which is fed by Comcast Internet, it says

[Network Name] Operational
Speed: 54 Mbps

But when I go to speedtest.net, I get speeds of 11 or 12 Mbps. So is the “54 Mbps” a supposed maximum or something?

Guess I need to look up on my Comcast bill and see for what speed I’m supposedly paying.

I’ll definitely be providing updates on my impressions. They are very much colored by having been on Dish and their DVRs for so long.

I have no complaints about customer service yet. Obviously the sales experience was a good one since they really wanted to get my business. Two installers are involved – one guy doing the house wiring and equipment; the other doing the outside line work. Outside guy made a point of saying hi and letting me know everything was done on his end even though he didn’t really need to. Inside guy was young but knew what he was doing. Snags came with finding the right paths for my existing coax and dealing with bad equipment that he ultimately swapped out. I had to send him away at 8:30 Monday night and he was back at 9:30 Tuesday morning.

Cost for what I have now and what I had with Dish is thus:

- On Dish I had two HD DVRs, their “250″ package plus HD networks plus HBO plus locals. Total monthly outlay was $128.
- On U-verse I have their Total Home DVR with one other receiver, the “300″ package plus HD plus Showtime networks. Total monthly outlay will be $96.

I also noticed last night that U-verse has a ton more HBO / Cinemax channels than Dish had. I think the Showtime package is 31 channels, with tons of that stuff being on demand.

The 18Mbps Internet is $65 per month. Not bad at all if you ask me. Best thing about that is that it does not require a phone line like regular AT&T DSL does in Atlanta. So I’ve been paying about $75 a month for 6Mbps DSL and the home phone line. I need to get wireless alarm monitoring, but ultimately I’ll probably end up paying $10 – $20 more for 18Mbps Internet (and wireless alarm monitoring) that I’ve been paying for 6Mbps DSL and a home phone line I’d rather not have.

My Dish remote is the 5.3 IR, which I assumed meant infrared. These have little LED-looking eyes on the front, so maybe it’s just that they beam infrared in a wider spectrum or something. All I know is I don’t have to point the Dish remote in any particular direction for it to work.

On the iPhone plan, they have an unpublicized level of Family Talk that’s I think 450 minutes for $59.99. And they looked up my wife’s company and found them having a 20% employee discount. So that’s $48 a month for two lines that can tap this huge bucket of rollover minutes I have (I don’t talk much). And what I’ll be doing (when they get more 3G S phones in) is making my current first-generation iPhone the wife’s line and buying me a new 3G S. Online they indicate that Family Talk with iPhones means you have to buy a family-type iPhone data plan, which would increase the cost from my $20 original iPhone data plan. But that won’t be the case. I’ll have the more expensive data plan for my line, but the wife will keep the current data plan and rate on my old line. And the new contract only applies to my new line; the existing one will be free and clear … maybe for an iPhone update next summer.

So we’ll end up paying about $100 a month for two iPhone voice/data plans (one old, one new) and be able to burn some of those rollover minutes. That’s a pretty sweet deal compared to what AT&T normally pitches, which is a base of $130 per month without a text-message package – $160 with unlimited text. If I go with unlimited text ours will be $125.