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| Houston Thinks U-Verse Will Succeed |
| Sunday, 12 October 2008 19:40 |
 Many thought U-Verse would be second-rate, but now it's "an excellent alternative to Comcast," writes the Houston Chronicle. "U-verse is much better than it was a year ago." That's a remarkable turnaround for Houston Chronicle reporter Dwight Silverman, and an important sign that U-verse may do better than the technology community expects. A year ago he wrote "The installation process back then took seven hours; digital display glitches were common; video-on-demand content was spotty; and outages were frequent. It felt like I was working with an unfinished beta product." Silverman's tests weren't very strict; he used an old analog TV, not the HD that about half of his readers' homes already have. AT&T has now proven they can sell U-Verse, with 1M homes expected by yearend. This is significant, because some felt cable's superiority would hold AT&T far back. FTTN/IPTV is an inferior technology, but a significant share of the market is buying it. By yearend, AT&T should have about 15 or 16M homes, so 1M is 6% or 7%. That doesn't mean AT&T will get the 30-45% it needs, because the service from both telcos and cablecos in the U.S. is so bad 10-20% of customers will automatically switch when given an opportunity. When AT&T starts recording 15 and 20% take rates in the older territories, we'll know the gamble on U-Verse is doing well. AT&T is no longer falling behind schedule now that Microsoft is providing an adequate minimum of functionality. When Ed announced the system, wide deployment was announced for 2005-6. Soon after, that became 18-19M passed by 2007. They will probably reach that in the first half of 2009, only a few months later than last year's prediction. |
| Last Updated on Wednesday, 26 November 2008 01:44 |