AT&T's Business Uverse: Good Idea But Just Not Fully Cooked?

Implications: Residential Uverse rolled out in San Antonio in the summer of '06, and just now AT&T is offering a business version to small businesses; however, the fiber feeder for all the residential Uverse customers passes many businesses of all sizes and types.  MetroEthernet is a great service that is attractive to medium and larger businesses, but the construction charges for a fiber connection keep them from making the change from copper feeder.  Some of AT&T's competitors are offering to pay those construction charges to gain the customer on their version of MetroE.

Analysis: The referenced article is a great step in the right direction, with
AT&T offering 10mbs internet service and multiple internet connections/free WiFi in their hotspots to small businesses.  AT&T will likely gain a lot of small business revenue with this effort if the price is right compared to the competitor's similar service offering. 

However, this should only be the first step of a multi-pronged effort to also pursue medium businesses (e.g., insurance companies, large retail offices) which are low hanging fruit with copper connections to the street where the fiber passes on the way to residential Uversers.  Current AT&T commercial processes require the customer to open the trench, provide the conduit, or whatever it takes for them to easily provide the fiber cable connection from the street.  Uverse-destined fiber feeder is passing many businesses along the way that are considered large enough to be called other than "small business", which usually meant 2-6 phone lines in the old days.  The medium businesses all have had some form of frame relay or high level private line service over the years that have cost many dollars to pump out their data to the world.  Taking the place of much frame relay and similar services, MetroEthernet is the product darling of the RBOCs, CLECs, and CATV MSOs right now.  MetroE on fiber is customer cost effective and highly robust and reliable compared to the costly dedicated lines of yesteryear.  With AT&T rolling out "Small Business Uverse", surely they have a team working on how to capitalize on the next lucrative customer layer, and one that is regularly overlooked:  medium businesses. 

One hairbrained idea:  have the Uverse 20-30mbs bandwidth from street fiber feeding the copper to the businesses (using VDSL) supplied in clustered business locations with the regular Uverse Alcalu equipment, minus the video complications. It is probably more complicated than that simple statement seems, but AT&T appears to be missing out on business customers as they seek the residential video holy grail at the end of the feeder route.  Perhaps this concept cross-elastizes their MetroE product, but with CATV MSO competitors like Charter Communications offering to pay the construction charges for fiber to the business, Medium Business Uverse might save a few losses to competition.  Verizon's FIOS is noted to be FTTP for Premise, which includes business and residence, so they have already seen the light.