U-verse Should Be Re-versed

Implications: ·U-verse is really the old Southwester Bell Corporation’s (SBC’s) old Project Lightspeed. Project Lightspeed’s goal was to drive fiber deeper into SBC’s territory using as much of its embedded local loop as possible. ·If I recall correctly, Lightpseed was launched in the early 1990s. ·Now the project’s age has nothing to do with the viability of the approach towards deploying multimedia services over an Internet Protocol (IP) backbone. ·Now the project’s age has nothing to do with the viability of the approach towards deploying multimedia services over an Internet Protocol (IP) backbone. ·If I recall correctly, Lightpseed was launched in the early 1990s. ·Now the project’s age has nothing to do with the viability of the approach towards deploying multimedia services over an Internet Protocol (IP) backbone. ·Now the project’s age has nothing to do with the viability of the approach towards deploying multimedia services over an Internet Protocol (IP) backbone.

Analysis:

U-verse is one way a wireline telephone company can bring broadband to the customer. U-verse is fiber to the neighborhood (FTTN) combined with the last 1000 feet over copper (DSL). Now there is nothing wrong with this. It works. AT&T is sending content over IP and is compressing video using H.264 encoding. This is a perfectly legitimate way getting broadband services to a customer. However, the goal of any wireline telephone company is to bring as much bandwidth to the customer as possible.

U-verse is a fiber-DSL product that was designed to fully realize the local loop’s potential. It works but it is not the ideal solution. Verizon’s FiOS is superior to the AT&T U-verse service. Verizon’s FiOS is a fiber to the premises (FTTP) solution. The FiOS network supports a RF multiplexing schema and IPTV. FiOS looks like cable. Cable and FiOS provide more bandwidth than DSL. No matter how much fiber you connect to that pair of wires, it is still a pair of wires. DSL is a limiting factor.

AT&T’s original estimates for U-verse was 19 million homes by end of 2008 or early 2009. AT&T is nowhere near that huge number and it will never make that number by end of 2008 or end of 2009.

AT&T at has been working to get good content and for that I will give them credit. When SBC took over AT&T, it should have abandoned the Lightspeed project and simply go ahead with AT&T Communications’ PON project. Before SBC acquired AT&T, AT&T had been deploying PONs (passive optical networks) in conjunction with new home developments and corporate construction. When SBC took over, that all stopped. What a mistake that was.