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U-verse TV

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AT&T U-verse is the brand name for a group of services provided over Internet Protocol (IP), including television service, Internet access, and voice telephone service. The new services are carried on phone lines (or over fiber) to the customer's premises, and are enabled by AT&T’s initiative to push fiber-optic lines closer to customers’ premises. U-verse itself is a laconic colloquialism for "universe", designed to convey the scope the service will encapsulate as well as project an emphasis on the customer ("you").

Unlike traditional offerings from U.S. cable companies, video is delivered over IP from the head end to the consumer's set-top box. Broadcast channels are distributed via IP multicast, allowing a single stream (channel) to be sent to any number of recipients. U-verse uses H.264 (MPEG-4) encoding, which compresses video better than MPEG-2, which is used on traditional media, including DVD. Better compression means simply that less bandwidth is required for a given level of video quality. In this model, the set-top box does not have a conventional tuner, but is an IP multicast client which joins the IP multicast group corresponding to the stream ("channel") desired, so that only that stream is sent over the customer's connection. This contrasts greatly with conventional cable television service, in which all channels (streams) are sent to all customers over very-high-bandwidth connections, regardless of which channel(s) a customer is viewing or recording at any given time; in which case, the customer's line must carry mostly unused data, and each channel can only use a small portion of the capacity of the customer's connection. In the IP multicast model, only the streams the customer uses are sent, so the customer's connection need not have the capacity to carry all available channels simultaneously.

Project Lightspeed

In June 2004, AT&T announced Project Lightspeed, the company's initiative to drive fiber deeper into its network with a planned investment of approximately $6 billion. Alcatel-Lucent was named as the Systems Integrator for Project Lightspeed. AT&T originally planned to reach nearly 19 million homes by the end of 2008 as part of its initial deployment. In May 2007, AT&T announced that they would only be able to offer U-verse to 18 million homes by the end of 2008 in the original 13 state region that SBC served. U-verse will also be available to additional homes in the old BellSouth region.

AT&T announced the commercial launch of U-verse services in San Antonio, Texas, in June 2006, following a controlled market entry that began in San Antonio in December 2005. AT&T expanded the San Antonio coverage area and launched HD service with 30 channels in November 2006. Houston was added as the second city for U-verse coverage in November 2006. Nine additional cities were launched in late 2006. AT&T is targeting the launch of the service in 30+ additional markets by the end of 2007.

AT&T was known as SBC Communications Inc. before closing its acquisition of the "old AT&T" in November 2005, and adopting the AT&T name.

Following the acquisition of Bellsouth, then AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre stated the company would examine how to best rollout U-verse video services in the former Bellsouth territory.

Phone Company vs. Cable

U-verse is a good illustration of the increasingly competitive telecom marketplace, in which cable companies are offering voice services and telecom companies are rolling out video offerings. Both cable and telecom companies are striving to offer customers a “triple play” bundle of voice, Internet access and video services. AT&T hopes to gain customers with many advanced features of U-verse, including an innovative, easy-to-use program guide, fast channel-changing, the ability to search for programs using title or actor’s name, and picture-in-picture functionality that allows subscribers to “channel surf” without leaving the program they’re watching. Other phone companies are also developing similar plans in their service areas or have already deployed them. Verizon has already launched its FiOS service in select areas, though its technology is fundamentally different from that of U-verse.

Network Upgrade

AT&T has chosen to bring its next generation of services via both fiber-to-the-node (FTTN), in which it plans to run fiber-optic cable to within 3,000 feet (910 m) on average of customers’ homes, and existing copper lines the remainder of the way; and fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP), in which it runs fiber all the way to the home. This access gear is fed using Ethernet switches and routers running the IP protocol suite over a private backbone constructed for Project Lightspeed. Extensive use of VPLS and MPLS have been implemented to provide a resilient network which scales to support the broadcast TV (via IP multicast) and IP unicast applications and functions. After leaving its PIM transport, multiple levels of IGMP snooping and IGMP proxy further make bandwidth conservation possible with IP multicast.

In its more common FTTN version, the network topology of U-verse/Project Lightspeed is similar to DSL; general network traffic travels no further than the FTTN node (analogous to a DSL remote terminal), while only the individual customer's traffic uses the copper wire to the home. FTTP follows a similar implementation where only the traffic destined for users on an FTTP node is forwarded there, then further downstream where only traffic for users on a specific fiber is sent to that fiber. Each user's home has a "Residential Gateway" from 2Wire

File:2Wire-family-04.jpg
2Wire Gateway Family

2Wire Gateway Family that includes the VDSL modem, a firewall, a wireless access point, an Ethernet switch and an HPNA interface.

Internet Access and Digital Television and VoIP

Digital Television Packages

AT&T U-verse customers can choose from any of five TV packages and four Internet packages.

The five base TV packages include:

  • U-family: Includes 50 family-oriented channels
  • U-100: Includes about 100 channels
  • U-200: Includes about 200 channels
  • U-300: Includes about 300 channels
  • U-400: Includes about 400 channels

The U-family and U-200 through U-400 packages include three receivers, one of which is a DVR, capable of recording up to 4 streams at the same time. This would be equivalent to a 4-tuner DVR, but the receivers do not use "tuners", instead they receive IP streams. AT&T is currently working on whole home DVR, which would enable every set top box to act like a DVR, which is slated for release Q3 2008. Members are also able to get a DVR with the U-100 package for a monthly charge. A customer can either watch or record a single HD channel at a time, dual tuner HD capability is not currently available.

The channel lineup of AT&T U-verse is similar to most cable and satellite systems. There may, of course, be differences between a local cable provider and the AT&T U-verse selection. For a listing in a specific area, consult the U-verse channel lineup.

Internet Access

AT&T High Speed Internet Access, U-verse Enabled offers four tiers:

U-verse Internet Tiers
Name Downstream Upstream
Express 1.5 Mbit/s 1 Mbit/s
Pro 3 Mbit/s 1 Mbit/s
Elite 6 Mbit/s 1 Mbit/s
Max 10 Mbit/s 1.5 Mbit/s

The internet service includes an AT&T email account along with a suite of security tools. Up to 10 active email sub-accounts can be created, each having 2 GB of storage space. The master account can be used to manage and schedule recordings on the U-verse DVR if available.

U-verse users on the fiber-to-the-node VDSL connection are all using interleaved profiles as opposed to fast path profiles. The interleaving is done to reduce the amount of lost frames since VDSL is carried over twisted pair that is susceptible to ingress radio frequency interference[1].

The depth of the interleaving on the U-verse VDSL adds a theoretical maximum of 11.8 milliseconds[2] of latency to all Internet traffic. Users are seeing a real world ping of about 20 milliseconds to the first router outside of their residential gateway[3].

Voice over IP

AT&T is now offering VoIP service in some markets, including Austin, TX, Detroit MI, Kansas City MO/KS, and Hartford CT.

AT&T U-verse Voice offers two package options:

  • AT&T U-verse Voice 1000
  • AT&T U-verse Voice Unlimited

The U-verse Voice provides calling within the U.S. and to Canada, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Marianas. The U-verse Voice 1000 provides 1000 minutes and 7¢ per minute thereafter. The U-verse Voice Unlimited provides unlimited minutes.

Availability

U-verse is available in the following areas:

References

  1. ^ VDSL Monitor (URL accessed 3 March, 2008)
  2. ^ EoVDSL, 3 July, 2001 (URL accessed 3 March, 2008)
  3. ^ Online gaming - latency issues, 19 September, 2007 (URL accessed 3 March, 2008)
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