A Real Live U-verse Customer – The Video

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I have wanted to see AT&T’s U-verse in action since its launch last year. I got a chance to in a hastily arranged video interview with a friend who only lives a few miles away from the Pyle domicile [Note, the poor quality of the video is a result of my friend’s dying four year old television set]. In this video interview, Mark Snow expresses what he has liked about the service and a few of the things he would like to see improved. In the end, technology and gee-whiz features take a back seat to have an easy to use offering that provides great value.

2 responses to “A Real Live U-verse Customer – The Video”

John

March 5, 2008

Mr. Pyle,
Your agenda is so obvious that you had to defend U-Verse’ “superior” service at the beginning of the story (god forbid people will jump out of their skin thinking oh, it’s U-Verse’s quality, na, na, na) by stating that the video quality is due to a dying TV set. Did you really think that through this small, almost IPOD like video size you could make out the difference in quality or are you insulting your readers’ intelligence?
Why are you interviewing people who obviously have no clue about the differences in technology and don’t know even what points to pay attention to when comparing the U-Verse Vs. the cables or Sat.? This one likes the fact that he has about 20 more channels? Wow! Amazing!
Why don’t you go and find those people who live in the neighborhoods where AT&T’s cabinets caught on fire, ask them how they feel about their service….

Ken Pyle

March 5, 2008

Hi,

Thanks for the comment. All comments are welcome.

As a bit of background, this was only the second U-verse customer I had met (the first was Alan Weinskrantz from San Antonio, who started a blog on the AT&T service). At the time of interview, AT&T had a relatively small subscriber count and I wasn’t aware of any video interviews with an actual customer.

Mark, in many ways, may be the typical consumer. He isn’t a gadget guy and he cares about getting a good value, as opposed to the latest and greatest feature. Since he is a customer, I would argue that his opinion on what matters in a cable television service is as important as any other person’s opinion. To him and many others, the technology is secondary.

This is exemplified by his television, which was slowly dying and created the ring affect seen in the video (the picture worked fine on the outside part of the screen, but the colors were green on the inner part of the picture). I tried to describe this in the video and text, but probably did not do a good job. I did not want his television to cast an unfair view on the service.

Probably the significance of this video is that it is real. In the conferences I attend on the topic of IPTV, the challenges of IPTV are discussed, but rarely, if ever, do we actually look into the home and hear directly from the customer.

To some extent, this video was a counter to one that Verizon had produced earlier in the year that appeared staged.

http://www.viodi.tv/2007/06/20/fios/

In that video, I was criticized for my sloppy reporting on Verizon and for bashing Verizon.

As far as an agenda, my bias is actually towards the independent telecom companies. I believe the smaller entities serve America better.

I am disappointed that AT&T has not more aggressively taken an FTTH approach like Verizon has. I would suggest that the copper plant in San Jose and much of California has long been depreciated (hence, why Pac Bell was rebuilding it over a decade ago, before SBC bought them and stopped the rebuild).

A FTTH strategy would not only provide an improved infrastructure, but it would eliminate the unsightly cabinets that are littering the streets of San Jose. It would also remove the batteries from the street cabinets.

Light Reading had some excellent articles and pictures on the battery fire problem. Articles on Outside Plant Equipment isn’t really the focus of the Viodi View or ViodiTV, so I am not sure there is anything we could add to what has already been written on this subject.