Last Saturday, I had at&t’s new service U-verse installed throughout my house. The technology is really impressive, but let’s just say there are some teething problems that, so far, are degrading the ‘wow’ factor.

The at&t installer showed up just after 9am on Saturday, and quickly got to work. She ran some tests on the signal coming to the box on the side of the house, and then at the individual outlets. She spent the better part of two hours tracing the mangled up cable runs from my basement, and an additional hour sorting out the copper jungle that hung from the rafters that provide telephone service.

She sorted out and organized all of that mess, and then tacked up up neatly to the ceiling. She was very polite the entire time, and did not mind that I looked over her shoulder to see how things come together.

After spending the majority of the day setting the house up, she brought in the set-top boxes as well as the residential gateway (the equivalent of an internet router).

The internet came right up, and we registered all the hardware. She then checked the signal strength coming out of the gateway, and then powered up the set-top boxes. After a one time configuration process that lasted 15 minutes for each TV, we were in business.

My initial impression was very positive. The standard definition picture quality was better than Comcast, and since I’ve never had HD TV, I was naturally impressed with the picture on my tiny 15″ HD TV in my kitchen.

By 6pm, the installer left and I sat down and started playing…

Then Sunday came along.

A sizzling stroke of lighting kicked the power off just long enough to reset the computers as well as the gateway, which powers both the internet and the TV’s. I tried resetting the gateway to no avail. It wouldn’t sync up with the at&t box up the street. After a quick call to tech support, I got the TV’s back up and running, but the picture was terrible! There was nasty pixelation, freezing screens, and episodes of a loud audio squelch belching from the television. The phone tech concluded that a technician would be required to look at the system.

Keith from at&t showed up at the house at around 2:30pm, and started checking the signals at each of the outlets. The strength was a bit weaker than he’d like to see, but said it was within limits. He then installed an inline resistor which filtered out the noise in the coax cable. Then he reset the power on the gateway to make sure it would synch back up, to no avail. After several phone calls, they decided they’d need to do some re-wiring at the VRAD (the at&t box up the street) because my house was wired to a port that was typically used in “emergency situations only”. No idea what that means, but who am I to argue?

After several other at&t technicians got done re-wiring the box, we tried to sync back up the gateway, and it still wouldn’t cooperate. The tech ended up replacing the gateway, and voila, it worked. The TV’s came up and the picture was back to normal.

Ketih ended up leaving at around 9pm.

I’ve worked with a lot of service companies in my short tenure, but at&t by far takes all accolades hands down. I fully expected all parties to pack up and quite at 5pm each day, but all the techs stayed around till the job was done and the customer was happy.

All the people I’ve dealt with are cheerful folks who enjoy the challenge of bringing a infant technology to fruition. There is a steep learning curve with all new technologies, and the stellar customer service really alleviates the frustration that comes with the growing pains.

It’s taking some getting used to, but I like the U-verse product. I’ve still got some pixelation every once in a while, which could stem from the low signal strength at the house, or possibly a strain on bandwidth during prime time.

I’ll give tech support a call and see if they can offer any help.

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