It was like a dream come true.
I just got finished with an AT&T; Rep who was going door to door after part of my neighborhood in Piedmont/Oakland was just greenlit for AT&T; fiber. After struggling though DSL for the past 10 years or so the future has finally arrived at my home address.
So what is the deal that AT&T; is offering residential customers?
Well, if it’s available in your area they are signing people up for AT&T; U-verse. You have to get your TV from them as well as fiber internet with the minimum package starting at $99 per month. They had some cheaper plans without the 10MBPS speeds, but I’m happy to pay more for the top fiber speeds. This $99 per month includes high speed fiber (with guaranteed speeds of 10MBPS downloads and 1.5MBPS uploads), AT&T; TV service including a dual tuner HDTV DVR and a bunch of premium cable channels. I opted to pay $10 more per month for their HDTV package as well. The TV service also has high quality movie pay per view downloads as well. So for $109 per month I now will get fiber internet as well as their bundled U-Verse TV service.
The rep also helped me move my home telephone package from a $60 per month package that I was paying before to a new $40 per month unlimited local and long distance package for U-Verse customers.
There are no installation charges that I have to pay and my service also comes with free Flickr Pro service through Yahoo/SBC. The rep also told me that as part of this package I’d be able to get free wifi service at AT&T; hotspots (including Starbucks). They will also be installing a new wireless router in my home so I’ll be able to get wifi on the service as well. According to the AT&T; rep this will not be shared internet service, I’ll be on my own network ensuring that I maintain my high speeds.
I’ve been dying for fiber service at my home for years and now it’s finally here. They are coming next Monday to install the new service and now it’s time for my internet speeds to fly, baby, fly.
The door to door rep who helped sign me up for the new service was a delightful woman who was very professional and incredibly helpful in terms of answering my questions and handling all the phone work and paperwork for me. I’d highly recommend contacting her if you are considering signing up for the service. Her name was Hope Washam. If you are living in the SF Bay Area and want to see if you can get AT&T; fiber at your house drop Hope an email at hopiewasham(at)hotmail.com and she’ll be happy to help sign you up for it.
According to Hope, there are only 60,000 households in the Bay Area that have been greenlit for AT&T; fiber to date, but more will be coming online in the months ahead. Areas where it might be available include Oakland (especially around the Oakland Hills, Montclair, Piedmont), Cupertino, San Jose, the Sunset District in San Francisco, some parts of San Rafael, Concord, San Mateo and a few other areas.
Talk about the best kind of Saturday a guy could have!
Hey congrats on scoring some really fast Broadband! Welcome to the 21st century. I suffered with Sprint Wireless Broadband for years and at the beginning of the year switched to Comcast. (No fiber available in my area yet). I got the Business class service. Service is guaranteed to be 8Mbit down and 800KB up, but I’m getting 16-18Mbit down and 1.5Mbit up!! Plenty of bandwidth to stream full HD video! I’ve seen upload speeds as high as 20Mbit in the early AM. I’ve been really happy with the service so far. The customer service for business class is top notch and is 24/7, they will even come out on Sunday to fix things if necessary.
Now your iPhone 3G will seem slow again 😉
Fremont! I hope they light up Fremont soon.
Mr Hawk,
I sent you an email concerning one of your photos that I had seen an artist had made a ‘painting’ of and sell it, but the email came back. I thought you might want to view the website it is on:
http://sandraspeight.com/interest.htm [home page]
http://sandraspeight.com/Rainy%20Night%20in%20San%20Francisco%20(Small).jpg [painting]
It did not seem fair to me that she had done this.
I love that photo of yours.
Wow, seems to be a big thing for you, Thomas! I really can’t unterstand what’s going on with internet broadband services in the USA. In Germany that kind of broadband is a higher standard, I have 16Mb/s with 1Mb/s for less than 30 Euro per month.
10 Up and 10 Down baby… and that was the cheapest plan available in my area. There is no way back now 🙂
I have uverse as well. Be aware this is only fiber to the node not the premise. The run from the node to your
property is the same wire. I hated the DVR since it barely worked missed recordings and there was only 1 HD stream. The Internet is ok but for the price I can’t complain since it is half the price of comcast. They don’t support the Hd Tivo or Hd tuner cards from a media center. I ended up staying with directv’s Hd Dvr but it is only ok when compared to my Directv TiVo powered Hd DVR.
U-verse? That's awesome!
I've tested out the U-verse TV experience, and it just rocks. I never though a TV provider could ever come up with a decent interface, but AT&T; proved me wrong. I love the slick TV interface, the DVR ability, and all that for one solid price. The interface is also pretty interactive, and the channel preview thing works great.
Interesting to note that U-verse utilizes IPTV (or Microsoft Mediaroom to be exact), which to me, is TV of the future. Great to hear you got U-verse in you area.
wtf is this crap 1.5mbs up? lame that is not fiber…that is limitations not really fast at all, Us or not like killercup said, this is crap. 10mbs up/down is bare minimum fiber. you are capped horrifically wtf is this crap