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AT&T U-verse is the brand name for AT&T Inc.’s portfolio of Internet protocol (IP)-enabled services, including AT&T U-verse TV, AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet, U-verse Enabled and, in the future, consumer VoIP. The new services travel over phone lines (or over fiber to a consumer's home), and are enabled by AT&T’s initiative to push fiber-optic lines closer to customers’ homes. U-Verse itself is a laconic colloquialism for "universe", designed to convey the scope the service will encapsulate.

Unlike traditional offerings from U.S. cable companies, video is delivered over IP from the head end to the consumer's STB (Set Top Box). Broadcast channels are distributed via IP multicast, allowing a single copy of a channel to be propagated down to the consumer. U-Verse uses H.264 (MPEG-4) encoding, which compresses video and yields a bitrate lower than MPEG-2, which is used on traditional media, including DVD. In this model, the STB does not have a traditional "tuner" - it is an IP multicast client which joins the IP multicast group corresponding to the "channel" desired. This also results in a change in the way that the head end (video reception and transmission facility), as capacity is linked to IP network capacity, not frequency, as in traditional cable or satellite systems.

Contents 1 Project Lightspeed 2 Phone Company Vs. Cable 3 Network Upgrade 4 Current Services 4.1 Internet Access and Digital Television 5 Service areas 5.1 Texas 5.2 California 5.3 Connecticut 5.4 Indiana 5.5 Kansas 5.6 Wisconsin 6 External links

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. AT&T plans to reach nearly 19 million homes by the end of 2008 as part of its initial deployment. Alcatel was named as the Systems Integrator for Project Lightspeed.

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.

Having recently acquired Bellsouth, AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre stated the company is examining how to best rollout U-verse video services in the former Bellsouth territory.

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. AT&T also offers other video products, including AT&T Homezone, a new service combining satellite TV programming with AT&T Yahoo! Internet, and satellite service from AT&T | Dish Network. 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.

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 to within 3,000 feet 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 IP 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 that includes the VDSL modem, a firewall, a wireless access point, an Ethernet switch and an HPNA interface.

Verizon, on the other hand, is deploying FiOS as a FTTP network using traditional RF-style video over fiber. Thus, the network topology of FiOS is very similar to cable; all network traffic in the neighborhood travels over the fiber to the "optical network terminal" (ONT) just outside the home. The ONT is functionally similar to a cable modem, but for fiber instead of coax.

Some have suggested AT&T's tactic is not practical due to the increase in HD and Digital channels which use high amounts of bandwidth. AT&T, however, contends that fiber within 3,000 feet of customers’ homes provides more than adequate bandwidth to provide four streams of high-quality video (including one high-definition stream) plus high speed Internet access and, in the future, consumer VoIP services. It should also be noted that AT&T's FTTN topology only requires copper bandwidth for the content actually being used by the customer, while cable must broadcast all neighborhood content to each set-top box or cable modem, and FiOS does the same to each ONT.

AT&T U-verse customers can choose from four TV packages and three Internet packages to customize their entertainment experience. Current featured bundles range in speed from 1.5 to 6.0 Mbps, depending on the selected programming and Internet package.

AT&T Yahoo! Internet Access, U-verse Enabled offers three tiers:

• Express: Download speeds up to 1.5 Mbit/s; upload speeds up to 1 Mbit/s
• Pro: Download speeds up to 3 Mbit/s; upload speeds up to 1 Mbit/s
• Elite: Download speeds up to 6 Mbit/s; upload speeds up to 1 Mbit/s.

The service also includes a suite of safety and security tools including anti-spy, anti-virus, pop-up blocker, parental controls, and anti-spam features integrated into one platform, plus free wireless home networking, a customized browser, virtually unlimited e-mail storage (a master account and each of 10 sub accounts with up to 2 GB of storage each), and instant messaging and Web cam capabilities.

Currently available in portions of the following markets (metropolitan statistical areas):

• Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex
• Houston
• San Antonio

• San Ramon, CA
• San Jose, CA
• Burbank, CA
• Danville, CA

• Hartford, CT
• New Haven, CT
• Stamford, CT
• Cheshire, CT
• Trumbull, CT

• Anderson, IN
• Bloomington, IN
• Muncie, IN
• Indianapolis, IN

• Kansas City, KS

• Milwaukee, WI
• Racine, WI

• AT&T U-Verse
• UverseUsers