The AT&T U-verse Nightmare
A couple weeks ago I did some research to see if I could save money by switching to AT&T U-verse service for Internet and TV service. The difference between U-verse and DSL is that DSL combines the POTS and DSL signals at the frame (local office), while U-verse uses the fiber optic cables in the street which it converts to 2-wire copper at the street junction box nearest to you. This means that there is no distance limitation for U-verse your area just needs to be wired with fiber optic cables.
So, on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009, they came out to install the service after being assured that:
- If I did not like the service I would be able to switch back to my old service (POTS with DSL).
- The TV service would not have any impact on my Internet service.
- My DSL service would be available until I decide to disconnect service.
In actuality, none of the above was true. 30 minutes before the installation tech called, my residential DSL service was disconnected. When he called, he said that it is not possible to have both DSL and U-verse service at the same address, but I later learned that there is no logical reasoning for this as I have 4 CAT-5 wire pairs wired in the building and U-verse only requires 2 wires. I did find that once an address is labeled with U-verse service, everything at that address becomes U-verse or dies. The later being the nightmare.
Prior to this, I had two POTS lines with DSL, one residential and one business. The U-verse service was supposed to be a completely separate and new residential account for Internet and TV service only. Since I was not moving my residential POTS line to U-verse, there should not have been any link between the two, but that is not the way that it was installed. The tech disconnected the DSL at the frame and added the U-verse carrier to my POTS line at the street. This was the beginning of the end.
I told the tech what I had been told and he said that I was incorrectly informed. He said that there is no way to have both DSL and U-verse service at the same address, even though my business DSL line was still working (keyword: was). Since I had no options at this point, I decided to go ahead and convert all of my Internet access over to U-verse ASAP, something that I didn't want to do until I was able to fully test the service.
I spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday trying to setup the 3800HGV-B 2-Wire Gateway to work with my network. Getting outbound connections to work was not really that difficult, but getting inbound connections to work was a completely different matter. Late Wednesday afternoon I called 2-Wire support to find out why the gateway was not allowing inbound server connections. The inbound status section of the gateway had "KILL_<protocol>" item for each server protocol (i.e. DNS, SMTP, POP, etc.), but there wasn't any visible option to remove them.
The guy at 2-Wire told me that they only sell their products to ISPs, who modify the firmware to match their network. A long story short, AT&T screwed up the firmware and blocked all of the server protocols to the DMZ bypass host, which is supposed to bypass the firewall. If you use the gateway's DHCP server to manage IP addresses you have the option to disable firewall intervention for each DHCP client, but Internet servers are usually multi-homed (have multiple IP addresses) and cannot use DHCP. Until this issue is fixed, it is not possible to run servers behind the gateway.
Now on to the TV service. When I first tried it, I thought that it was awesome as it changed channels in less than 1/10th of a second. The HDMI service appeared to be locked into 96Khz digital audio and I didn't get a chance to test if it was true surround sound. The set-top box for TV service is Compact Windows based and looks pretty good. The tech told me that the TV service may impact the Internet service as the total download pipe is 25Mbps, each HD channel requires 7.5 Mbps (max of 2), and my Internet connection was supposed to be an 18Mbps down/1.5Mbps up connection. Do the math.
So, I setup the DVR to record the shows that I watch, all of which are HD. At 8pm on Tuesday, a notice appears on the TV, as the screen goes black. It basically says that I can't watch another HD channel while 2 HD channels are being recorded. The wording is different, but it's no different than how DirecTV works, so I'm thinking that I'll watch one of the channels being recorded. Nope, can't do that....black screen. OK, lets try playing the recording that is currently being recorded. Nope, can't do that either....black screen. Maybe another show that was recorded earlier? Nope, can't do that either....black screen.
I didn't try watching an SD show as SD shows look like crap on a 46" HDTV. It's like watching TV through coke-bottle glasses when you don't need glasses. TV service was out. Internet service was out. So, on Thursday morning I called to cancel service and have my old service restored. Before I tell you how that went, I need to back track a little bit to Wednesday morning.
When I came into the office on Wednesday morning I noticed that my business DSL service was down, but the POTS line was working. I called AT&T support and was immediately routed to AT&T U-verse support. No matter how hard I tried, it was not possible to reach DSL repair directly. As I alluded earlier, once your address is flagged as having U-verse, all services become U-verse. If a service is not a part of U-verse (i.e. DSL) it gets disconnected. So, my business which has the same address as my residence, is now flagged as U-verse. Since DSL is not a part of U-verse, a disconnect order was sent for my DSL service. And since my POTS line is tied to the DSL service, the POTS line had a pending disconnect order as well.
All-in-all, I spent well over 16 hours on the phone trying to get this fixed, but nothing could be done. Once an order is processed, none of the subsequent orders can be stopped. You can try, but all it does is slow down the inevitable as the system physically destroys and releases services. On Thursday, March 19th, 2009, I placed an order for new service while they were still trying to see if anything could be done to end the cascading destruction. I was originally given a March 25th installation date for the new services, then a late afternoon on the 24th date. On Monday morning (the 23rd) I received a call at 9am from a tech who was originally sceduled to fix now broken lines, who said that he would be able to complete the new installation while he works on the repair.
Once the new lines were functional I told him to cancel the repair service as the old IP addresses could no longer be recovered, and I was informed that the repair could not be completed. A new order would need to be placed to get them working. From about 1998 to 2001, this used to be how Pacific Bell (now DBA AT&T) normally did it's business. I had similar experiences back then when they would randomly disconnect service and change the address on my account every 2 weeks. It took me 8 months to get some one to look into why the address on my account was changing, and an entire year to find out that some one had put my DSL number on an Excel spreadsheet of numbers that were to be disconnected.
You would think that AT&T, the largest telco in the world, wouldn't keep repeating the same mistakes over and over, but they do. From previous experience, it typically takes 2-3 years for them to work out all of the kinks in new services and I doubt that U-verse will be any different. Since they weren't even aware of the issues that I discovered over the 2 days that I had service, I doubt that they will be fixed and sooner, which is really sad. Anywho, I just wanted to let everyone know why I had completely disappeared from the face of the Internet for 7 days, and hopefully prevent this from happening to anyone else.
Take it easy,
Bill