Lawrence Broadband Observer

AT&T shoots self in foot, reloads

2011-03-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

AT&T has made a major announcement that represents a significant degrading of the quality of their internet services. Starting May 2, AT&T will begin capping the bandwidth for all of their internet offerings. Many in Lawrence are already familiar with caps such as these, as Knology (previously Sunflower Broadband) has implemented them for years.

Needless to say this announcement hasn't gone own well amongst AT&T's customers.

AT&T's excuse, that such draconian new restrictions are needed to prevent "network congestion" has been ably debunked - likely the real reason for AT&T's move is that many customers are downgrading their U-Verse television service and preferring to get content via sources such as Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, and Hulu. Bandwidth caps are a dagger aimed at the heart of services such as these - after all, who's gonna watch TV via Hulu and HD movies via Netflix when they have to keep a careful eye on the meter? Much easier to just upgrade your U-Verse TV plan (which isn't subject to the cap - how convenient!)

Anyway, for those of us in Lawrence, U-Verse has suddenly become much less competitive with Knology. Let's stack up how the top of the line plans for both providers now compare.

	Knology Gold	AT&T U-Verse Max Turbo
Download speed	50 Mbit	24 Mbit
Upload speed	1 Mbit	3 Mbit
Bandwidth cap	250 GB/month	250 GB/month
Bandwidth meter	Updated hourly	Updated every several days
Base price	$60	$65
Overage Fees	$25 per 50 GB	$10 per 50 GB
Grace	Unofficial, can call CS to get overage reduced	3 overages allowed over account lifetime before charges begin to accrue
Bandwidth tracked	Upload and download	Upload and download

(sources: public web sites from AT&T, Knology and first-hand sources from both companies)

So, basically, with AT&T, you get faster upload and cheaper overage fees although you pay a slightly higher base fee and have slower top download speeds. Knology gets you faster downloads, but it will be more expensive if you go over your cap. As a side note, AT&T's metering is a joke - it will only be updated every few days, making it almost impossible to figure out what might be using bandwidth. Knology's meter is update in near realtime, making it a useful tool. Of course, in both cases, the meter's accuracy is "in the clouds" - unlike, say, your electrical meter, there is no independent body which calibrates and audits the meter. Do you trust AT&T (or Knology) to keep accurate track of your data usage?

Either way, the only winner is the service provider, and you, the customer are the loser, because you can't take advantage of new innovative video services or important security measures like online backups without the anxiety of watching a meter run and the risk of billing surprises.

What will the Broadband Observer do? Probably stick with U-Verse....for now. All things being equal, still like the higher upload speed and slightly lower overage prices. However, Knology could upgrade their upload speed by flipping a switch, and will probably adjust their overage fees to stay competitive. When they do so, AT&T will likely be kicked to the curb at our house.

I For One Welcome Our New Knology Overlords

2011-01-19T09:51:00.000-08:00

Not really, but I am always looking for an excuse to use an obscure Simpsons reference.

Anyway, it is official.

Knology is now Lawrence's local cable-based broadband provider. The old Sunflower home page redirects to a new Knology Kansas page. I guess I need to update the sidebar links on the blog.

The natives are showing signs of restlessness.

Who knows? Sam knows.

2011-01-13T18:55:00.000-08:00

The Broadband Observer has become friends with Sam. Uncle Sam, that is, or at least the Federal Communications Commission part of it, who is helping run a first-of-its-kind national three-year study of broadband connectivity and performance in America.

These are real, scientifically sophisticated automated regular tests of connectivity, bandwidth quality and speed that will be used to gain an understanding of what actual broadband performance is being delivered to customers. Over 100,000 users nationwide, subscribing to hundreds of providers and tiers of service are being studied, and the results will show if consumers are actually getting what they pay for, as well as what the true broadband infrastructure in America is like.

I am excited to be one of the people selected for this test. The test works by having a special NetGear router with custom firmware attached to your broadband connection. It regularly tests the connection and uploads statistical information to the study's managers. The owner of the broadband connection being tested (me) also gets to see my own data, which I am definitely interested in!
You can learn more about some of the technical tests if you are curious.

Watch for future posts about the SamKnows testing as I learn more about the process and find out some preliminary results.

Odds and ends: Waiting for Knology, U-Verse hits a rough spot

2011-01-07T07:10:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I have written here, mostly because not too much has been happening in the Lawrence broadband arena. Knology officially completed their purchase of Sunflower Broadband although as of yet there have been no changes to the technology or service offerings for Lawrence consumers. The only change of note was a rather aggressive swinging of the layoff axe as Knology decimated one of the best parts of Sunflower, their local customer service. Impact of these cuts (and any changes in services and branding) will probably become apparent later this Winter, and I will try to write about it here when it happens.

Ironically, those changes might be happening right around the same time that Mr. Observer himself might be shopping for a new ISP. Our 18 month long U-Verse experiment is showing signs that it may be in trouble. You might remember that last summer, which was the last time I really talked about U-Verse, service was humming along without any problems. This has mostly continued since then, with occasional glitchiness that usually resolved itself after a few days. The main problem we have had over the past year is internet slowdowns where our speed has dropped drastically, on its own, for a few hours or even a few days before magically correcting itself.

However, in the past week, things have taken a dramatic turn for the worse, with significant VDSL signal problems, including random router reboots, dropped signals, and numerous line errors - more then we had ever had before (hundreds of millions of corrected blocks in a day). Topping it all off, our internet speed sometimes randomly slows way down for hours at a time before returning to normal. When this happens, speed tests to multiple sites show average speeds of less then half of the 24/3 we are paying for, with ridiculously high ping times (over 150 milliseconds) even to the local AT&T switch behind the VRAD (these are normally in the range of 40 milliseconds when things are working right).

AT&T has already tried numerous remedies; they've swapped our in-house router (the residential gateway), cleaned up our outside wiring, and even switched our connection port on the VRAD itself, to no avail. My suspicion is that there is likely a problem with network management or a network device in the AT&T network itself (this would account for the slowdowns and terrible ping times) and perhaps something wrong with the local line as well. The problems with the AT&T network itself probably affect other customers, but I would imagine most do not notice it, as they are not as technically inclined as I am and probably do not have the higher-speed internet tiers in which a slowdown would be way more apparent.

It just seems very weird that an installation that has been rock-solid for over a year would suddenly fall apart like this, without any obvious causes. AT&T is coming back out today, and my expectations are very low, both based on the intermittent nature of the problem, and past experiences. I am expecting a bunch of "shotgun debugging" - I predict they will try to replace the router again, and run more line tests that will show things to be "clean" and it might work for a short while...and then, ugh. This is nothing against the service technicians themselves; to a man, they have all been as helpful and courteous as possible - they just haven't been able to solve the problem!

We've been spoiled by a year of troublefree service, and the joys of 3 megabits upload speed and no bandwidth caps, but if these issues can't be solved, Sunflower (or I guess Knology) might be getting another look.

As a side note, I am really glad we do NOT have U-Verse for TV now. Slow internet stinks, but you can live with it. But I have to imagine that the television service would have just been decimated by all these glitches and we would probably have been forced to miss a bunch of our favorite shows.

PS: I would think an issue like this would be something AT&T would be very interested in solving, especially if it does involve something higher up in their network infrastructure that may potentially affect many people. I know that the different parts of AT&T are like islands, and the guys who come to your home to troubleshoot do not work with the network engineers, or the line repair guys. I've been told that is the corporate nature of AT&T, which is sad, because just like in medicine, sometimes you need to approach a problem from many different angles and get teams from different departments to work together.

Sunflower QAM channels in Lawrence

2010-08-05T06:32:00.000-07:00

At last, a a break from speculating about the Knology purchase of Sunflower back into some good technical information on cable TV in Lawrence.

A very helpful individual named Sigmund on the Lawrence Journal World forums has done the hard work and put together an updated list of all the QAM mappings for the Sunflower Broadband Bronze cable networks.

As I have discussed last year, QAM channels are the actual digital cable channels that you watch on your TV. Most people watch these using a set-top box, which makes things easier, but at the cost of allowing "TV geeks" to use their own equipment (such as a PC-based tuner).

Anyway, Sigmund has written an absolutely wonderful blog post discussing the current state of QAM programming and Sunflower, as well as providing an up-to-date QAM channel guide.

Sadly, you'll notice the channel guide is missing some important channels, such as ESPN and Comedy Central. Commenter MizzouJayhawk notes that these channels have disappeared because of new contracts between the networks and cable company that require encryption...just like a "premium" network such as HBO.

Anyway, stop what you are doing and go read Sigmund's excellent post, and update your channel mappings in preparation for the fall TV season if you haven't already.

And, it's official

2010-08-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

Sunflower Broadband has been purchased by Knology for (cue Dr. Evil laugh) $165 million dollars

From the MBA-speak in the Knology earnings announcement:

-- Highlights of the Sunflower transaction include:

-- Acquisition of a very well managed business with solid
operational and financial metrics
-- Maintains Knology's strategic niche, operating in secondary and
tertiary markets with favorable demographics and positive economic
growth characteristics
-- Consistent culture and value system with focus on customers and
employees
-- Similar hybrid fiber/coax network architecture
-- Incumbent cable operator, adding approximately 54,000 homes
passed to Knology's existing footprint and approximately 105,000
RGU's to Knology's operations
-- Geography offers attractive edge-out possibilities, tack-on
acquisition and larger acquisition opportunities bridging Knology's
southeast and upper Midwest footprints

So what will this mean for Lawrence broadband customers? Time will tell. I am sure a lot of details will start to come out about the announcement today and in the weeks ahead, and we will try to keep you informed here at the Lawrence Broadband Observer.

UPDATE: This rather folksy history of Sunflower written by her soon-to-be-former sister company, the Lawrence Journal World, contains a nugget of news: the local cable network Channel 6 which provides local news, features, and community access will continue to operate on the Knology system in Lawrence.

Sunflower Broadband to be sold to out-of-state conglomerate?

2010-07-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

Big changes might be coming to the world of broadband cable and internet in Lawrence, Kansas. According to a report in the cable industry newspaper Multichannel News, Georgia-based broadband firm Knology is close to finalizing a deal to acquire Sunflower Broadband.

This would probably mean some big changes to the broadband market here in Lawrence. It would also mark the end of Sunflower Broadband as a local, independent entity. Buyouts happen all the time in the world of business, but I still pause to shed a few tears for the demise of another independent, local, family-owned business - especially one that has always "punched above its weight" by being technologically ahead of the curve of many much larger companies over the years - both positive (cable internet, DOCSIS 3, digital cable and HD support) and negative (bandwidth caps).

So, what will the buyout mean for the local Lawrence broadband market?
Well, new logos on the bills and a new sign on the building for sure, but beyond that, who knows?

I browsed Knology's corporate web site and was actually pretty unimpressed. To put it mildly, Knology is well behind Sunflower both geographically and technically. Knology offers service in rural areas much smaller then Lawrence, like Storm Lake, Iowa and Dothan, Alabama. They also offer service in a few towns that are equal or larger then Lawrence like Charleston, South Carolina.

Technically, Knology is well behind Sunflower in what they offer customers in other cities. Top internet speeds (albeit cap-free) are only in the 8-10 megabit range, five times slower then Sunflower's new DOCSIS 3 offerings. On the television side, while it varies from city to city, Knology generally offers only 30 or so HD channels, which is less then half of what Sunflower offers. Knology offers a rudimentary DVR, but nothing like Sunflower's multi-room options.

Perhaps Knology is interested in buying Sunflower to learn how to offer more advanced services, knowledge they can take to their other markets. I don't know, but it seems like this is a case of a large buggy-whip manufacturer buying out a smaller company that makes automobiles.

My prediction is that for Lawrence broadband customers of Sunflower, not too much will actually change. Obviously, Knology is not going to reduce the service levels that Sunflower already offers. Perhaps they will make positive changes. Some folks are already speculating that the change in ownership might mean the elimination of bandwidth caps for internet, and perhaps the adjustment of the speed tiers (as long as we are dreaming, how about maybe raising the ridiculously low 1 megabit upload speed on the high-end plans?)

On the TV side, I noticed that nothing on Knology's site referenced support for the critical cable cards which are essential for TiVo use. However, the FCC requires cable cards to be supported so I doubt there would be any changes here. Of more concern would be an end to Sunflower's refreshing and fairly unique policy of not encrypting the majority of digital QAM channels. This very consumer-friendly attitude allows Sunflower customers to use a variety of independent and PC-based DVRs. However, most cable companies don't allow this, encrypting all non-premium "basic" channels except the over-the-air networks. Hopefully, Knology won't change this, but my guess is that they will.

Another question is what will happen with customer service. Will it still be local, and will great features like live Twitter support remain? I really hope Knology enters Lawrence with a very light hand and allows the good things about Sunflower Broadband - including all of its employees - to keep doing what they are doing.

UPDATE: Broadband blog "Stop the Cap" has some additional coverage of the impending sale.

UPDATE 2: A great analysis of the potential effects of the sale by Dave Greenbaum.

No news is?

2010-07-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

Good news?

I'm still alive here, although things have been pretty quiet. Our U-Verse Max Turbo continues to hum along, outage free and with reliable speeds, so there's not much new to report. The same goes for the Sunflower cable TV service. Of note to Sunflower customers, is the unfortunate news that the company has recently started encrypting some of the previously in-the-clear QAM channels such as Comedy Central, meaning only Cable Card devices are now capable of viewing them.

Later this summer as the 1-year anniversary of the blog (and our broadband switch) occurs, I'll be posting some more retrospectives, so stay tuned.

Turbo. Max. Max Turbo, at your service

2010-03-31T19:33:00.000-07:00

If you read my post yesterday you know I was quite frustrated with AT&T's customer service and inability to properly provision my line to support their new fast internet tier, Max Turbo.

What a difference a day makes. I took my frustration onto Twitter, and god the kind of friendly helpful service that Grandma probably got in the olden days. I followed the official AT&T group Twitter presence and directed a mention their way, describing my frustration. Within an hour, I got a response from a very helpful gentleman named Jason who works for AT&T's Twitter team. We exchanged some Direct Messages (I pointed him to my blog entry) and he said he would contact AT&T's U-Verse team to get a straight answer.

This morning, I got a call from a U-Verse Tier 2 technician, who, within 5 minutes, was able to look up my account, determine that my line qualified for the higher speed, actually get my line properly provisioned with the 32/5 profile, and added the Max Turbo level of service. The profile took effect immediately.

And that's it. A tale of successful customer service. I am quite glad that it all worked out and I am very happy with the level of service I got after reaching out to AT&T on Twitter, but a part of me wonders why I had to go to this length? Shouldn't you be able to get the same service if you call in? It almost seems like there's two levels of service -- the basic, poor phone support, and for those savvy enough to use Twitter, premium, high-quality support.

But, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Thanks to Jason and the rest of the AT&T Twitter team, I have Max Turbo:

Over the next few weeks I will put it through the paces, keeping an eye on my line stats and real-world internet speeds. As always, I'll share the results with you here.

Max Power? Not quite.

2010-03-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

Boy I was excited yesterday. AT&T announced a big U-Verse internet speed increase was available across their network. For essentially no increase in our monthly price, AT&T was offering 24 mbits download speed (up from 18) and 3 mbits upload (up from 1.5).

Twice as much upstream capacity, and a nice little bump on download, for the same price? Cool. The new service tier is called "Max Turbo" (why do all the U-Verse speed tiers have names that sounds like porn stars?)

However, when I went to actually upgrade, I was reminded of why it is so frustrating to deal with AT&T. I went online to change my plan, and of course the online form allowed me to select the new tier, but when I tried to place the order, it just said "not available in your area."

A brief perusal of the AT&T online forums shows that a lot of people are having this issue.

The technical reason why is that your U-Verse VDSL line is "provisioned" to support particular tiers of service. The most common tier is 25/2 which means your line can support 25 mbit down and 2 up (remember that some of this is reserved for TV use, even if you don't have U-Verse television).

In order to support the new faster internet, my line has to have its provisioning profile updated to AT&T's new "32/5" profile. Not all U-verse customers support the profile; if you are too far away from the fiber optic node (VRAD) in your neighborhood, you are out of luck. The key statistic to help determine if you can support the new speed is your line's "maximum sync rate." If you have U-verse, you can view this number in the Residential Gateway's user interface.

If you have the "new" UI, you can see it here. Here's what mine shows:

The blue circle indicates what I am provisioned at... 25/2

The red circle indicates my lines maximum speed, which is over 50 mbits!

While no U-Verse customer can actually have a speed close to the max (if you get too close to it, the number of line errors goes way up...think of it as being the same as the maximum speed your car can go...the engine wouldn't last long if you drove at that speed all the time).

However, the 50 mbit max speed is important, because it indicates my line can support the high-speed 32/5 profile (generally, if you max user rate is 45 or above, you definitely qualify for the fast profile). Furthermore, our line is very "clean" with no errors, making it an ideal candidate.

So, my line can support the fast speeds, but my profile needed to be updated to actually make it work. Simple call to AT&T tech support to get this taken care of, right?

Simple as creating world peace, perhaps.

After a frustrating hour on hold, being shuttled between several different folks, nobody at AT&T can tell me why they can't make this simple switch. Changing line provisioning is something that Tier 2 technical support can do remotely (on-site techs can also initiate this).
The excuses I have been given included the whopper that "the central office in your town can't support those speeds" which is factually wrong, as well as "maybe the system will be upgraded in the future." Adding to my frustration, the Tier 1 representative, and an additional sales representative refused to escalate me to tier 2 support so perhaps I could get this fixed, or at least get an honest answer as to why it can't be done.

Needless to say I am quite frustrated. I've reached out to the AT&T staff on Twitter (this is a good way to test their responsiveness, especially compared to our local cable company's responsive Twitter presence.

I'll update this blog when I hear more from AT&T, meanwhile the "dis" in front of my "gruntled" is growing.

UPDATE: I reached out to AT&T on Twitter and they responded quite well. Read the full story here.

Unloading on uploading

2010-03-23T12:21:00.000-07:00

If you live in Lawrence, Kansas, you have some decent competitive choice amongst broadband providers, at least compared to other areas of the state. We have Sunflower Broadband offering cable internet, AT&T offering both VDSL (U-Verse) and traditional ADSL, and Freenet for a wireless solution.

All of these services have one thing in common: their upload speeds absolutely suck. AT&T, Sunflower, and Freenet won't sell you a decent upload speed at any price.

According to recent reports from the FCC Broadband Speed Test, the average internet upload speed amongst all broadband customers in the Sunflower State is between 1.5 and 2.0 megabits per second. None of Lawrence's broadband ISPs can provide upload service within that range. By way of comparison, the average download speed in Kansas is between 7.9 and 10 megabits per second, which is exceeded by both Sunflower Broadband and AT&T's U-Verse.

The upload speeds offered in Lawrence are a joke. The maximum speed Freenet offers is only 512 kilobits. AT&T's maximum VDSL upload speed is only 768 kilobits, and Sunflower can only manage a meager 1 megabit, even on its brand-new DOCSIS 3 cable network. AT&T's VDSL service, U-Verse, manages 1.5 megabits, the very bottom of the state average...and that is their top-of-the line theoretical speed, generally not matched in actual deployment.

Freenet and AT&T ADSL get a bit of a pass, because technical reasons make fast speeds extremely difficult. However, U-Verse and Sunflower don't have any good excuse for their terrible upload speeds. U-Verse is capable of upload speeds in excess of 2 megabits, but AT&T chooses not to provision such a speed or offer it to most customers. Sunflower Broadband is even worse. Cable infrastructure is easily able to support upload speeds much greater then they offer; indeed most cable companies around America (and elsewhere in Kansas) offer 2 to 5 megabit upload speeds, even in their mid-range tiers. Why Sunflower refuses to offer acceptable upload speeds is a mystery.

Upload speed is important, nearly as important as download speed. A lot of the activities you do with your internet connection require a good upload speed to function properly. Uploading HD video to Youtube, sharing photos on Flickr, utilizing online backup services, and VPNs/remote offices all work much much better with decent upload speeds.

I don't know why the providers in Lawrence don't offer higher speeds, or why Lawrence lags behind the rest of our own state (not to mention the rest of America) in this aspect of broadband. I would guess it is a combination of factors. Perhaps the providers don't understand that the nature of the internet has been changing and that consumers utilize uploading a lot more frequently these days then 5 or 10 years ago, when the internet was less interactive and participatory. Hopefully AT&T or Sunflower will offer faster upload speeds in the future and give customers some additional choice.

A quiet broadband new year so far...

2010-02-18T18:54:00.000-08:00

The blog's been quiet as of late because not too much has been going on. Our broadband "experiment" in Lawrence continues to be status quo - Sunflower Broadband cable (via our Tivo and a ClearQAM PC tuner) has continued to handle our boob tube needs (can an LCD screen still be called a 'boob tube?')

Internet-wise, U-Verse continues to be quietly reliable, with no downtime since November and reliable speed, both up and down. The only fly in the otherwise perfect ointment has been some random and minor packet loss, in the real of .1% or so. This doesn't rise to the level of causing any issues whatsoever (at least so far), but is still detected by my testing, and from a pure technical standpoint, ANY packet loss over time is not supposed to happen.

That's where we are at, but what has changed in the Lawrence-area broadband scene in general since last Fall?

In a nutshell, Sunflower has been busy upgrading their internet offerings, catching up to U-verse in several areas, surpassing them in others, and still trailing in one important area.

No bones about it, Sunflower has improved their internet offering quite a bit. The speeds are much faster, and anecdotally, I have heard that the network congestion and evening slowdowns are much less frequent on the DOCSIS 3 network then on the older DOCSIS 2 network. Furthermore, they have raised their bandwidth caps to 250 GB per month for the Gold plan, which is in line with other cable providers like Comcast.

If I were doing the U-Verse vs Sunflower internet comparison today, it would be much, much closer. The one area where Sunflower still lags is upload speed, which even on the high-end plan is still limited to 1 megabit. This seems puzzling, and the 50 down to 1 up ratio is greater then any other DOCSIS 3 cable company I was able to find, and makes it difficult to use services like photo and movie uploading, file sharing and online backup services. If Sunflower ever raises their upload speeds, they might just be able to lure this former customer back into the fold!

Sunflower has also added a comparison page similar to the ones I did for TV and internet, of course focusing on the areas where they have the advantage. With TV especially, the equation changes based on the number of rooms and specific needs of each TV. Internet is more static in comparison; but notably Sunflower didn't note the one area where they remain slower then U-Verse, upload speed.

In the mean time, AT&T U-verse has made little change to their internet offering. They are testing a slightly faster service providing 24 megabits down (up from 18) and 2 megabits up (up from 1.5), but it is only available in three test cities (not in Lawrence).

By the way, as an aside, looks like TiVo is announcing something in a few weeks, perhaps a new DVR or maybe a new OS?

2010: A Broadband Odyssey

2010-01-13T18:14:00.000-08:00

I just discovered that I got linked from a blog called Stop the Cap which appears to cover internet broadband issue with an editorial position against usage caps. They linked to this blog from a post covering broadband in Lawrence so it is kind of cool that a national blog not related to Jayhawk basketball has discovered our little town!

Anyway, if you are visiting from Stop the Cap, welcome! I started my blog as a way to document a side-by-side comparison my family made of our local cable provider, Sunflower Broadband, with AT&T's VDSL service, U-Verse. The links on the right cover the highlights, but after trying both services, the end result is that we went with AT&T for Internet, and Sunflower for television. Even if you don't live in Lawrence, hopefully my blog will be a good comparison between cable and VDSL for anyone through the country who can choose between the two technologies.

We made the decision in late September, and in the four months since then things have been working out well. We continue to enjoy our Sunflower television service on our TiVo (and on my Mac using a QAM tuner box) and our U-Verse internet has been nearly flawless, with a single pair of glitches over a day in mid November, and other then that no downtime whatsoever with consistent and fast speeds.

Of course there are no use caps on U-Verse in Lawrence. This hasn't turned my family into bandwidth hogs, but it is really nice to be able to veg out to Hulu, utilize online backup services, or download massive software updates and games without worrying about the meter running.

I don't think AT&T is perfect (hey, I have an iPhone too!) but they have been good to have in Lawrence as they have spurred competition. Sunflower has responded by raising their bandwidth caps from 50 GB per month on the Gold plan to a better 120, definitely an improvement for their customers, and hopefully both companies will continue to improve their respective offerings.

Thanks for visiting, and I'll keep writing occasionally about our experiences with broadband here in Lawrence.

U-Verse reliability update and some cable internet geekery

2009-12-01T13:34:00.000-08:00

A couple quick updates...

U-Verse reliability

You might recall that after almost three flawless months, our U-Verse turned to crap in mid-November, going down for four hours on the 17th and having major line noise issues the following night.

We called AT&T for service, and they were unable to find any issue with the line the next day when they were out at our house, although the record from the previous night indicate some line noise. They did do some "wave the dead chicken" troubleshooting by switching our port on the VRAD and providing us with some noise filters for the ethernet cables.

Did those make a difference? It's been almost two weeks since then with no additional downtime. Of course, those two nights could have had nothing to do with us, but rather AT&T head end problems. We know the 4-hour outage was a higher-up issue as U-Verse service thorough the KC region was affected.

Oh well. After three full months of U-Verse, our uptime is at 99.74% (it was 99.99% before the glitches). Sunflower Broadband, for reference was at 99.14% for the first 9 months of 2009.

Cable Bandwidth Meter Geekery

Those of you on Sunflower have bandwidth limits, which you can track using a meter provided by the company. Have you ever wondered how the meter works or how accurate it is? Comcast, which is experimenting with similar metering, commission an audit of its meters by a third party, which can be read right here.

The summary? The Comcast meter is accurate within about 1% of actual use. FWIW, I don't know if Sunflower's meter uses the same technology as Comcast.

As an aside, one of the major problems with meters is that there's no real-time way to know if you (or something on your network you don't know about) is sucking down the bits. Sunflower has improved their meter to the point where it shows hour-by-hour usage, which helps somewhat, but what is really needed is a real-time "tachometer" to see the actual bandwidth. This probably needs to be built-in to the router or cable modem. Ironically, U-Verse's home gateway includes a built-in meter exactly like this...I say ironically because U-Verse doesn't cap bandwidth, so the meter is informational only, although still quite useful for figuring out of someone in my household is killing our connection by hogging the pipe. If you have U-Verse you can see the meter at http://192.168.1.254/xslt?PAGE=M01

A couple quick updates

2009-11-17T06:19:00.000-08:00

U-Verse Internet

After over 10 weeks of uptime, our U-Verse connection suffered it's first extended outage last night, going down for about 4 hours between 11:45 PM and 3:45 AM. The actual DSL link stayed up, but there was no internet access - i.e. the lights were on but nobody was home!

My guess is that there was an equipment outage in AT&T's "head end" rather then any problem with the DSL line itself. Either way, the result was the same, 4 hours downtime.
This knocks our overall uptime since we got U-Verse down to 99.70% (from 99.99%) which is still better (so far) then our average uptime with Sunflower Broadband, which was 99.14%. This U-Verse downtime better not become a habit. I'm cutting them some slack since everyone gets a freebie, but yeah, I'm not quite as enthusiastic as I was a day ago.

As an aside, as part of my troubleshooting when the net went down, I rebooted the home gateway. It made no difference for the main issue, but it did end up fixing a nagging problem I recently discovered where the home gateway wasn't fully opening up mapped ports through the firewall. It would kind of "half open" them in a weird way. The reboot fixed that. The router had been up for two months prior, which for a consumer router, is probably simply too long to remain running reliably without a power cycle.

Sunflower Broadband cable TV

Sunflower Broadband just announced a new multi-room DVR which is very similar to what we tried with U-Verse TV. As I mentioned in my TV overview, U-Verse has a multi-room DVR where you can watch recorded shows in any room and pause a show in one room and pick it up in the other. Sunflower is offering this as an "add on" to the existing TV service for an addition $25 per month (for two rooms) which makes their price (with this service) about the same as U-Verse.

For the technically curious, Sunflower is using Pace's multi-room DVR for this, and is actually one of the first companies in the United States offering the service. Pace's system works over ethernet or coaxial cable, and is similar to U-Verse in that there is a main unit with a hard drive acting as a network-attached storage device serving the other set-top boxes. The UI (at least for the Sunflower version of the box) is similar to their existing HD i-Guide, in other words, it's not going to put TiVo's UI designers out of business any time soon! Engadget has more details about the system's tech specs.

We're still satisfied with our TiVo, but having a multi-room option on both cable and U-Verse to choose from is certainly a good thing.

U-Verse internet update . . . 46 days and counting

2009-10-26T19:01:00.000-07:00

Our U-Verse internet has been up now for 46 days without a single glitch. No downtime, and no noticeable or sustained dips in speed or ping time. I am probably jinxing myself, but I find this absolutely amazing. I guess I shouldn't find this too stunning (wait, you mean we're actually getting the service for which we paid?!?) but in over 10 years of service with Sunflower, we never went for longer then 7-10 days at a time without some downtime (if even for a few minutes), and frequently the outages and slowdowns were much worse.

I'd actually be interested in know why this is so, from a technical standpoint. I would think coaxial cable would be more reliable then copper, but perhaps it has to do more with the network management rather then the medium. Alas, it is a mystery.

Now, if the AT&T folks who run the U-Verse network could only give the guys who run their cellular data networks a few clues...

U-Verse Internet caveats

2009-10-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

Our U-Verse internet has continued to be rock-solid (keeping fingers crossed) but during the month we've used it so far, there have been a few minor issues we have come across, which I will document here for Google and posterity. Two of these have easy workarounds, and the other two will not really matter to most people, but might to you, if you are a special flower....so read on....

First, the two issues that have workarounds:

1. The U-Verse gateway's DNS doesn't like Apple computers.

The workaround for this is easy. If you use a Mac, simply set your DNS to use OpenDNS (or if you have a bunch of Macs, you can do this in the router)

2. U-Verse's head end blocks outbound traffic on port 25 for non AT&T email accounts.

This is the port that is used by most mail programs when they send outbound email. This isn't something you can change locally in your router, but luckily AT&T will unblock it if you ask them. We were able to get this done in 5 minutes via their online chat support, but other people have had to call in to tier 2 technical support.

And second, the two issues which might be deal-killers for some folks:

3. U-Verse utilizes interleaving for their data transmission.

Interleaving is a method of transmitting data in non-sequential chunks to increase overall performance. This is good for things like TV, but it has a side-effect with internet...slightly longer ping times, up to 20 milliseconds or more. This doesn't matter to most people....unless you are an online gamer. Online gaming relies on very fast response times from the servers, and the added overhead of U-Verse's interleaving may degrade game performance in some games. This isn't a "100% for sure" thing...it depends on the game and the server, but it is certainly something that should be at "yellow alert" for any gamers considering U-Verse. Take advantage of the 1-month free trial and test with all your favorite games.

4. There's no way to get pure unrouted internet access to a local device.

U-Verse allows you to set up a DMZ, which for an individual PC will allow in all internet traffic. This is considered dangerous and only experienced folks who know what they are doing should use the DMZ. However, some physical devices, such as hardware VPN routers and firewalls do not like being in a DMZ; they prefer pure, unrouted "raw" public connections to the internet. U-Verse's residential gateway cannot be placed into the "bridge" mode that is required to do this, so if you need this functionality, make sure you test your devices with U-Verse during the free trial period to make sure they work.

U-Verse TV parting shot and wireless gateway weirdness

2009-10-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned last week, we decided to go with Sunflower Broadband for television, keeping U-Verse for internet. This weekend, I disconnected the U-Verse set-top boxes in preparation for shipping them back to AT&T (this shipping is handled by the UPS store; AT&T has an account with them, so we just drop the boxes off there).

This gave me the chance to snap a couple extra pictures of various aspects I hadn't mentioned before. Specifically, you can now get a good view of the various ports on the back of the unit as well as seeing how the two units stack up right next to each other. (the smaller box is the secondary unit, sans DVR hard drive.)

Interestingly enough, once AT&T shuts off television service to your home (which they do remotely), you can't even use the DVR to watch previously-recorded shows. This is different then other devices like the TiVo, which allows you to watch shows previously recorded even if you no longer are paying for service.

Wireless weirdness

Last Thursday night, our U-Verse residential gateway's (RG's) wireless interface failed. Basically, it was randomly dropping connected wifi devices, and if you tried to connect a new device, sometimes it would connect, and sometimes it would not connect. Even if it connected, it would drop after a few minutes, or the DHCP server wouldn't assign an IP address to the wifi client. I determined that this was not any type of new interference or signal issue. My solution was simply cycling wifi off and turning it back on from the RG's admin interface, after which everything went back to working properly.

Needless to say, this glitch didn't fill me with confidence as to the robustness of the residential gateway. In comparison, our previous wireless router, an Apple Airport Extreme, ran uninterrupted for over a year without any glitches like this. I should also note that the DSL signal (i.e. internet connection) was fine through this entire episode. The problem is local on the gateway itself, not the upstream connection.

Although the RG allowed wireless to be reset without requiring a full reboot of the entire RG, we noticed later when we tried to watch a television show that was recorded during this time period that it was blocky, pixellated, and skipped a lot, indicating that the RG was really having some issues. We had already decided at this point to drop the U-Verse TV service, but this certainly reinforced our decision.

As of now, the RG has been performing fine, both wired and wireless since then. I will certainly be keeping an eye on things though. File this under "reliability, long term, questions of."

Sunflower Broadband Gold Internet to receive upgrade

2009-09-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

Mere days after we decided to go with U-Verse for our internet needs, we (as well as presumably every subscriber in Lawrence) got a letter from Sunflower Broadband detailing upgrades to their top-of-the-line Gold Internet package, starting November 1 (the news about the upgrade still isn't on Sunflower's web site as of this writing). This is the very package we recently subscribed to that we switched from to U-Verse. Does the new plan give us some serious "buyers remorse?"

Let's take a comparison:

	Existing Gold	Upgraded Gold	U-Verse Max 18
Download	21 mbit	50 mbit	18 mbit
Upload	.75 mbit	1 mbit	1.5 mbit
Bandwidth cap	50 GB	120 GB	unlimited
Price	$50	$60	$65

So, to summarize, for an extra $10 per month, Sunflower Gold customers will get over twice the download speed and bandwidth, and a very slight boost in upload speed. Not mentioned in the letter is the technology which make's Sunflower's upgrade possible, DOCSIS 3.0, which promises, as one of its features, better management ability of the data streams, which will hopefully end the evening congestion and slowdowns that have frustrated many cable modem customers. The faster download speed should be really nice for downloading huge files, such as operating systems and online movies and television. While many users won't see the theoretical maximum connecting to public sites on the internet, the fact that these speeds are starting to become available to home users is a great sign for the future. This is a solid upgrade and I congratulate Sunflower for bringing DOCSIS 3.0 technology to Lawrence.

While a good value for the extra $10, it isn't quite enough to win us back for now. I am disappointed to see the upload speed of the upgraded Gold plan is still an anemic 1 mbit, which is 50% less the our U-Verse connection and barely any better then the old Gold plan. Given how much upload speed matters for common tasks like uploading home photos and movies to online sharing sites, as well as file sharing and connecting to corporate VPNs, the almost unchanged upload speed isn't very impressive.

The increased bandwidth is very nice, and would make us worry less about unexpected overages, but it falls short of U-Verse's unlimited bandwidth, as well as continuing to be somewhat less then other cable providers such as Comcast which caps bandwidth at 250 gigabytes. Sunflower does offer a bandwidth-unlimited service called Palladium as an alternative, but variable download speeds and a still-slow upload don't make this an attractive option compared to U-Verse for now.

Sunflower's upgrades are good news for customers and makes the Internet choice closer then it was 24 hours ago. In the past, Sunflower has often "tweaked" their offerings, and if they bump the new Gold upload speeds up a megabit or so and continue to adjust their bandwidth limits higher, they have a good shot at winning our business back yet. For now though, we will still stick with U-Verse as long as its price and reliability continue unchanged.

The Verdict: Landline Telephone

2009-09-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

It's kinda of anti-climactic, but we are going with AT&T U-Verse for our landline telephone. This is partially because we don't have much of a choice -- AT&T requires that you subscribe to at least two of the U-Verse packages to maintain service. Since we want the Internet and don't want the television, we have to maintain the phone service to keep subscribing.

There apparently is not concept of "dry loop" U-Verse. With regular DSL, you can subscribe without any ancillary phone service, and pay an extra $10 per month for this, but AT&T chose not to carry this ability over to U-Verse.

Luckily, we actually like the phone service so it's not much of an issue. The main pluses with U-Verse's phone is the internet-enabled management of the line, call logs, and voicemail messages, as well as unlimited long distance. I noted before the downside of touch tones not working all the time, but this is a relatively minor issue, albeit annoying -- and supposedly AT&T considers it a bug (they should!) and is trying to fix it.

Anyway, that's that. U-Verse for internet and phone, and Sunflower Broadband for television....or is it? This trial has been around a month. While I have gotten good ideas about each service's features and reliability, the fact is, 1 month is too short to figure everything out.

How is U-Verse's long term reliability? What about customer service consistency? We will continue to re-evaluate our service providers based on their own performance as well as new offers and changes from competitors. I plan to keep this blog going, as a resource for Lawrence, Kansas broadband users, as well as as a resource for the increasing number of visitors from outside Lawrence.

The Verdict: Internet

2009-09-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

We decided to go with U-Verse for our Internet service, canceling our Sunflower Broadband internet, which we had used for over 13 years. U-Verse' top line internet costs $15 more per month then Sunflower's; we decided that the advantages of U-Verse for internet were enough to make this extra $15 per month a reasonable value.

My main concern with U-Verse's service was its reliability. While, as they always say "past performance is no guarantee of future results," in four weeks of testing, our U-Verse internet has not gone down once, even for a single minute. Even during intensive ping testing, U-Verse never has lost more then a few packets during any 24-hour period. Furthermore, the speed of U-Verse has been remarkably consistent, always ranging between 16 and 17 mbit down and about 1.4 mbit up, no matter the time of day.

While Sunflower's internet service is very fast at certain times of day, it frequently slows down during evenings or other times of heavy network use, sometimes to less then half of the speed we were paying for. Furthermore, the internet services would occasionally go down, sometimes for a few minutes, other times for longer. During the last 6 months, our Sunflower uptime was 99.14%, and U-Verse's (over the past 4 weeks) was 99.99%.

The other primary reason we went with U-Verse was because U-Verse does not have bandwidth overage fees or any kind of bandwidth limits. Although we have been careful with Sunflower and managed to avoid any bandwidth overage charges, having "the meter running" all the time was annoying, and we worried that we could always be surprised with an unexpected charge. With U-Verse we do not have this worry. One could almost think of the $15 extra for U-verse as an insurance policy...it buys peace of mind not having to worry about bandwidth overages.

The Internet victor: AT&T U-Verse

Addendum....Advice for the losing team on what they can do to win a customer back...

So, for now we are with U-Verse for our Internet. What could Sunflower do to win us back as Internet customers? The main things would be to raise their internet bandwidth caps to a level where they would not be a worry (but would still deter immense hogs). Comcast has set a cap of 250 GB, way above Sunflower's current 70 GB limit. Sunflower could follow Comcast's lead here. They can also improve the speed and reliability of their network. A new cable internet standard called DOCSIS 3 may provide much greater speeds and more reliability. When Sunflower rolls this out (rumors have it coming later this fall), they might win some customers back, us included.

The Verdict: Television

2009-09-25T12:50:00.000-07:00

We've decided to stick with the local cable company, Sunflower Broadband (with an assist from TiVo) for our television service. U-Verse had some exciting features, but in the end, these additional features were not worth an additional $25 or so per month (for the television portion of the bill), especially given our bias toward the TiVo UI and experience.

The quality of the HD signal ended up being a push. Neither U-Verse nor Sunflower seemed dramatically better or worse then the other. The only noticeable difference was that U-Verse's picture seemed somewhat darker (something others had noticed). Actual watch-ability of HD on both services was fine. As an aside, during my research, I found this great guide to the interpretation and understanding of HD quality, I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

When we compared the two providers, the main advantages of U-Verse was the seamless integration of the service on multiple TVs, excellent online and remote scheduling, and a greater selection of channels. U-Verse's main disadvantages were that it was more expensive, the UI of the devices was inferior to TiVo, and it wasn't as good with advanced recording options (such as prioritizing shows and padding recording times).

The main advantage of Sunflower/TiVo was a cheaper price, more local channels, the excellent TiVo UI experience, and (at least for now) clear QAM support for the digital cable, allowing viewing on my Mac and other TVs without needed a set-top box. Sunflower's main disadvantages include the lack of seamless integration between TVs, poorer remote scheduling (although TiVo has been beefing this up), and the random 'jumping' of QAM TV channels.

In the end, the main determining factors came down to UI and price. Minor differences aside, both systems offer all the same major channels in HD that we would ever watch. Both offer DVR capability, and the picture quality of both is very similar. In the end, we decided the small advantages of U-Verse television in some areas were not worth an extra $25 per month.

The television victor: Sunflower Broadband.

Addendum....Advice for the losing team on what they can do to win a customer back...

So, for now we are with Sunflower for our television. What could AT&T do to win us over as television customers? The main thing would be for them to work on their pricing structure, as they are simply not competitive with 'standard' cable prices. They could start with killing the ridiculous extra $10 charge merely to watch HD television, and try to get the price for the typical 2 to 4 television household down within 10 or 15 bucks of cable. I understand they will always charge a bit more for some of the advanced features they provide (such as the seamless integration and such) but price is still an area they must work on. The second thing AT&T could do is hire a few human interface design experts to go over the set-top box UI, both on the screen and the remote control and try to make it a bit less annoying. TiVo is the gold standard, but in spite of my love towards TiVo, it is somewhat dated...so combine the usability of TiVo with a modern look and feel, and AT&T will have a winner.

Over halfway there...

2009-09-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

So we are over halfway through our month long U-Verse trial, and we are finally at the point where we have a decent amount of real-world experience with the services to start thinking about whether we want to go all U-Verse, all Sunflower, or a mix of the two.

Here are some brief updates...

Internet

As I mentioned earlier the internet has been rock solid since our service call two weeks ago. In over two weeks of ping testing, I have had a single test cycle (out of several thousand) with any lost packets. Additionally, there has been no actual downtime so far. This is better then I have ever gotten with Sunflower, even after their network improvements at our node last Spring.

Internet speed has stayed pretty consistent at about 17 mbit down and about 1.45 mbit up. We tested dozens of times the first few days after we got our line serviced two weeks ago, and only occasionally since then, and have not seen any speed dips (other then when expected, such as during a big download). For comparison, our Sunflower Gold has been bouncing around between 10-18 mbit during recent evening tests.

We did discover, to our annoyance, that AT&T blocks outbound traffic through port 25 on their network, making it impossible to send email using the standard SMTP protocol. This doesn't affect things if you use web-based email (like GMail) or AT&T's own email servers, but if you use a third party server, you will be dead in the water. Luckily, you can call AT&T and they will unblock it if you request. We did this via a brief online chat with an AT&T rep and port 25 was opened up with no problems.

Score after 2 weeks: lean towards U-Verse. The service costs $15 more per month over Sunflower, but in return we get more reliable speed, faster upload, and no bandwidth limit.

Television

I've spent a lot of time examining U-Verse's and Sunflower's HD signals. I've watched a variety of shows, a lot of football, some fast-action nature shows and the usual prime-time dramas and comedies, and HD quality is quite similar. I give Sunflower a slight edge in overall HD quality. It seems a bit "tighter" especially handling faster motion (such as sports). The picture on Sunflower is also a bit brighter. U-Verse seems to be darker, which is especially noticeable in images with high contrast, such as the shadows and sun that mark outdoor scenes in "Lost." U-Verse seems a bit better handling very slow scenes, and sometimes human actors appear sharper with U-Verse. Overall, it is very close, and I suspect that the compression each provider uses probably explains the differences.

Honestly, I could be comfortable watching HD with either service. Neither one is remotely unwatchable, and neither one is a lot better then the other in quality.
U-Verse offers a lot more channels then Sunflower in the same service level, but of all these channels, only a few are ones we would ever want to watch. The ability to seamlessly watch recorded shows in multiple rooms is a huge win for U-Verse, but even after two weeks, I still do not like their remote control or UI, although I have gotten more used to it.

Score after two weeks: Leaning towards Sunflower. It's not just that I love my TiVo (although that is part of it). U-Verse is more expensive for television, and the added value so far doesn't appear to justify it. Slightly better HD quality doesn't hurt Sunflower's case either.

Telephone

The phone service has been perfectly fine, with one glaring exception. U-Verse phone service has some major problems when you use it to access automated systems that require you to make menu selections via touch tones (i.e. "Press 2 to be transferred to sales")

These tones are called DTMF tones and the U-Verse system has issue "translating" them to VOIP and back again. This issue doesn't happen all the time to all people. Based on some forum research, it looks like it depends on the local phone, the system at the other end, and the fickleness of AT&T's systems in the middle.

Score after two weeks: mild lean towards U-Verse. Better value for the money then Sunflower, but not being able to do something as basic as hit touch tones definitely harshes my mellow

So, how does it look overall? If I had to guess, I would say we will probably end up keeping U-Verse for phone and internet, and Sunflower for television. However, things could still change. It's not over til it's over!

Some snapshots of the U-Verse residential gateway config screens

2009-09-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

This post is for geeks only...I finally got around to taking some screenshots of the various more interesting status and configuration screens inside the U-Verse residential gateway router. The router is a 2-Wire 3800HGV-B in case you are interested. These are all screenshots from the router's various configuration pages. I did take the liberty of removing private info like our IP address and other such data, so if you see a blank spot or a truncated number, it is me, not the router's UI.

Main Summary
This is the main screen you see when you go to the router's web interface. It has an overview of the network, link status and so forth.

Broadband Link Overview
A brief overview of the DSL link

Broadband Link Details
Much juicier information on the overall state of the DSL link. Note the true speed of the DSL link is 25 megabits. Only 18 is given over to data, which means the remaining 7 is for the TV and voice services. It would be great if AT&T offered the full 25 Mbit as an option in lieu of TV, but alas...

Broadband Link Errors
This page gives a list of all the various errors the DSL line may have experienced. From my research, the big warning signs of a bad connection are link retrains, errors and timeouts, as well as uncorrected blocks and severely errored seconds. Our screenshot has some scary numbers, but thankfully they were all from a service call 2 weeks ago while the AT&T guy was fiddling with our line. Since then it has been smooth (knocking on wood)

Private Network Summary
The main overview of the status of the private network, showing hosts and any active pinholes. You'll note two devices, *.65 and *.64; those are actually the two TV set-top boxes. They are just IP devices on the LAN.

Wireless Settings
The standard wireless settings page. It offers the usual security options. Out of the box, the unit has WPA turned on, which is good.

NAT Mapping Settings
This is the page where you set NAT mapping (pinholes) for games and such. The router comes with a huge list of predefined ports for mapping, and allows user-defined ports as well, both TCP and UDP individual ports or ranges. You can also place a device in the DMZ, although I have not yet tested this specifically.

Add a custom NAT mapping
The dialog to add a custom port mapping.

Firewall Settings
This is the router's overall firewall settings page. It offers basic protection from a variety of common attacks.

Private Network Address Allocator
This page allows you to set up address allocation for devices on the LAN. If offers both DHCP and static addresses, and you can also MAC address lock an address in the DHCP range to a specific device (so a device that uses DHCP will always get the same IP from the server)

Advanced Networking
This page allows you to set up some advanced features, including public routed subinterfaces and changing the IP range for the private network.

Quick tour of some of the U-Verse TV UI

2009-09-17T20:22:00.001-07:00

Some highlights...

Main U-Verse screen
The main screen you see when you "enter" the U-Verse menu system. Note the "blue everywhere" color scheme and the light blue selected item (which is easier to see in the photo then on the actual TV screen)

U-Verse device info
The "System Info" for the box. WinCE!

U-Verse Video On Demand menu
Main VOD menu

U-Verse interactive menu
This is the applications menu; each of these actually launches an "app" for things like local weather, and such.

U-Verse schedule
The list of scheduled recordings.

U-Verse recorded shows
The menu for already-recorded shows.

U-Verse recording set-up screen
The main screen for setting up a new recording.

U-Verse program guide
The main program guide view.

Some quick updates on U-Verse internet and TV

2009-09-16T13:24:00.000-07:00

Some brief updates and observations about U-Verse so far...

- After our adjustment last Wednesday, the internet has been rock-solid for the past week, about 17 mbit down and 1.45 mbit up. I've gotten consistent real-world download speeds around 1.5 megabytes per second while downloading a 5 GB Apple software package, and over 2 megabytes per seconds while downloading a (perfectly legal, thank you!) concert via BitTorrent.

- Internet uptime has been almost perfect. I show a 99.99% uptime (measured based on pings of AT&T's nameserver ever minute). For comparison, Sunflower's uptime over the past three months (as measured to their nameserver) is 99.14%

- I've noticed a bit of latency, caused by U-Verse interleaving. Nothing that bothers me, but if I were a gamer, it might be a concern. I also ran into what I think was the U-Verse Mac DNS bug which I worked around by changing my nameservers. Since then I have had no problems.

- TV-wise, I have been out of town too much to watch a lot of TV, although that will change this weekend, when I plan to log some serious football-watching, which will be a great test of the HD performance while watching a fast, bright show. We did watch some of Planet Earth in HD, and during fast motion scenes (chases, etc.) you could really notices the blurring as compression reared its ugly head. Of course, the TiVo does this too on cable, but it seems to be a bit better and handling this stuff. I need to do some frame by frame comparisons.

- The TV UI is really bad. The "menu item selected" is very difficult to discern. It is a slightly lighter shade of blue, and many times it is nearly impossible to determine what item on the screen is selected. This is such a basic fail, and so easily rectified (how about a contrasting highlight color?) that I just don't understand.

- Even when the set-top box is in standby mode, the front of it has a hideously bright light that will illuminate a darkened bedroom like a high-beam. I have to prop a book up in front of my box before I go to bed. This is another case of sloppy design.

- I am still frustrated with the remote control and the overall functional UI. I really don't know how much of this is just me needed to overcome my prejudice towards 10 years of TiVoing. I want to give U-Verse' TV a fair chance, so I need to work at this!

- We had some initial problems with our internet speed. It was widely variable, ranging between 1 mbit and 17 mbits. We had to have AT&T come out for a service call. Diagnostics showed nothing obviously wrong, but there was still an issue. We learned that AT&T's Quality of Service for U-Verse is 70% of advertised speed, meaning speeds under 12.6 mbit were something that qualified for service, but speeds higher then that (even though less then the 18 we paid for) are not. To make a long story short, the AT&T guy basically tried "shotgun debugging" -- he replaced the Residential Gateway...no luck. He then change the port for our home on the VRAD...that appeared to do the trick, and since then, like I said, our speed has been much better and consistant.

Photos of U-Verse equipment

2009-09-07T15:23:00.000-07:00

Here's some quick photos of the main pieces of U-Verse equipment:

The residential gateway box and UPS (with a regular paperback book next to it to show size)

The standard remote control

The main set top box (with the DVR inside) (with a AA battery next to it to show size)

The secondary set top box (with a AA battery next to it to show size)

Early impressions of the U-Verse iPhone app

2009-09-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

After our installation of U-Verse, I grabbed the U-Verse iPhone app which promises the ability to remote-managed your DVR, similar to what is available for the TiVo (albeit for TiVo, via a webapp, not a native app)

I haven't used the app too much yet, but I do have some early first impression, and they are decidedly mixed.

First, the plus side: the app does what it says. You open it, sign n, and you can managed your U-Verse DVR. You can see the shows already recorded (and delete them if you want), as well as see a schedule of what is coming up. You can search for shows, and either recording single episodes, or schedule series recordings (season passes in TiVo-speak). Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to customize series recordings, for example, setting it to only record new episodes and not repeats.

You can also do basic activities like browse the program guide, and set favorite shows to make finding things easy. Settings are available for preferring HD and whether or not to show "mature" shows (I don't think they mean "Golden Girls" either!) The UI was tolerable, no the greatest, not the worst, and it did seem rather slow, even over WiFi to switch tabs and load data.

So if the "good" is that the app basically does what it says it does, the "bad" is that, well, sometimes it doesn't! After a few successful launches, last night I fired up the app, and it simply would not work - just sitting there spinning, never loading program guides or letting us see our shows. This went on over several launches, and finally I gave up, deleted the app, re-installed it, and suddenly, it started working again. A brief perusal of the app's reviews on iTunes shows that I am not the first person to have this problem. I certainly hope it was a fluke, because a bug like this would be a deal-killer for this app.

The U-Verse Install Process

2009-09-05T11:13:00.000-07:00

As one of the first folks among my friends and colleagues with U-Verse, one of the most common questions is "what is the install process like?"

AT&T allocates up to 6 hours for an install, and ours ended up being very close to that, but the amount of time it takes depends greatly on what services you order and how much in-home work is required.

Our own process wouldn't be a perfect example, because we are a bit more knowledgeable then the usual subscriber. We also did some preparation work (setting up TVs and so forth) in advance, and we knew exactly what we wanted. Even with these caveats, 90% of the installation could be fairly generalized.

The AT&T installer called about half an hour in advance to let us know he was on the way, and when he arrived, he introduced himself, gave us a welcome package with some documentation, as well as his personal business card with his cell number (a nice touch!) He then verified with us what services we ordered, and did a brief walk around the house.

The purpose of the walkaround is so the installer can get an idea of what the wiring is like in the home, as well as the general layout (where TVs and computers are and such). He also takes a look at the home's telephone network interface box. At this point, he left our home for about 45 minutes to "turn on" our service at the VRAD. When he was done here, he came back and now, for the first time, could measure the actual capability of our home to receive service (prior to this, our "readiness" for service was purely theoretical). Basically, he was checking the actual distance from our home to the VRAD and the amount of throughput we got...the strength of the VDSL signal.

In our case, the throughput was fine for the top level service profile, which allows for multiple HD streams as well as internet and phone. At this point, the technician talked nitty-gritty about wiring with us. In many homes, they may try to use existing coax cable. This was not an option for us, since we are keeping our Sunflower service. Thus the installer needed to run some new cat 5e ethernet cable.

We discussed where the residential gateway box (the central "hub") would go, and decided on a first floor office as the most central location. The installer then asked us where we wanted the holes for the wires drilled in each room where there was a TV. This was a very collaborative discussion about the network and wiring layout; if the customer wasn't as technical as were were, I imagine the installer might have been more prone to use his own judgment. I was very impressed with how the AT&T tech worked with us and listened to our needs and requested locations for the new wiring.

The next couple hours were essentially spent by the gentleman actually running wiring. When he was finished, the overall network topology was essentially DSL into the home (via ethernet) to the residential gateway. From the gateway, there are four outbound cable runs: two television, one hardwired PC, and a backfeed into the home's main telephone interface (feeding all the phones in the home with a normal dial tone, which the gateway converts to VOIP).

When the wiring was finished, the AT&T tech then installed the residential gateway, which is about the size of a Playstation 3, along with a Belkin UPS (required to provide power for the phone system during outages). Before physically hooking up the main cabling to the gateway, he tested the actual, in-house signal strength of the VDSL signal to make sure everything was is spec. It was, and so now at this point, we had internet; the gateway was operational.

Next up, installation of two set top boxes: a DVR in the living room, and a satellite unit in the bedroom. The boxes needed a brief initialization and a firmware update before they were ready. We verified that each box could get a good HD signal. Interestingly enough the first box he tried in the bedroom was "bad" so a second box was tried, which worked fine. I already had prepared for the boxes by hooking up HDMI and audio cabling as needed; I don't think the average customer may have done this, and I am not sure if the techs have cabling with them or not (I suspect they do, to use as needed).

With the internet and boob tube up and running, the last item of business was telephone. We are almost five hours into the process by now. I didn't pay much attention to this portion of the process; the tech was working in the basement, hooking the outbound cable from the gateway into the home telephone network interface box. I know he was testing each phone jack with a tone generator.
We also called our alarm company to verify that the alarm system was working fine with the new system (it was, and I forgot how loud that damn thing is!)

The install was finished now. We talked briefly with the installer at this point about our concern (which I noted in yesterday's post) with some dips in signal we noticed, and he said that we should give AT&T a chance to replace the line from our home to the pole before getting too concerned. He also re-iterated that we could call him personal phone number (on his card) any time during the first 10 days after install to follow up on this. This is great customer service off the bat, but I am honestly worried that after 10 days, we will be in the usual out-sourced AT&T hell should anything not be working right. Time will tell.

As an aside, the tech specifically asked us at the end of the install if we wanted him to show us the details of the television interface; we declined, as we want to figure these things out for ourselves. However, average users can probably expect at least some time at the end of the install for basic int ructions from the installer on the new system.

So, in a nutshell, that is how the process went. From start to end, about six hours, of which about half was wiring-related, a quarter equipment installs, and the remaining quarter prep work outside the house.

And yes, someone does have to be home the whole time. Are in our case, two geeky someones.

U-Verse is a go - scattered thoughts

2009-09-04T12:53:00.000-07:00

We now have U-Verse, up and running in parallel with our existing Sunflower Broadband connection. The U-Verse installer was a real professional, ran cat5e to all the needed rooms in our home. We have the residential gateway in my office. I am connected to it via wireless (from two feet away) and keeping Sunflower wired for now, so it should be a good comparison. The AT&T DSL check showed plenty of bandwidth, and initial speed tests are showing about 8-16 megabit down, and a solid 1.5 up. There is some variability in the down speed which is a bit concerning (and we noticed some brief pixelization in an otherwise pristine TV signal), but we have an old phone line outside which AT&T will replace in the next few days; once that variable is eliminated, we will be more able to determine if this is a concern or not.

A quick equipment rundown for those interested. The residential gateway is a 2-Wire, the two set-top boxes are Motorola, and we were provided with a Netopia USB wireless adapter.

I've grabbed the iPhone app and already started to schedule some shows for recording, and set up my monitoring system, so this game is on! I promise I will upload full details, including more equipment specs, screen shots, photos and a look at the TV and Residential Gateway interfaces in the days and weeks ahead.

The night before...and a some notes about customer service

2009-09-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

It's the night before U-Verse, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a.....eh, never mind.

Yeah, the big game begins tomorrow, Sunflower Broadband vs AT&T U-Verse for triple-play supremacy in Lawrence, Kansas. Well, at least in one residence in Lawrence.

I have a nice little to do list to take care of this evening, including prepping our AV equipment and televisions, clearing away some clutter to allow for easy access for wiring, and deciding where to places various pieces of equipment. I am hoping the guy AT&T sends out tomorrow is a competent, friendly professional who will discuss our needs and desires with the service, be considerate of our property and home, and do an excellent job.

Points off if he is a slob, doesn't listen (major points off if he tries to blow off the need for installing new CAT-5e wiring runs so we can simultaneously keep our existing Sunflower service) or otherwise doesn't put the best face forward for U-Verse.

This segues into a brief note about customer service and the impressions I will have, as a customer, with AT&T. Frankly, I have never been impressed with AT&T's customer service in any form. AT&T is the worst part of my otherwise great experience with the iPhone. AT&T's customer service even during the U-Verse ordering process has been crappy. We protect our credit by utilizing a lock service on our credit reports, meaning (since AT&T runs a credit report when you sign up) we had to call AT&T's call center to actually order, and they couldn't even tell us which credit service they use until we called several times, and they had a difficult time applying the web special pricing to our account.

AT&T also ignored our requested timing for the install with no explanation. We had asked for a Saturday, but they scheduled us for a weekday. We called to find out why, and it turns out when you get a phone number ported, it has to be a business day. Great, how about making your back-end system a bit smarter? When we actually tried to change the install day to another weekday, we spoke to someone who had a very poor understanding of the English language, and it took a while to even make this simple change.

If AT&T is this bad when we are trying to order, what's going to happen when we actually have an issue? I've heard rumors that the tier 2 (US-based) AT&T support is actually very good. We shall find out.

Sunflower's customer service has two huge advantages over AT&T's - it is local, and everyone speaks English. Local isn't always great (the banjo-playing kid in "Deliverance" was local too!) but in this case, it is a big advantage.

On the other hand, our actual support experiences with Sunflower have been very mixed over the years. This past spring, we had significant internet slowdown issues, with solid data showing exactly what and where the problem was, but Sunflower blew us off, argued with us, initially sent a tech to our home who was incredibly rude, and only finally admitted and fixed the issues after additional extensive prodding from us.

That was Jekyll. Thankfully, Mr. Hyde showed up this very week, when we had a cable modem outage. I tweeted to Sunflower's Twitter account about it, and they quickly communicated with me, and had a friendly, competent tech call me within 15 minutes. He quickly diagnosed the problem (having to do with stale routing tables in our cable modem after a Sunflower back-end change) and had us back online quickly. It was great.

Anyway, that is the lay of the land....television, internet, phone, and customer service...and behind it all, obviously the price and relative value of the two services. Over the next month, we will see who wins...most importantly, I think no matter which company (or a mix of both) that we choose to go with a month from now, the people of Lawrence win, by having multiple choices to choose from for these services.

Game on!

PS: If you missed earlier segments of the U-Verse vs Sunflower preview, check out our look at telephone service, television, and internet.

Geek Super Bowl Preview: Telephone (or "who cares?")

2009-09-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

Ah, landline telephone. The sickly third leg of the triple-play tripod is definitely not one that is very important to most people. These days when everyone has cell phones, what is even the point of a landline anymore, outside of folks with home alarm systems or perhaps a business owner?

Well, in the interest of completeness, I will briefly note that both AT&T U-Verse and Sunflower Broadband both offer landline telephone service. AT&T, in a refreshing display of simplicity compared to their dozens of TV and internet plans, offers just two phone plans, prices at $25 and $30, and Sunflower has three plans, rangingin price from $19 to $40.

While both Sunflower and AT&T's top plan includes unlimited long distance, and the usual bells and whistles (called ID, call forwarding, voicemail and such) there are a few major differences under the hood, and ironically, for such a pedestrian feature, phone service appears to be one area where U-Verse has a somewhat revolutionary improvement upon traditional phone service. Since it is all integrated into the residential gateway that controls the internet and TV, AT&T can do things like display incoming call information on the TV, advanced messaging and selective forwarding, and allow remote access to voicemail and call logs.

The downside? U-Verse uses an IP-based phone technology. While you can still plug any old phone into the phone jacks in your house, the Residential Gateway is the "gatekeeper" for the phone system, and it has some issues with home alarm systems and doesn't function during extended power outages. Additionally, if the broadband network goes down, you may be left without any phone service, including 911 service. AT&T recommends that you have a cell phone available to reach emergency services if you use their phone service. This is not a deal killer for us, but it might be for some people.

It is possible to configure U-Verse to use the broadband connection for TV and Internet and keep the phone done the traditional way, and for long-term use, this might be a better choice for many people, but for one month at least, we're going to use the phone as part of U-Verse so we can report how well it works. We will test with our alarm system (although we don't plan to test 911 :-) as well as the more fun advanced TV integration features and let you know how it goes.

Geek Super Bowl Preview: Internet

2009-08-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

Along with television, internet access is probably the most important broadband service out there, and maybe the most important one to any geek worth their salt. We've been subscribers to Sunflower's top-level Gold internet tier for the past several years, and will be getting AT&T U-Verse's top-level internet packages, called Max 18, allowing for a good comparison of each company's best offerings, in the areas of speed, reliability, and performance.

First, a quick look at each company's best offering:

Factor	Sunflower Broadband Gold*	AT&T U-Verse Max 18
Download Speed	21 mbps	18 mbps
Upload Speed	.76 mbps	1.5 mbps
Bandwidth	50 GB/month	unlimited
Price	$50	$65

* I have heard rumors that Sunflower's Gold service level will gain increased speeds and bandwidth later this fall as they adopt a new cable technology called DOCSIS 3.0 but this is not available yet so I can't yet compare it..

Both AT&T and Sunflower offer other service levels as well, generally offering less speed (and less bandwidth in Sunflower's case) for a cheaper price. Sunflower has an additional level of service called Palladium which does away with any bandwidth limits, and has variable speed levels.

There are technical differences in how Sunflower and AT&T deliver their internet service. As I mentioned, Sunflower uses the standard for all cable internet in America, called DOCSIS. The best way to think about how it is delivered is that the internet is essentially a "channel" on the cable system, except rather then being able to "tune" it with your TV or set top box, it gets "tuned in" by a device called a cable modem, which you can either rent or buy. Cable modems are made by many manufacturers and can be bought at stores like Best Buy. This is a nice benefit of the DOCSIS standard - you don't have to rent a special box, you can buy any compatible model and it can be used on Sunflower's network. Furthermore, many DOCSIS cable modems provide no routing functionality, so technically experienced folks can use all kinds of third party routers with cable internet service to construct sophisticated firewalls and routing systems.

AT&T's U-Verse internet is technically similar to the DSL service that has been offered for a while, although the enhanced bandwidth provided by the VRADs used for U-Verse allow for much faster speeds then previous types of DSL. Unlike the world of cable, there are no independent options for U-Verse's "DSL Modem" - the U-Verse packages includes a device called the Residential Gateway which handles the Internet networking and routing. It cannot be replaced. While this fully integrated device is a boon to less technical users, more experienced users who may have specific routing needs may find themselves frustrated with the built-in router and its limitations. Part of my evaluation of U-Verse this next month will be exploring the functionality of limitations of the Residential Gateway and seeing how adaptable it is to my geeky needs.

Of course, raw download speed isn't the only way I will be evaluating the two services. Upload speed is important as well, especially for people like me who routinely access my computer from outside my home, as well as for uploading movies and photos to the web, and of course peer-to-peer file sharing. Another area of concern in the evaluation will be to issue of bandwidth. Sunflower limits the amount of bandwidth you can use every month, although additional bandwidth can be purchased. We generally manage to avoid overage charges by keeping careful watch on our meter, and I am looking forward to not having this worry with U-Verse. But, is this "freedom" going to be worth an extra $15 per month? Only time will tell.

Another area I want to keep an eye on is network reliability, specifically slowdowns and outages. I run network monitoring software that automatically keeps an eye on the speed and reliability of the internet connection from my computer. I have months of data on how our Sunflower connection has performed, and I want to compare this to how U-Verse does. Will there be unexpected network drop-outs or congestion-related slowdowns in the evenings? My testing should be able to identify if this occurs.

There's only four more days until our U-Verse install. Still to come before then, a brief review of the phone options, and a discussion of customer service.

Tech Notes...What is a VRAD and why should you care?

2009-08-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

One factor that might make the decision about whether to choose Sunflower, U-Verse, or any other provider easy is whether you can actually get the service at your home, business, spider-hole, bunker, or other place of dwelling.

Sunflower Broadband is the clear leader in Lawrence availability as of this writing. You can get cable-based broadband basically everywhere within the city limits of Lawrence, and even a few areas outside Lawrence. Coaxial cable has been a part of the Lawrence infrastructure for a while, and Sunflower enhanced their network earlier this decade with an improved fiber network backbone serving all of Lawrence. So, if you live in Lawrence, you can count on getting Sunflower Broadband service at your location.

It is more difficult for AT&T. They have access to a community-wide network as well, but it is the old copper phone network, which as I mentioned in an earlier post, doesn't have the bandwidth for broadband cable and internet services like coaxial cable does. AT&T's solution is to run a fiber optic cable backbone to specific termination points located in individual neighborhoods, and from these termination points (which are called VRADs), they then have the ability to push broadband services to individual homes. VRADs look like large beige cabinets, and you can see them being installed around Lawrence if you have a sharp eye. This is an example of what a VRAD looks like.

As an aside, in some parts of the country, AT&T (and competitors like Verizon) actually run fiber lines to each house. This gives amazing amounts of bandwidth, dwarfing anything else around, but it is also much more expensive for the service provider. Eventually, though, fiber to the home will probably become as common as electricity and water to the home.

Anyway, because AT&T has to install the VRADs in a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, it is taking them a while to roll U-Verse out to our entire city. AT&T needs to find a spot in each neighborhood to place the VRAD, then arrange to have electricity and a fiber cable run to it. Once a VRAD is in your neighborhood, and AT&T's own testing is complete, they can provide service. Whether you can get service depends on how close you are to the VRAD, as measured in the actual feet the phone wires travel between the VRAD and your house (not a straight line either, as phone wires may zag around). You are usually in good shape if you are within a few thousand feet of the VRAD. I don't know for sure, but I would expect AT&T will be spacing them out so that eventually all of Lawrence will be within a service area.

Geek Super Bowl Preview: Television

2009-08-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

First up is everyone's favorite waster of time, the boob tube...television.

Both Sunflower and U-Verse offer a comprehensive set of television packages, roughly divided into four tiers, ranging from a low end featuring over-the-air stations plus a few basic cable channels to high-end packages featuring hundreds of channels, including premium networks. We are going to be comparing the mid-range offerings of the two providers - plans that offer, in my opinion, the most "bang for the buck" -- You get all the popular cable networks, a decent amount of sports, music channels, and all the usual non-premium channels you expect to get with cable TV.

Sunflower calls this level of service "Bronze" and AT&T calls it "U-200".

Price-wise, both are fairly similar. U-Verse's U-200 is $64 per month, plus extra fees for things like HD service and additional televisions (the service includes 1 set-top box/DVR). Sunflower's Bronze service is $56 a month, plus extra fees for additional HD-DVRs and set top boxes (Bronze service includes 1 standard definition set-top box). We actually use a Tivo currently with our Sunflower service, so we do not need to rent a DVR, but to keep comparisons equal, this is what it would cost to equip a typical home with 3 TVs with each provider, if you rent the DVRs and set-top boxes:

Description	Sunflower Bronze	AT&T U-200
Base Package	$56	$64
HD Fee	none/included	$10
TV #1 - HD - DVR	$10 additional fee to upgrade to HD DVR	none/included
TV #2 - HD - no DVR	$10 set top box	$7 set top box
TV #3 - Standard Definition - No DVR	$5 set top box	$7 set top box
Total	$81	$88

So, roughly the same. Obviously adding or changing a TV here or there might make a $10 difference either way, and your price may change if you don't need a set top box (which is an option for Sunflower, see below for technical details), but it is fair to say you will likely spend close to the same amount of money, if you have three or less TV sets in your home, perhaps with a slight edge in price to Sunflower.

Before I got any further, I need to digress into geek-ville. The fact is that fundamentally, cable-based TV (which Sunflower provides) and IP-based TV (which U-Verse provides) are fundamentally different "behind the scenes" and these technical differences explain much of the limitations, and advantages of each service.

Warning....several paragraphs of technical stuff ahead. But I really try to explain it in a non technical way :-)

Cable providers generally broadcast all their channels all the time. This basically means that all the channels your service provides are always flowing through the wires into your house, even when the TV is off. When you are tuned to ESPN, VH-1 and hundreds of other channels are being pumped into your house along side of it. Since this "river" of programming is always flowing, you can generally plug in as many TVs as you want into the coax outlets in your home, and access programming freely, as easy as simply "plugging in."

This has changed a little bit in recent years, as cable companies have moved towards digital programming. Many TVs need a digital box to pick up the new digital cable channels, but fundamentally, you can basically plug any TV into the wall and get some cable channels. Sunflower offers a bunch of "basic" channels without requiring any type of box, and you can pick up the entire gamut of their lineup with a modern TiVo (which is what we use), or by using any newer TV that can tune in digital cable ("QAM").

The down side of this ease of use is that there is limited interactivity. Sunflower (and other cable providers) offer video-on-demand, where you can interactively order programming. This requires a digital box, and often uses a technology called switched digital video, where the "river" of incoming programming is actually switched and controlled "upstream" in response to the users' requests. Traditional cable television is gradually moving towards this more interactive, switched digital future, but for now, a great benefit of traditional cable TV, as provided by Sunflower in Lawrence, is that anything can plug into it...new TVs, old TVs, digital and analog tuner cards for computers, and so on. A set-top box might get you added features, but it is not a requirement....yet.

So, here comes AT&T with their U-Verse system. They faced a big problem.
At its core, the coaxial cable that Sunflower (and other cable services around the country) offer has much more capacity then the copper phone wire used by AT&T. So, how can AT&T possibly provide hundreds of channels over a pipe that is many times narrower then coaxial cable? Their answer is that rather then provide the "stream" of hundreds of channels to your home, they instead only transmit the channels you are actively watching or recording. So if your TV is on Comedy Central and the kids are watching Nickelodeon, those are the only two channels that flow into your house at the time. Change a channel, and AT&T transmits this request "upstream" to the fiber box in your neighborhood, which switches the channel and starts sending you the new channel you requested.

Because every channel change and other request is sent "upstream," the AT&T system allows for some fairly sophisticated interactive features, such as a variety of "applications" that can be run on the TV,as well as sophisticated time-and-place shifting of the channels you are watching. This enables features such as pausing a show in one room of the house and "picking it up" in another room, or instantly transmitting recorded shows between TVs.

While the U-Verse system represents an elegant technical solution to a tricky problem, it is not without its own downsides. First is the limited bandwidth. AT&T claims that they support up to two HD channels and two standard definition channels at the same time. This means if you have 5 TVs in your house, two of them must be watching the same channel. Furthermore, since the U-Verse system requires its own custom set-top boxes to function, each TV must have one of these boxes installed. In addition to the cost of rental, this means you can't just "plug in" to U-Verse or use your own equipment (such as a TiVo or computer tuner card); You need to use AT&Ts equipment.

U-Verse and traditional cable TV cannot co-exist on the same physical wires. During our trial, we will continue to use our home's coaxial cable for Sunflower, while running U-Verse over a set of parallel CAT-5e ethernet cables, which will be installed as part of the U-Verse installation.

We have a television set with two HDMI inputs. One input will have our TiVo HD, connected to Sunflower, while the other will have the AT&T U-Verse box. This will give us the ability to see the same programming provided from both sources, and compare the quality. Both U-Verse and Sunflower compress their HD signals, but the compression may differ. We plan to watch a mixture of shows -- sports, movies, action, talk shows, and even some standard def programming to fairly compare the two services.

OK, most of the super geeky stuff is out of the way...

Keep in mind, its not just the channel list and content we are comparing. Part of it is ease of use. We love our TiVo and its famous UI. Will the U-Verse box be like a Mac user switching to Windows? How easy will it be to do basic tasks like skipping commercials, setting up a season pass, or finding a favorite show.

I am also interested in how U-Verse handles local channels. Their channel lineup contains the main Kansas City over-the-air networks, but none of the local Lawrence or KU channels Sunflower offers, or any of the Topeka stations. I am also wondering how U-Verse is for sports. I am an avid college football fan, and look forward to being able to watch KU play this fall. It will certainly be a test to see if KU (and other teams I follow) are available on U-Verse as well as Sunflower.

We will find out and let you know, because in the end, it's not about U-Verse or cable...it's about watching The Office and Mythbusters (and Rock Chalk Jayhawk!)

Still to come, previews of the Internet side of the game, as well as some quick looks at the phone and customer service.

U-Verse vs Sunflower: Full-Out Geek Brawl

2009-08-25T08:42:00.001-07:00

There are two heavyweight contenders for broadband supremacy in Lawrence, Kansas. They are AT&T's U-Verse and Sunflower Broadband. These two services are the only ones that offer the "triple play" of services: TV, phone, and internet.

Although they provide similar services, the two companies utilize different technologies to connect to the home. Both Sunflower and AT&T utilize fiber optic cable backbones, but neither company actually runs fiber to your house. Sunflower uses coaxial cable to transport data from their fiber network to your house, while AT&T uses copper telephone wiring to transfer data from their fiber network to your house. Sunflower's service is available throughout Lawrence, and AT&T is rapidly rolling out U-Verse, with the expectation that it will be available throughout the city by the end of the year.

We're going to compare the two services. We already subscribe to Sunflower's top-of-the-line Internet service, called Gold, as well as their most popular tier of cable service, called Bronze. We recently signed up for a U-Verse trial, requesting the equivalent level of TV Service (their "200 tier") and their top internet level ("Elite"). During the month we subscribe to both services, I will be doing comparisons of both the internet and TV service and quality, as well as general experiences with both services and companies, from the initial install to the final verdict, to give you an idea of what each one is like, and its plusses and minuses. And of course, as a geek, I will be very interested in sharing as much technical detail about the equipment, configurations, and so forth as I can.

Our U-Verse install is scheduled for the end of next week. Before then, emulating a sports columnist looking at each of the teams before the big game, I'll take a look at what advantages and disadvantages both AT&T and Sunflower bring to the table, what each company is advertising, and what I see as some of their strengths and weaknesses. I will try to be as fair as I can and give an unbiased opinion, documenting our experiences over the next month. Hopefully it will be as interesting for you to read as it is for me to experiment with!