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story category New AT&T Broadband Customer Additions Take Nose Dive
Industry giant adds Just 46,000 Broadband Users In Q2
09:53AM Wednesday Jul 23 2008 by Karl Bode
tags: business · bandwidth · telco · AT&T U-Verse
AT&T this morning posted their second quarter earnings, which reveal the company's profit jumped 30%, mostly thanks to the addition of 1.3 million new wireless customers. However, landline bloodshed actually accelerated: the total number of AT&T phone lines (including wholesale and business) in service continued to drop, down 8.1% to 58.9 million total lines from 64.8 million. But it's AT&T's broadband additions (or lack thereof) that will probably get the most attention today, with just 46,000 new broadband customer additions on the quarter.
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Regional consumer revenue connections (retail voice, high speed Internet and video) totaled 48.4 million at the end of the quarter, versus 49.5 million at the end of the second quarter of 2007 and 49.3 million at the end of the first quarter of 2008. Total consumer broadband and TV connections over the past year increased by 2.2 million. At the end of the second quarter, AT&T had 14.7 million total broadband connections, up 1.4 million over the past year and up 46,000 in the second quarter of 2008.
While a drop in new broadband additions was expected given market saturation and the housing market, most analysts still expected net additions to be somewhere around the 300,000 mark. AT&T notes that they added 170,000 U-Verse TV customers, and now serve 549,000 U-Verse customers total. That doesn't sound like much, but according to Light Reading, the company is ahead of deployment projections for the year and vendors say AT&T might be slowing spending on the project:
"Our contacts are indicating that AT&T, so far this year, is running ahead of budget on Project Lightspeed spending," partly the result of good weather in the first half of the year...It's unclear how long spending would pause, though. Notter cites two conflicting sources: One believes it's a four-to-six-week pause, while the other thinks AT&T has met its U-verse expectations for the entire year.
The report notes that AT&T's deployment of pure FTTH (which only happens to new housing developments) have "come to a standstill" because of the housing market. Last year, AT&T told me that U-Verse deployment plans involved a million homes getting pure fiber (albeit capped at VDSL speeds to maintain a "consistent user experience"). AT&T's original goal was to serve 1 million customers with both VDSL and FTTH U-Verse by the end of the year -- so they're more than halfway there.

Related:
  1. When Does FTTH Yield Just 6Mbps?
  2. AT&T Sets New U-Verse Goals
  3. Wisconsin Residents Have Concerns About U-Verse
  4. AT&T Fiber To The Home
  5. AT&T Confirms Dual HD Stream U-Verse Upgrade
  6. All Markets Will See U-Verse Dual HD Streams By Q3
  7. AT&T Backbone Sees 20% P2P Drop
  8. Will Qwest Come Clean About Usage Cap Like Comcast?
Forums » New AT&T Broadband Customer Additions Take Nose Dive
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avd706
Premium
join:2003-02-06
Great Neck, NY

They should

either raise or lower prices

Skeedatl
Ah, push it - push it real good
Premium
join:2007-12-26
The Cloud

Re: They should

They should lower the price and sweep up dial-up converts that they can later upsell.

superht1

join:2001-02-22
Kennesaw, GA
·AT&T Southeast

Re: They should

said by Skeedatl See Profile :

They should lower the price and sweep up dial-up converts that they can later upsell.
I can barely afford to eat let alone utility bills

cdru
Go Colts
Premium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN

Re: They should

Where are your priorities. Since when does food come before broadband?

Amadeus
Premium
join:2005-05-02
Miami, FL
they need to lower prices or offer more speed on the u-verse.
--
Think Ahead. Learn More. Solve Now!

Geminimind
Premium
join:2003-12-20
Sacramento, CA

Re: They should

They need to get on the ball with uverse otherwise I will stay with comcast.

Neyland85

join:2003-02-04
North Augusta, SC
How can they offer more speed when they can't offer HD effectively?

Cuda

@sbcglobal.net

Re: They should

WTF are you talking about. I have a vastly better picture and more HD channels with Uverse then I ever had with Comcrap or Wow. And the weird thing is, it doesn't take 20 seconds to change channels like Comcrap either.

tad2020

join:2007-07-17
Orange, CA

Re: They should

I think he's talking about AT&T's continued technical incapability of offering more than one HD steam simultaneously. I wish MS and AT&T would has just used an open standard like DVB-IPI instead of coming up with their own half-assed IPTV system.

Neyland85

join:2003-02-04
North Augusta, SC
·AT&T Southeast

Re: They should

said by tad2020 See Profile :

I think he's talking about AT&T's continued technical incapability of offering more than one HD steam simultaneously. I wish MS and AT&T would has just used an open standard like DVB-IPI instead of coming up with their own half-assed IPTV system.
Exactly. I just don't see how they can compete without gross compression and slow internet speeds.

I have Dish, had Comcast. Never had to take 20 seconds to change a channel. With Comcast it's instant and Dish about two seconds.

I understand Comcast is having some compression issues itself right now, but they still offer as many HD sets as you're willing to get a tuner for. Plus their ability to upgrade, lose analog and grab enough bandwidth to lose the compression is much simpler than what ATT will have to do.

S_engineer

join:2007-05-16
Chicago, IL

The death star...

will milk the copper lines for another 50 years. Which is a good thing. I'm all for paying collective bargaining wages. But Att had the worst wireless service I ever had the mispleasure of using. I wonder how much of this will be attributed to the I-phone.
--
The "Lifetime" channel is responsible for 83% of all divorces...Robert Ginty

TamaraB
Question The Current Paradigm
Premium
join:2000-11-08
Underway
·Verizon Online DSL

Re: The death star...

said by S_engineer See Profile :

... I wonder how much of this will be attributed to the I-phone.
Hmmmmm.... I have had sprint cell-service for the past 7 years. Only have POTS from Verizon because DSL is the only option for broadband here on the waterfront. ALL my voice comms is via CELL.

I am about to purchase an Iphone, and therefor forced to switch to AT&T in order to utilize the Iphone's 3G capabilities. Sprint has been reliable and clean. Am I going to be disappointed with AT&T?

Bob
--
Motor Vessel - Tamara B.
43' Long-Range Trawler
Cape Elizebeth ME.
See her Here.

S_engineer

join:2007-05-16
Chicago, IL

Re: The death star...

if you live in the chicago metropolitan area...yes

gdm
Premium,MVM
join:2001-06-15
Mchenry, IL
clubs:

Re: The death star...

I have no issues in the chicago area with them at all. Downtown or the suburbs.
mlbSAE

join:2000-08-01
Dayton, OH

I had AT&T wireless and was happy with it. Great coverage in the Dayton, Ohio area. I only left them because after my contract they wouldn't give me a free Blackberry Curve like T-Mobile did.

As far as landline goes, I have a landline and DSL through them. I've been much happier with them than I was with Road Runner through Time Warner. I kicked Time Warner out of the house, went to Dish and AT&T and have never looked back.
kylemorris

join:2007-12-14
Richardson, TX
I live in Dallas, TX and AT&T is by far the best wireless provider i have ever had. I had sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile and AT&T is the best one out there.

Cuda

@sbcglobal.net

First thing, Realize there is some new trending little hate at&t thing going around so you will hear alot of people say it sucks. They never will understand that when they are hiding under the bed in the cabin underneath a verizon tower, of course they will think at&t sucks. But there feeble little brain can't understand how the situation might be different 5 miles away under a at&t tower. And don't dare speak badly about verizon service because some dude had a great experience with it and the old rule of "must be the same every single spot on the planet" still applies.

Thing is, every service sucks somewhere and every service works flawlessy somewhere else. Disregard the childish bandwagon sheep who preach the line and just get a iPhone and you will be happy.

swhx7
Premium
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia
·RoadRunner Cable

I cancelled my AT&T POTS because they couldn't keep the lines working. I had to call every few weeks when the dial tone stopped again.

Since then they've kept sending me ads for their DSL and wireless. Why would I commit to a long contract with a company that can't or won't even maintain its own infrastructure?

A well-run organization without a duoplolist's arrogance would notice my long series of repair requests and at least promise to address those kinds of problems, if they wanted me back. They might even realize this is one reason people are leaving, and maybe even do something about it.

Cuda

@sbcglobal.net

Re: The death star...

said by swhx7 See Profile :

I cancelled my AT&T POTS because they couldn't keep the lines working. I had to call every few weeks when the dial tone stopped again.

Since then they've kept sending me ads for their DSL and wireless. Why would I commit to a long contract with a company that can't or won't even maintain its own infrastructure?

A well-run organization without a duoplolist's arrogance would notice my long series of repair requests and at least promise to address those kinds of problems, if they wanted me back. They might even realize this is one reason people are leaving, and maybe even do something about it.
Sorry, gonna call BS on that. Just can't believe these stories anymore. Way too many sheep following the trendy anti-at&t wagon lately.

XBL2007

join:2001-01-03
Chicago, IL
·AT&T Midwest

Re: The death star...

said by Cuda :

said by swhx7 See Profile :

I cancelled my AT&T POTS because they couldn't keep the lines working. I had to call every few weeks when the dial tone stopped again.

Since then they've kept sending me ads for their DSL and wireless. Why would I commit to a long contract with a company that can't or won't even maintain its own infrastructure?

A well-run organization without a duoplolist's arrogance would notice my long series of repair requests and at least promise to address those kinds of problems, if they wanted me back. They might even realize this is one reason people are leaving, and maybe even do something about it.
Sorry, gonna call BS on that. Just can't believe these stories anymore. Way too many sheep following the trendy anti-at&t wagon lately.
Sadly at$t has been having some surprising problems again, they had cleaned up their service for awhile but now with no competition they seem to becoming lazy again.

MattE
Obama '08
Premium
join:2003-07-20
Jamestown, NC
·North State Commun..
·Corporate Colocation

Profit Up, but Subscriber Growth Stalled

What to do, what to do? Hrmmm, I know, let's squeeze our current customer base by implementing usage caps with hefty overage like the cable companies do!

Ok, so maybe that isn't the EXACT conversation, but I'm sure it went something like that.
baltar

join:2007-03-27
West Palm Beach, FL
·Comcast

:P

they need to sweeten the deal.

Take my market for example, Palm Beach, ATT is still 1.5mbit max in my area, and they don't have naked dsl here either. I would have a choice of either comcast with their 8mbit cable and their crappy customer service for about 60/mo, or ATT's 29.95 for 1.5mbit, and then another 30 bux for a land line. I'd stick with comcast.

Outside of My market, where there's FIOS and 10mbit Cable, versus att's max 6mbit dsl? I can see why theyre losing...

Skeedatl
Ah, push it - push it real good
Premium
join:2007-12-26
The Cloud
·Cox HSI
·Verizon FIOS
·MegaPath
·Cox VOIP
·Verizon west (ex G..
·ViaTalk
·Time Warner VOIP
·RoadRunner Cable

Re: :P

People don't give a crap about 10Mb anything. They shop price which is why when VZ and AT&T had their dirt cheap DSL deals they flat smoked cabled in new adds.

Even with FiOS, you can see from the DSLR archive that people buy the cheapest tier.

Price is king and AT&T should take advantage of it with more dirt cheap DSL and then upselling some of those customers to other services as it becomes available. It's easier to upsell a customer than steal a customer from a competitor.
baj475

join:2004-11-02
Chico, CA

Re: :P

No so for everyone. I dumped my 6M (top tier) AT&T dsl line which when added to basic phone service cost me $59/mo and opted for $67/mo Camcast 16M/2M HSI. For an additional $8/mo I get 2.5+ times the speed, a bargain in my view.
karlmarx

join:2006-09-18
Nashua, NH
·Fairpoint Communic..

Re: :P

umm, well, assuming you don't use you comcast. Lets say you go crazy, and download 1000GB in a month. That will set you back $1100.00+ in overage charges, making the 6M AT&T look like a bargain in comparison. Ask yourself, why get the speed if you can't even use it?
--
The happiest countries are the most secular. The struggle AGAINST corporations is the struggle FOR humanity!
baj475

join:2004-11-02
Chico, CA

Re: :P

$1100.00+ in overage charges would make my old dsl look like a bargain, but that is not going to happen. Who says I can't use it, the speed that is?

Cuda

@sbcglobal.net
Nice speed increase. At least until the neighbors all decide to pay-per-view Sex in the City until your about 2mps.
baj475

join:2004-11-02
Chico, CA

Re: :P

That might prove difficult because it turned out that my cable connection is the only one in the box, so at least none of my immediate neighbors can slow my connection.

morbo
Complete Your Transaction

join:2002-01-22
00000
clubs:
·Charter Pipeline
·AT&T Southwest

this explains...

"landline bloodshed actually accelerated: the total number of AT&T phone lines (including wholesale and business) in service continued to drop, down 8.1% to 58.9 million total lines from 64.8 million. "

this explains why my pots bill continues to rise. was ~49 a couple years ago. is now regularly ~57. AT&T has down pat the recipe for driving away young customers.
BF69

join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN

edit:
July 23rd, @10:45AM

Wait until they institute caps

then "only" getting 46,000 new customers will seem like a lot.
iansltx

join:2007-02-19
Fredericksburg, TX
·magicjack.com
·Comcast
·Qwest.net
·Sprint Mobile Broa..

Re: Wait until they institute caps

Well, if the competition has caps it wn't matter. However if the competition doesn't (hint: VZ FiOS overbuilds) then AT&T simply won't intro caps in the area due to the risk of losing all customers.

Looks like AT&T needs to plaster $9.95 (w\POTS, as dialup requires POTS, but cheap POTS) 768/128 DSL ads everywhere, then upsell to their higher tiers. I'm not talking about a 6 Mbit down, 768k up tier. I'm talking U-Verse, or ADSL2+ where U-Verse doesn't wanna go. When I say U-Verse or ADSL2+ I'm talking speeds of 10 Mbit or higher, with uploads of 1 Mbit or higher. At that point tey're competitive with cable.

Oh, and if they match their landline prices with cable VoIP, then the POTS bleed would probably stop. C'mon, $40 isn't so hard to match...

Then again, I have no love for AT&T. U-Verse is crap, and their FTTP stuff being capped at 10/1.5 is just plain lame. Grr.
BF69

join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN

Re: Wait until they institute caps

Well in my area I have at&t and Charter. Charter has only minimumly tlak abut looking into caps perhaps sometime in the future. So they both might have caps but at&t will have them first and thus drive customers to Charter. Also if both have caps and both have very low caps then I will simply quit most of my internet usage and get the very cheapest package I can get and only use it for e-mail, online bill paying etc. I'm sure I won't be the only one doing this or dumping internet completely.

justbits
More fiber than ATT can handle
Premium
join:2003-01-08
Chicago, IL
·AT&T Midwest
·AT&T Yahoo

For the large portion of customers who can't get speeds faster than 3Mbps, ADSL2+ wont help until AT+T does some serious line conditioning or they start building out more RTs. And if they're busying building out RTs, it's more likely that you'll get a U-verse VRAD with VDSL instead.

Cuda

@sbcglobal.net
"Uverse is crap!"

Better then any Comcrap or Wow I've ever had. Works perfectly ALL THE TIME.
jimk
Premium
join:2006-04-15
Raleigh, NC
·RoadRunner Cable
·AT&T Southeast
·ICDSoft
·Vonage

As others have said, if they have usage caps as well as the competition, there won't be much of a difference other than ordinary customer churn.

However, this is all the reason for AT&T (and other phone carriers) to offer truly unlimited service, or at least set the caps substantially higher than any of the cable companies (i.e. 500+ GB). They need to distinguish themselves from the cable companies somehow, especially as they start to compete with them on television offerings.

People will be willing to take a slight speed hit to avoid worrying about caps. This should be easier for the DSL carriers since they don't have the same sharing concerns that cable companies have. (Yes, I know it is shared at some point... but the nature of the network setup makes this less of a problem for the DSL carriers)

At least they finally offer DSL without home phone service. I would have been a DSL customer a while back, but the $20+ for a basic phone line which I would never use just didn't make sense. It may be less profit for them per line, but it is some profit where they were getting none before.
momus_98

join:2002-09-10
Pflugerville, TX

Get out and push

Perhaps if AT&T was serious about upgrading its network to support the inevitable march to 10Mbps (to start with) up to 100Mbps (like S. Korea & other countries), then perhaps they'll get more subscribers.

When you're watching a movie via the Netflix Roku on your new 50" LCD, your son is using Xbox Live to vanquish pixelated beasties, your daughter is pulling down (legal) MP3s via Napster to fill her Creative player, and your wife is at work watching the latest Lifetime movie of the week via Slingbox, people will clamor for faster and more bandwidth.

In the coming years, as VoD and other video services become commonplace, AT&T would do well to upgrade its network to stave off the cable competition.

To paraphrase a slogan from my "primary color" employer, this is and will become very much an on-demand world and broadband infrastructure has stagnated since the heady days of late 1999 - 2000, when broadband was aggressively rolled out. To borrow something else from my current employer, as a lesson they learned in the 90s, you either innovate or evolve....or you die.

And now they're stronger than ever. AT&T, are you listening?
--
"War does not determine who is right; only who is left." - Bertrand Russell
"Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their
country." - Bertrand Russell
chris123

join:2002-07-23
Highland, IN
·AT&T Midwest

Just another poorly run American company....

At this time, AT&T U-verse service is not available for this address or phone number as entered:

I don't understand why there is such a span between the time it takes to install the nodes and getting customers online. I mean they already purchased the hardware and installed it, you would think they would want paying customers using it asap.
--
see my SBC Review @ »Review of AT&T Midwest by chris123

verolom

join:2002-03-23
Eatontown, NJ

Re: Just another poorly run American company....

It's called an ORT - Operations Readiness Test. They want to make sure that the crap works before they freak the consumers out with crappy service.
Madtown

join:2008-04-26
Madera, CA

Re: Just another poorly run American company....

said by verolom See Profile :

It's called an ORT - Operations Readiness Test. They want to make sure that the crap works before they freak the consumers out with crappy service.
Yes, as much I can't wait to get my hand on the service I rather have them make us wait longer so they can test it out and make sure instead of ordering a service that doesn't work at all.

Cuda

@sbcglobal.net
Usually the wait is for the local power company to fire up the AC to the equipment.
chris123

join:2002-07-23
Highland, IN

Re: Just another poorly run American company....

Cuda: They've had the power meters installed and lit up for months.
pandora
Premium
join:2001-06-01
Outland
·Comcast

AT&T's network sucks

AT&T had a network when there were no networks. AT&T had ISDN before there was broadband. I've had AT&T DSL since it was released. 1.5M down, 384K up. Same speed many years. Over time my network needs increased, my demands increased, AT&T is unable to provide a faster link. Reluctantly I've been forced by the failure of AT&T to upgrade their DSL network to move to Comcast HSI. Comcast with the worst customer service in the business, is more appealing than AT&T.

There is no excuse for Comcast to be able to easily provide me 4x faster broadband than AT&T, but they do.

As for the AT&T land line phone network, every time I open a bill there is a chance to discover a new or increased fee. The bill only goes in one direction. Land line extra fees and taxes make it non-competitive with VOIP or wireless.

Some say AT&T will go another 50 years on their wired network, and they may. However the AT&T land line business will be 3 guys and a truck in 20 years servicing their last 200 customers.

I do not understand why Verizon is so darned competitive, or why Comcast is so good, and why AT&T is so pathetic. It should be the opposite, AT&T was out first, had the wires run, should have been able to build out quickly. One day the history of AT&T's demise will be written, and it will be a painful read.
--
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
vibsdj

join:1999-11-25
Marietta, GA
·AT&T DSL Service

If only you could talk to them!

I'm confused. Do I have BellSouth Fast Access DSL or ATT High Speed Internet? I'm paying the bill and I don't even know. Nor do their technical support folks. When I try to call them on the toll free support line, I only get two options, press 1 for billing or 2 for sales. Where is tech support? I tried the ATT tech support chat, they told me that they couldn't help me because I have BellSouth Fast Access. I've had to solve all of my own problems using the BBR informational posts and tools. Shame on you ATT, you really don't care about your customers.

ATT Stinks

@spcsdns.net

AT&T Stinks

Since the BellSouth merger service level has decreased for wireless coverage & the have offered NO new services!!! The FCC created a MONOPLOY & AT&T is screwing everyone!!! How can AT&T people can sleep at night???
Forums » New AT&T Broadband Customer Additions Take Nose Dive


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