Here’s the latest scorecard on AT&T’s entry into pay-TV:
It has 18,000 subscribers to U-verse, its pay-TV service. It’s now averaging 2,000 U-verse installations a week, up from 400 a week in January. At the current rate, AT&T will have 122,000 U-verse subscribers a year from now.
U-verse will launch in Los Angeles in “the coming weeks,” but the company did not specify what sections of LA will first get the service. Time Warner Cable is the dominant cable TV operator in LA. It plans additional U-verse launches later this year, but did not say where or when.
In Q1, it launched U-verse in Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Dallas-Fort Worth. Over 200,000 households in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, if they subscribed, could be connected to the service.
Ralph de la Vega, group president of regional wireline operations at AT&T, said, “Consumers are clearly hungry for an alternative to the cable companies, and AT&T U-verse is a very attractive choice. We offer more high-definition channels than local cable companies in the markets we serve, the ability to record up to four programs at once, and the ability to set DVR recordings remotely using the AT&T Yahoo portal or, soon, a mobile device.”
AT&T also sells three other pay-TV services in addition to U-verse: EchoStar’s Dish, as part of a bundle in the AT&T footprint that existed prior to its acquisition of BellSouth, delivered to an EchoStar set-top box; DirecTV, in the old BellSouth territory, delivered to a DirecTV set-top box and Homezone pay-TV, which includes EchoStar pay-TV, Akimbo, Movielink, Yahoo services and broadband, delivered to a set-top box of AT&T’s design.
Including U-verse and the three satellite TV services, AT&T added more than 180,000 video users in Q1, which it says is more than the four largest cable TV companies that reported combined added for all of last year. The four are Cablevision, Time Warner, Comcast and Charter. Cox no longer reports its results publicly.
AT&T has been pushing what it calls its “three-screen” strategy – TV, PC and mobile phone. As an example, AT&T points out that its Homezone subscribers can program their DVR via the Internet and their wireless phones. It announced this week that U-verse customers will soon be able to do that also.
Then there’s AT&T U-verse OnTheGo, an extra-cost service that allows U-verse customers to view live television on any PC using any broadband Internet connection.
HD content has been a weakness for AT&T but, having recognized the importance of HD, it’s working to strengthen its HD hand. U-verse TV offers access to more than 25 HD channels. AT&T says that’s more than cable TV providers offer in markets where U-verse is currently offered. AT&T also recently said that qualifying new subscribers could get HD programming free for one year.