We hear from multiple sources, including DSL Reports, that there is continued disappointment at AT&T’s project U-Verse, the company’s multi billon dollar experiment into IPTV using Microsoft software and Alcatel infrastructure.
The data came out of an AT&T investor relations webcast where some features of the system were delayed further, in particular the delivery of multiple HD streams, which will not now be possible until the second quarter of 2008.
Timelines were also given for AT&T offering things like photosharing on the IPTV system, VoIP and Yellow pages on screen all released by Microsoft this week, but scheduled by AT&T for implementation in the last quarter of this year. Also delivery of a U-Bar feature, an interactive bar that allows access to stock, weather, sports, or traffic information on the TV screen, is also put off to the end of the year.
The doubling of HD streams seems to rely on VDSL2 and ADSL2+ pair bonding, where one ADSL2+ line works with another to double the amount of traffic to an individual home, and Alcatel has only just introduced the relevant line cards that can do this. This means AT&T will introduce it a year from now.
Worse still multi-room DVR is pushed out to the third quarter of next year and an idea we have heard about for what appears to be decades, because it is a great example of merged IP based communication, putting caller ID on the TV set, may not even make it into 2008.
AT&T does however report that customers are now signing up at the rate of 600 a day and hopes this can rise to 10,000 new customers a week by the end of 2007, which would make its annual run rate around a quarter of the level that cable companies are stealing away fixed line customers.