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AT&T has a new service which is going head to head in competition
with cable TV companies and Dish television services. But this service also provides a phone and Internet access besides
television service. If you currently have DSL, your going to find that you will have to get your Internet access over
the U-verse instead of the DSL. AT&T tells me that for things to work properly there cannot be two high speed services
at the same address. I think it has something to do with power influences from one circuit interfering with another.
In any event, we went with that but there is an advantage. I was able to get rid of the DSL modem on my desk along with
the Cisco wireless router I had been using for Wi-Fi enabled laptops and game consoles over the DSL. Result? More
room on my desk.
The Gateway unit AT&T puts in is also a Wi-Fi unit. Now the wireless units
work through it and there is no problem.
In any event, when we first got cable television back in the early 80s, the cost
of service was under forty dollars a month, and, no commercials. Seems like all the television production companies
can't resist the lure of cash from advertisers. Things have now gotten so bad that at all times of day and night, you
can channel surf and find infomercials. It's bad enough that we have to put up with them, but, we also have to pay for
them to boot.
So where's this leading? Everyone's service, including AT&T's U-verse,
has channel programming which includes infomercials. You can't get away from them. However, when the cable television
service (such as we had) is lousy as well, it makes for an intolerable situation.
In 2006, we seriously started looking at alternative service providers. We
almost made the jump to SBC's Dish television service. We have a large family and we really kicked this around for a
long time. At just about the time in 2007 when we were getting ready to make the phone call, we heard about AT&T's
Home Zone service which more or less morphed into U-verse. So we decide to look into this and several months went
by and we saw that AT&T was putting in fiber optic cable to the neighborhoods in our area. In fact, wherever the
phone company has a terminal called a Serving Area Interface (SAI, also called by phone company technicians, a SAC
point - below) the company was putting in fiber nearby.
For what it's worth, the channel packages available for U-verse service are referred
to as U100, U200, U300 and U400. When you start flipping channels on the U-verse service the range for non-High
Definition (HD) channels is 1 to 999. 1000 up to, I think, around 5000 are High Definition channels which
can be viewed on a standard analog TV, though the image size is a bit smaller.
The technology has progressed to the point that the standard copper wire cables supplying
homes with telephone service from the SAI can also be made to handle high speed data - which, essentially, is what U-verse
is.
So what does the phone company have to do to get this new service
to your home? I'm sure most who read this have no familiarity with telephone cables and equipment. But for those
who do, here's a relatively quick explanation.
First, a pair of wires in the cable coming out of the SAI must be dedicated
specifically for the address where the service is to be installed. This means that there can be no length of cable beyond
the phone company terminal out of which the U-verse will be feeding for the customer's premises. There can be no Bridge
Taps, i.e., connections to the cable pair which might go off on a tangent to the pair to be used for the service. This
work is not performed by the technician who will be installing the U-verse but by a cable technician.
The cable technician then goes to the customer premises to see if the
premises is fed by a twisted pair drop as opposed to the much older single pair drop wires which are a pair of side-by-side
copper-coated steel wires. These are not suitable for the digital U-verse service and if this wire is presently carrying
service to the customer's building, it will have to be replaced with twisted drop wire such as that in the picture below.
In the picture above, three of four white dots can just be seen within
the end of black plastic outer jacket of the drop. These are nylon fibers which add strength to the drop and keep it
from stretching to the point of breaking over long distances. The two white filaments, or strings, are zip strips which
the technician uses to split the black plastic outer jack to expose the two twisted pairs within.
The drop wire is run to the existing Network Interface (NI), or, if there
is no NI, the technician installs one such as this one below.
Typically, the picture below shows what the customer side of an NI looks
like when opened. Pictured are two line modules for voice service. The lower one has a protective neoprene boot
over it to keep out moisture. Some years later it was determined that the boot didn't do all that much and it was eliminated.
So the upper module appears without it by design.
The picture below shows a slightly different NI with both the customer
and phone company covers opened. Inside the cover on the left can be seen the running sheet at the top which
identifies which lines are on which modules. To the right are the modules (in gray with the first one at the bottom
opened) to which the customer premises wiring is attached. At the right center are the lightning protectors (in
blue) which will shunt a foreign voltage surge to a ground source. The purpose of these protectors is to prevent dangerous
voltages from getting to the customer's telephone equipment or the customer himself should he be using the phone when an electrical surge
hits.
What can also be seen on the protectors is the old inline drop wires which had to
be replaced for U-verse service in favor of the twisted pair drop. These older drop wires were made of copper-coated
steel wire as opposed to just copper wire in the twisted drop. If the older drops happened to have a nick in the copper
coating, down to the steel, rust would begin to set in which would, in time, lead to the failure of the drop and the service.
But that's not the primary reason for using twisted drop. It has to do with the breaking up of the magnetic field which
surrounds every electrical circuit and which, due to the power influence from one side of the circuit to the other, could
interfere with the service - at least that's what I've been told. So if any of you engineers out there have a better
explanation, let me know and I'll post it.
The beige block at the top of the picture above the NI is called an Entrance Bridge.
In the early or mid 1980s, this block would have had a modular cord on it which would have plugged into the first
NIs the phone company used which are now discontinued. Some of them are undoubtedly still in use in the field in locations
where there has been little or no wiring activity over the years. The early NI for this Bridge had long ago been removed
and the modular cord was removed from the Bridge itself in order that it might not create a service problem should it become
wet or damaged. The block is still serviceable for making needed wiring connections.
The metal strip below the NI (with the three lugs) is a ground buss which
provides a convenient place to pick up a ground for the NI's lightning protectors as well as the cable TV coaxial cable which
can also be seen running horizontally above the NI to a cable TV filter just in the picture at the upper right. The
vertical clamp to the left of the filter is the ground connection for the coaxial cable and it is connected by a black 14
gauge wire to the ground buss.
But let's get back to the matter at hand. Once the drop is of the
proper kind, the technician installs a module in the NI (see picture below) which will support the U-verse television/Internet
access signal and a dial tone line.
The blue wire at the right is the Category 5 wire needed for the U-verse
service. This particular wire is also called Plenum wire as it can be used in open ceilings designed to provided the
cold air return in a building's ventilation system. It is made of Teflon to resist burning should a fire somehow get
into the return.
Note: the moronic powers that be wanted Teflon so the wire wouldn't
be so quick to burn and give off noxious fumes which could incapacitate someone still in the burning building. I've got
news for those dodoes. If a person is still in the building when regular phone wire starts burning, he's already dead.
And thanks to the taxpayer, they pay jerks to make up rules such as that. It also adds to the cost of wiring.
As of October, 2008, regular phone wire costs about $75 for a 1000 feet whereas Plenum wire costs three times that amount.
Makes you wonder who's getting the kickbacks doesn't it?
In this picture below can be seen the U-verse module. This device
has a filter in it to bring out the dial tone which piggy-backs on the digital U-verse signal and is accessed via the red
and green capped screws on the right. The unfiltered digital signal also provides Internet access along with television
service and is accessed through the black and yellow capped screws on the left.
Once the Cat 5 wire is connected to the U-verse module in the NI, the
other end is brought to a jack where the wireless Gateway will be installed.
Immediately below is a picture of a U-verse equipment installation.
In the picture below are highlighted the four main elements for this
particular installation. From the left down, to the right and then back up are the Hub, the Gateway, the Jack and the
Electrical Power cords for the Hub and the Gateway.
Gateway - the Gateway itself can handle four hardwired devices.
In this installation, the customer has seven hardwired devices.
Hub - because the number of devices exceeds the capacity which the
Gateway alone can handle (4), the U-verse technician installed a hub. It is like a hub which might be found on computer
when there are not enough USB ports to handle all the devices to the computer. In this case, the Hub is connected via
the white Cat 5 wire coming off the back of the Gateway (right side) from one of the primary ports (easier to see in
the picture above). The televisions are connected to the hub. The customer's computer is also connected to one
of the primary Gateway ports instead of the hub.
Jack - below and to the right of the Gateway is the jack to which
is attached the wire from the Network Interface. A green Cat 5 patch cord can be seen in the picture. It is plugged
into the jack and to the Input jack of the Gateway.
Power Cords - both the Gateway and the Hub require an external 110
volt power supply for the units to operate.
In the picture below can be seen some of the jacks used to connect to
the Gateway.
The two top gray jacks are for additional dial tone lines.
The green outlined port is for the Line In (labeled, Phone Line) from the jack
to which is connected the U-verse service from the NI.
The red bracketed jack, or port, is for an alternative broadband arrangement.
The yellow bracketed jacks are the primary digital signal ports for television and
the Internet.
In this next picture we have the jack arrangement. The U-verse
jack is the one in the center of the picture. The blue Cat 5 feed wire from the NI can be seen below it while
the green Cat 5 patch cord is plugged into the jack and then into the Phone Line jack of the Gateway. The jack on the
right had been used for a DSL voice line filter for the whole premises. As the DSL service was disconnected, the filter
was removed and a short patch cord was used to connect through the U-verse dial tone to all the phones on the premises.
Remember that the dial tone filter is now in the NI line module and no filters are otherwise needed.
Below, a closeup of the hub with the white Cat 5 feed patch cord.
Once all devices are plugged in, it is time to plug in the other end
of the Cat 5 wiring to the digital-to-analog converter which each device requires, that is, except for a computer. In
the case of this particular installation, the U-verse installer put an 8 pin plug on the end of the Cat 5 wire.
This was then plugged directly into the computer's Ethernet port. Below is an example of the front and back of one of
these converters in this installation.
As of October, 2008, AT&T had included a combination Digital Video
Recorder (DVR)/Digital to Analog (DtoA) converter in its installation. The DVR is usually at the location of the
main television set. I've been told it can simultaneously record up to four programs at a time and that there is a maximum
of 120 hours of recordable time.
I said that all televisions must have a DtoA converter. This includes televisions
which are digital, not just analog sets and it doesn't make any difference if the digital set is High Definition (HD) or not.
Every set MUST have a DtoA converter.
As can be seen in the picture immediately above, the Cat 5 wire with
the installed plug connects to the converter the way you would connect any 8 pin plug in a communication application, except
this is for television. The signal comes out of the converter via a coaxial cable which then connects to the input jack
of the television in the same manner you would connect cable TV service. As also will be noted, there are a variety
of jacks and connectors for an assortment of applications on the back of the converter.
And lastly, there is the Remote. As can be seen in the picture
below, there buttons for a whole slough of things. The U-verse technician takes whatever time is need to explain all
these functions and whatever the customer might not understand.
Each remote takes programing for a particular television set. In the application
mentioned on this page, there were 6 television sets. Each set has its own programming for the remote so that when
you use the Power button it will shut down both the digital-to-analog converter as well as the television. As any of
you who have setup remotes knows, every television has its own codes for the remote units. And the codes are unique
to each television brand. What works for one television won't work for another - usually. The U-verse
technician will set up the remote for you. So, my suggestion is, if you have a number of television sets, to
take a permanent marker and write on the back of the remote which television it is to which it belongs. You will save
yourself some grief. You will also get information from him which you can use to contact AT&T if for some reason
you lose the programming. They will assist you to get things up an running again.
This was not meant to be an all inclusive study of U-verse. I created
this page just to give anyone interested in U-verse service some familiarity with it as far as I am familiar with it.
I am not an expert on U-verse. If you need more detailed information, my advice is to contact an AT&T Business Office.
I can tell you that since we installed U-verse service in September of 2008, we've been very happy with it as well as with
the lower cost (for us at least) of the service compared to our old cable company.
If you think I might be able to answer some question for you, you can reach me by
way of the contact information in the sidebar on the left.
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