I have spent just over two years with U-Verse Internet only service. The house was new when it was bought, it is in a newer neighborhood with lots of other new developments around it, and luckily it is a FTTP installation. I have not noticed any outages and also I never had to call customer service. There were several reasons that have caused me to switch to Cox, along with adding CATV for the first time in 8 years.
The 2Wire 3800 HGB-V is a piece of equipment that I hated. It is large so it didn't fit into my structured wiring enclosure with other equipment in it. It has outdated standards, which caused a slow network inside the house. And it doesn't have a proper bridge mode to set a decent router behind it. So it had to sit on my desk and take up both Ethernet ports, one for the service line coming from the ONT and the other back to the switch in the closet. The wireless signal was pretty spotty everywhere in the house and I assume this is because it used internal antennas. About 6 months ago I decided to test out cloning the MAC Address to my D-Link DIR-655 I had sitting around from the previous place using AT&T DSL. Solved all my problems, except the $6/month rental fee. But why again must I rent it when it's not really used outside of authenticating (at some point)?
The increased fees have also irritated me. When I signed up they weren't offering any discounts without bundling services. So I paid $48/month plus a $3/month modem rental fee for 12/1.5 the entire time. About 2 months later the rental went up to $4, which wasn't a big deal. Last year it increased to $6 plus they are increasing the service price to $51 per month in a few days.
Everybody else has been outpacing AT&T in offering faster speeds. Cox has had DOCSIS 3 in the area for awhile now. It's been bonded channels around here for at least a year and maybe a little bit more. Yet AT&T still only offers a maximum of 18/1.5 for FTTP customers. Although customer service did try to offer me a deal on 24/3. I asked him if he was sure I could get it and the best response I got back was a tech would have to come out to verify it. I'm sure after the tech visited, told me I could not get it, the next deal offered would not be as enticing. I declined. I did read AT&T has promised faster speeds starting later this year.
The other complaints are not directly related to service I had, since I never had TV through AT&T, but they are the reasons why I didn't. No CableCard compatibility was a big one. I already had a TiVo with a lifetime sub but it would have been served the same purpose of OTA recording if I decided to use U-Verse TV so what was the point? I didn't want to pay a $10/month HD Service fee, or $15/month for a DVR, or hell any money so every TV could receive the programming. $2/month for a CableCard from Cox isn't a terrible deal, since it is cheaper than even a standard receiver rental. Also AT&T should follow suit with some good programming at a much lower rate than their $60/month 150 tier. I am enjoying Cox TV Economy, which dumps the costly channels out of their basic digital lineup, and costs roughly half the price. I don't care about ESPN, MTV, or many of the other ones. There are about 3 channels I do wish I could add, but they aren't worth $10/month each.
I do hope I can switch back to AT&T, at least for Internet, but only after they do something about the speeds and the modem rental. Cox hasn't been too bad so far for the weekend I've had it. I am getting 28/3 sustained and more like 35/8 during speed tests and PowerBoost and it costs just a little bit more than I was paying but it evens out since I added TV service too.
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