And, of course, I hit the 250 GB bandwidth cap on Comcast. Now, as I previously suggested… before departing Comcast, you should do this too, so that Comcast can’t keep the Affected Rate artificially low.

If that sounds rambling, I’ll put it another way. Comcast basically says 99% of people aren’t affected by the bandwidth cap. That’s because those folks quit Comcast right when the cap went in. So, by hitting the cap, you remove Comcast’s excuse that virtually nobody is affected by it. And, every three months I’m viewed as a new customer… and proudly (albeit very temporarily) switch back to Comcast… lather, rinse, repeat.

Okay, enough ranting on Comcast versus U-Verse. The great news is that my initial install took much less time (and only one premise technician). But, the install hit one snag. My apartment suffers from a chronic problem facing many buildings. And, that’s that many outlets aren’t ground wired.

Now, you probably know that the third prong on a three-prong outlet is the ground prong. It’s meant to provide electricity with an emergency exit. If something dangerous happens (say, a wire goes bare, touches the metal casing on a gadget), then the ground wire is used to pull the power away from the device (and most importantly, away from any human touching the device at the time).

In the late 80′s, three-pronged devices just started going into devices. At the time, electiricians were flooded with work orders to give every dwelling at least some three-pronged outlets. That’s why many still have some two-pronged and some three-pronged units.

Well, with all this renovation, corners got cut. Electiricans didn’t want to have to tell landlords and homeowners that they had to run ground wires. And, at the time, gadgets didn’t really need them… not on the 500W PSU situations that we often deal with today. So, the corners got cut, and the outlets weren’t grounded.

So, what was a small problem with the U-Verse install, led to the discovery that the entire complex’s electrical wiring is out-of-code… and hazardous in a few ways I didn’t even realize while looking at it (yes, there were that many layers to the problems). It’s like The Money Pit… everything looked fine, until it went to crud.

Oh, and somewhere in there, my insurance agent called (had to buy more insurance for MechaWorks)… so this came up. Apparently, it’s enough of a hazard that you can be disqualified from a renter’s insurance claim (should electrical and/or fire cause damage).

As such, if you rent, I strongly encourage you to get a wiring tester, or at least a surge strip with a dedicated wiring fault indicator (and make sure it says that it checks for wiring faults… not just surge protection). Oh, and have renters insurance… you never know what lies inside those walls.

And, with that, I’m now sitting back while electricians rewire nearly every outlet, as well as run grounding lines to the breaker, and down to the street. My condolences to the landlord… their wallets won’t be looking as good this Memorial Day. $3,000 less good.

As you may know, OnLive promises lag free gaming from your web browser. I’m not going to poke holes here in OnLive (though I did that quite nicely over there). But it’s safe to say that it is a massive bandwidth hog. While the developers claim it doesn’t always demand 5 mbps per second, that really depends on what games you’re playing. Either way, at most you’re going to get 3.8 hours per day on Comcast (or, about 114 hours per month… not factoring in any other data usage). Any more and you hit their 250 GB bandwidth cap.

And don’t even think about AT&T’s pending 150 GB bandwidth cap. You won’t be able to finish one major game per month with that…

My first warning is simple: This is going to cause ISPs to lower their bandwidth caps, or charge for more bandwidth. That’s really not a shocker, if OnLive hadn’t provoked it, I’m sure some other platform would (and really, Mozy and Carbonite likely started that process already).

But my second warning is more specific. OnLive has said that they are looking to score preferential treatment deals with the ISPs. I would advise ISPs to stay as far away as possible from those deals. Even the Bush administration FCC mandated net neutrality (and the Obama FCC is going to be even more net neutral).

Giving preferntial bandwidth allotments to OnLive is just as bad filtering BitTorrent traffic. It’s an anti-competitive business practice that is against the public interest. But, that’s not me talking, that’s the existing mandate of the FCC. And you can rest assured, if any ISP gives OnLive preferntial treatment… we’ll be the first to stand up against it.

I won’t go through all the FUD. But, basically, there are a lot of uninformed customer service reps at AT&T, and a lot of people making wild guesses.

Here’s the deal. You can have a dry loop U-Verse connection with only internet. But, you have to have either the 10 mbps or 18 mbps plans. The reason being, AT&T doesn’t want you to escape the dry loop fee on traditional, DSL speeds.

Now, the procedure is also painfully tricky. First, you have to order and have installed TV or Digital Voice, in addition to Internet service. You can’t just order Internet alone from the get go. Once you’ve had TV service or Digital Voice service for 24 hours, call AT&T U-Verse customer care, and say you want to cancel the TV/Voice service.

(Why did they do it that way? Simple, they want you to bundle. Even if it means that a few people will go through a mess of provisioning to activate the TV or Voice service, only to cancel it a day later, most won’t. Most will keep the TV/phone service and not even realize that they can pick and chose between U-Verse, Cable, and Satellite.)

At this point, they should (emphasis on should) take care of it. I had no problem on my first try. However, others have had to make numerous calls to get the job done. Good luck, if you want a cap-free internet, supporting U-Verse as it is today is a great way to vote with your wallet… assuming it’s in your area.

This morning, maintenance techs came out and replaced that line with a “little crosstalk” which “couldn’t have been the issue.” Only, their tune changed when a bunch of water came pouring out of the line…

That didn’t completely fix the issue though, so I had a premise tech dispatched as a last-ditch effort to replace the CAT5 line into my house.

Being proactive, I didn’t want to wait for the (ninth) tech to come out and scratch his/her head. So, I got on the phone with Tier 2.

Initially, Tier 2 also couldn’t find anything wrong. But, they said they’d pass it up to Tier 3 to “reset the data on everything.”

That apparently did the trick. I can only suspect that the NOC found something it didn’t like with the old line’s quality, for which none of the diagnostic tools could reported yet. Considering that 18 mbps is new, and there are probably plenty of added stuff that can go wrong with FTTL/ADSL2+ at those speeds… I’m not surprised the diagnostics come back clean.

Still, I don’t think I’ll ever know what did the trick. But, since nothing happened between the non-working period, and the working period, I have to conclude Tier 2 or Tier 3 did something on the backend that fixed it, especially since the connection started working properly within a couple of hours of my call.

Regardless of why, the connection now works as advertised. Consistent 18 mbps down, consistent 1.5 mbps up.

My upset today? First, the premise tech never came out as promised. I was going to tell him/her that everything was working when I got my pre-appointment call. Problem is, I never got that call. That’s probably the sixth appointment that AT&T never made good on. Do they realize that missing an appointment is one of the rare times that AT&T can’t just say “sorry for the inconvnience” with a straight face? They absolutely know that missing an appointment means damages, not inconvenience to the customer.

I like U-Verse, I really do. I just think the service has gone to dismal levels when dealing with the infastructure that AT&T has right now. There’s two parts to this: Union (CWA) FUD, and AT&T FUD. AT&T must make restructuring union contracts a priority, in order to improve customer service. If they don’t take a customer service focus to negotiations, they’ll continue to have these problems… and I’m speaking from experience here. Cut down the union-imposed walls to improving customer service, or AT&T could wind up like the Big 3 auto makers today.

Truth be told, that’s why I’m writing these posts… so that AT&T can improve.

On one final note, after being pretty good about it, maintenance techs tracked mud into my house late yesterday. I now have carpet stains thanks to them. They stopped walking on my carpet after I noted it… but now I have to have my carpets cleaned. So much for my $225 in cash back just for signing up. Thanks AT&T (not)! AT&T may wipe out my bill for the first month to cover all this… I’ll follow up if they refuse.

This is affecting my bottom line. It’s not okay.

I called into dispatch this afternoon, and I have been hung up on three times in a row. The phone rings through to someone, and then just cuts off. I don’t know if it’s their phone system, or if they’re just acustomed to my caller ID number. I suspect the former, since I’ve tried on two different phones.

After that, I called the last premise tech (thankfully, he left his card), and he’s calling around to try and get to the bottom of why this is getting so screwed up.

Developing… very, very slowly.

Update (9:40 PM): A lot actually started happening around 5 PM. Two maintenance technicians came out, and got to work. I got a call from Robert (one of the premise techs, and the first person I called after I couldn’t get dispatch to answer). Major praise to him for rescuing the job. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and got the trucks rolling again.

They found the signal between my house and the VRAD was fine, albeit with some crosstalk. But, rather than just leave, they got on their phones and kept calling… until they found another premise tech to come out. I now have three big AT&T trucks on my street at this point.

Ultimately, they decided to replace the Remote Gateway (that’s the modem and router combo box). That did fix the bad fit issue which Tier 2 Tech Support… but the connection was still bouncing arround. Every speed test either had the download rate screwed up, or the upload rate. That’s consistent with the issues that I’m having, as the connection runs fine climbing up to 18 mbps, then gets knocked down, only to start climbing back up again.

After I thought the maintenance techs had left (giving up really, none of us could come up with something else to try), they knocked on my door. They decided that since there was some crosstalk on the line, that replacing some of the line would indeed make sense… even though the diagnostics were coming back clear.

So, they’ll be back tomorrow to do that. If that doesn’t work, we’ll move on to replacing the line that AT&T hijacked from U-Verse (the feed indoors). If that fails… I’ll be packing stuff up to move to Silicon Valley at that point, so I really don’t care. Hopefully U-Verse will work better at my new home.

It’s about 7:15 AM, I called in early to the dispatch department, remembering that they clock in at 7 AM. For some reason, the maintenance service tech didn’t get my job until 8:40 PM… way past the 6:10 PM that the premise tech called it in, and far too long after my 4 PM call (where I was promised the maintenance tech would arrive simultaneous with the premise tech).

It’s quite clear to me at this point that dispatch lied to me and never scheduled the maintenance tech to meet the premise tech, they probably just opened the case and let it sit there… rather than take the two minutes to get on the phone and tell someone to go out there. Not a great way to start the day.

Regardless, I’m the “second job in the assigned technician’s queue”, which means that they should be here “before Noon”. I’ll keep you updated with what happens this time around.

It may be time for me to set up an AT&T category with all this going on… at least I can go to Starbucks and use my (now free, thanks to U-Verse) AT&T Wi-Fi over there.

Update (6:05 PM): Not good. I’m starting to dislike the maintenance regime at AT&T even more. I’ve even had premise techs complain about them, and the union FUD that has created this useless divisioning at AT&T.

Oh, you wanted an update. Well, basically, nobody has come out to re-run the cable from the VRAD to my house. Dispatch now says that my ticket has been kicked “to the bottom of the wait list” twice today. It looks like maintenance just doesn’t want to do it (in the rain, at least). I’m on hold while dispatch calls over to find someone who can call the maintenance dispatcher and “fixes this”.

Another gripe: AT&T, please get consistent names for your employees. I’ve had the same department referred to by no less than six different names. Everyone at AT&T seems to know they all refer to the maintenance department… but I’m sick of it. MST, Engineering, Maintenance, Repair, please stop the insanity!

Update (6:20 PM): My maintenance ticket just got “re-prioritized” to the front of the line… yet again. No ETA on when they’ll actually do it. Considering it’s after 6 PM, I’m looking at a fourth day of no reliable service.

Update (10:00 PM): Surprise, surprise… not. Nobody from AT&T came anywhere near my house today. Thanks AT&T! I’ll be calling dispatch tomorrow… hopefully with progress (than the zero amount which happened today).

Two problems had cropped up with U-Verse since it was installed mid-week, and today I wanted to get them fixed. First, my HDTV had brief periods of pixelation. Every 5 to 15 minutes, the connection would freeze, for about a second to two. Worse though, was the internet. I was only getting about 12 to 13 megabits, and am on the 18 megabit plan. Even worse than that, it couldn’t be sustained. Backups of PhoneNews.com averaged four to six megabits… in between the constant connection drops to zero kilobits.

First tier tech support didn’t have a clue. They said all their green lights were green, and that it was my network (blaming having too many computers, using hubs, etc). I cut through that FUD and explained how the first tier rep was wrong on each point. Then, I asked for tier two. About 10 minutes later, tier two support came on the line, and things started becoming clear.

Most of tier two’s initial tests came back clear. But, they ran a signal test, and found that my line was getting too much power. This apparently happened because maintenance ran the new line from the VRAD too short. I live quite close to the VRAD on my street, so this was supposed to be avoided… in other words, maintenance either didn’t get the instructions, or didn’t follow them.

Long story short, tomorrow a U-Verse tech will be out to confirm the diagnosis. Then, they’ll order maintenance out to re-run the line (yes, again) with a longer cable that will avoid the overpowering. Then, I assume U-Verse techs will be back out to re-test the finished new line.

It’s progress, and that’s a lot better than nobody having any idea why my connection isn’t working at the top speed.

Update (5:07 PM): AT&T did not come out in the 10 AM to Noon window that they quoted me. I finally called them (had other things to do, yes, I do have a life). After 32 minutes on the phone (mostly on hold), we got things back on track.

Since I got the number for dispatch directly, I was able to speak their language. As such, I got them to agree to send out both the premise technician and the maintenance technician simultaneously. They usually don’t do that, but since my case got screwed up, I was able to convince them this would take two days… at this point… to finish the job otherwise.

So, it is lousy that they didn’t make the first appointment. Had this been just about any customer than myself, said person would be stuck at home two days in a row, losing two days of work to get this problem fixed.

And, really, there’s no guarantee still I won’t be said person. I’ll keep you up to date when they come out.

Update (6:12 PM): U-Verse premise tech just called me, should be here shortly…

Update (6:24 PM): Premise tech is done and gone. Basically just confirmed the fit on the line was bad, and verified that the ticket for the maintenance tech was in. Should be out before 9 PM… but if not… I get to call in tomorrow. The good news is that they shouldn’t have to enter the house, so I’m not stuck at home even if they have to come out tomorrow.

Update (9:26 PM): The maintenance department didn’t show, so I get to have to call in at 7:30 AM tomorrow, in order to make sure that they will come out today.

And, in case you haven’t figured it out yet… maintenance can’t verify that the new line will fix the bad fit. So, once they are done, I have to call Tier 2 tech support, have them check the line, and if the fit is still bad… have another premise technician come out, to come up with a new game plan.

Yesterday was off to a good start, but AT&T tripped over a non-existent wire (literally). Can U-Verse redeem itself with a finished installation today? Let’s find out together. Read more for the complete liveblog.

8:30 AM Just got a call from the U-Verse installer. This isn’t a good start. The wiring team was supposed to be out here first, to finish wiring the circuit. The installer wasn’t happy to hear that “let me call my supervisor… obviously that didn’t happen… either way I have to come out.”

The good news is, unlike the previous installer he said he would “stay until the wiring crew came out and did their job.” That’s progress, considering that when yesterday’s installer left, everyone at AT&T (and I do mean everyone) forgot what needed to be done.

On a more positive note, SureWest forgot to disconnect my internet, and Comcast forgot to disconnect my cable. While that’s not great customer service… at this point, I still have service, and am pleased about that.

9:30 AM It has been an hour since the U-Verse installer called, and more than twice the time it takes for the trucks to roll out here. I called the installer back at his phone number, but got nothing but voicemail. I’ll give it 15, and then I’ll be calling Customer Service…

9:40 AM Decided to check the VRAD before calling further. Sure enough, an AT&T truck is out there… going to investigate.

9:56 AM Apparently, the truck out there was not for my case. Austin, one of the two U-Verse install techs assigned to my area (Scott being the other), informed me that maintenance has some backlog because wires went down after some rain last night. But, they are re-escalating it with maintenance department queues every hour. As soon as maintenance gets out there to fix it, they’ll shuffle me back to the top of either Austin or Scott’s queues… whoever can get out here sooner.

Progress? Shrugs. Maintenance appears to have their marching orders, but now we have no idea when they’ll come out today.

10:16 AM A big maintenance truck pulled in a few minutes ago. The maintenance tech said that they “didn’t provide him with much info.” Luckily, I was able to give him all the details on what he had to do.

And, then I had to explain how I don’t work for AT&T…

He’s out on his computer right now verifying the specs I gave him, so we should be under way with running the cable in a few.

11:11 AM The cable has been re-run from the VRAD to my house. Now the ticket has been bounced back to U-Verse installation, so I should be getting a call soon from them.

11:30 AM Just got a call from Ron (yes, a third U-Verse installer). They are handing the job off to him since he’s had the opening in his schedule. He’ll be here in “about 15 minutes.”

11:50 AM Scott just called, apparently he also got the ticket and is coming out as well. Chances are, one of them will leave and the other will do the job… this is the kind of redundancy that I like to see. I’d rather have two techs come out, rather than none at all (a la maintenance yesterday).

12:02 PM Ron arrived, and promptly passed the job off to Scott. He’ll be here in a few minutes.

12:09 PM Both Scott, and the maintenance tech have arrived… I now have both sides of the street lined with AT&T trucks. The maintenance guy was called back because there’s been so much trouble with this job thus far, that they want to make sure everyone is on hand to finish the job

12:34 PM Remember that cable that I mentioned yesterday, that they would have to run around my house in a circle? That’s what they’re running right now. This cable will feed right into the U-Verse gateway.

I do have to question at this point why AT&T won’t just take U-Verse Fiber To The Home (FTTH) now, rather than just to the loop (FTTL). Basically that means that at some point (a few years down the road), they’re going to have to come back out and replace the line.

I guess it makes sense in apartments and when all the wiring is set up already for FTTL. But, SureWest splits the difference just fine. They run FTTH when possible, and fall back to FTTL.

It’s worth nothing that SureWest’s FTTL, while only a regional play, is pathetic. Their ADSL2 maxes out at 10 mbps, less if you want to use HDTV from SureWest as well. AT&T thankfully did ADSL2 right, and let you have a full 18 mbps alongside HDTV.

Of course, both still have their problems, namely the asynchronous woes of a maximum potential for 2 mbps upload speed (currently capped at one, to give AT&T room to roll that out that second megabit later on). Hence, why I think it would be smarter to roll out FTTH when possible now. One could even envision where it would make good business sense to offer an upgrade kit to FTTH, where someone would pay the extra install fees in order to get proper fiber-grade upload speeds… especially when we’re talking U-Verse for Business.

1:02 PM Switched over to WWAN via Phone as Modem. The U-Verse installer is hijacking SureWest’s drop so that he doesn’t have to crawl under the house to run his cable. I told him to go ahead, after all, I’ll be in Cupertino about when my one month of U-Verse here is up… no need to preserve SureWest’s wiring in the house.

1:23 PM Houston, we have dialtone!

1:49 PM The installer decided to keep the SureWest stuff intact and run his own line. We’re waiting for sync on the gateway box, and setting up the STBs right now on each HDTV.

2:06 PM Setting up the STBs is taking a bit longer, but may still be provisioning. The gateway is synced and provisioned…

2:26 PM Posting this from U-Verse on my MacBook Air. U-Verse is fully set up, and the installer just left. Total time for the job: 2 hours 25 minutes.

First Lesson: Have a maintenance tech on-call.

This was something that U-Verse used to do religiously, and have stopped now that U-Verse is “becoming mainstream.” Having one maintenance tech being ready to roll out, at any time, would have saved me a day of lost income.

Second Lesson: Don’t let customer service fall by the wayside.

One incompetent customer service representative nearly botched the entire U-Verse deployment. Continuous improvement in this department is crucial.

Third Lesson: Let your support chain be like Jack Bauer.

It should not be hard to escalate through a ticket chain when it gets broken. Supervisors should be armed with the tools to cut through support ticket and queuing protocols, when those protocols are counter-productive.

Aside from losing an entire day, and a single incompetent support rep, things went well. This is a far cry from AT&T’s famous 20-day-DSL-installs. I encounter those at least twice a year, including up to the present.

At this point, I’m pretty happy. I now have U-Verse running on my existing network, and AT&T was able to work with me to deploy U-Verse how I wanted. If I wanted it to run over coax in my house, great. If I wanted it to run on CAT5, they were ready for that too.

Probably the biggest lasting letdown, is that the U-Verse Gateway (which does the routing as well as being the modem) has only 802.11g. It’s time for them to roll out 802.11n gateways, so that folks don’t have to daisy chain in needless gear.

I haven’t had U-Verse long enough to judge the visual quality, of course. I can say that I do see some minor artifacting on HD. It’s clearly Windows Media Video pixelation… but it isn’t inconsistent. The pixelation happens at the same rate across the picture, then rasters up to full quality when things stand still. Think of a JPEG video at 70% quality… and you start to get the picture. When things are still, they look perfect… but there is some motion blur.

Now we have to play the game of quality vs quantity. I now have over 100 HD channels, versus Comcast’s 15 to 20. And, I now have 4-channel DVR accessible from any room. Oh, and Picture in Picture… which TV makers relentlessly gut to price gouge for it on high-end models.

In the end, AT&T will likely keep my TV business when I move to Cupertino, and they have a monopoly on fiber speeds… considering Comcast caps.

P.S. AT&T, don’t cap U-Verse internet… you’ll lose me in an instant.

And, as with the TiVo CableCARD installation, I’ve decided to liveblog this one. After all, like my CableCARD install… I’ve waited a bit for U-Verse to become mainstream. There should be no real issues with the installation, but if there are, it’s a good time to point them out (since, well, AT&T is exiting the early adopter phase for U-Verse).

1:25 PM AT&T has said that U-Verse should be here between 12 and 2 PM. Still haven’t seen them, but we’re inside of the installer arrival window. I’ve already told Comcast to jump off a cliff, and I reluctantly set my SureWest Fiber To The Home (FTTH) account to close at midnight. That was a tough phone call to make, I’m trading 20 mbps down and 20 mbps up for $90/month, for 18 mbps down and 1 (yes, one) megabit up for $65/month.

1:31 PM Just got a call from the U-Verse installer, letting me know that he’s on his way.

1:50 PM The U-Verse truck has arrived.

2:02 PM We got our game plan set. While we could use the existing coax to power the TVs… I don’t trust the coax in my house. So, we’re going CAT5 over my existing network. And, as usual, this is their first 18 mbps install in the area.

Only complaint so far, the install tech is chomping on gum with his mouth open. Highly unprofessional.

2:05 PM The installer is off to the VRAD down the street to enable everything on that end. Unlike the old U-Verse installs, this shouldn’t require a second install tech to come out and finish the job.

2:18 PM Yes, there will be photos. Right now the tech is wiring up the VRAD. It actually appears surprisingly old tech inside of there… you’ll see.

And, of course, I’ve gotten the usual 20 questions about how I know so much about all of this :)

I just give them the dot-com startup story, and explain about how it’s in our interest at MechaWorks to get fiber out there to everyone. Yes, we’re working on high-bandwidth stuff, but I’ve mentioned that already.

2:32 PM The install has hit its first real snag. The wiring in the house was set up in the pre-DSL era. As such, it’s not really well-designed to handle U-Verse.

Long story short, they’re having to run CAT5 basically in a circle around the house. Not a huge deal, and not something out of the ordinary… but it will add a lot of time to the job.

3:03 PM Uh oh. No sync on the line. Not good. That means that even though the wiring is set up, it’s not seeing AT&T upstream.

Part of the problem lies in that I never used AT&T for local phone, so this is a dry loop install… with possibly bad wiring. SureWest had completely bypassed AT&T (complete with their own phone jacks) in the house, by running their own lines. So, the U-Verse installer is trying to diagnose the wiring problem.

The installer just had to call others to get some guidance on what to try next… we’re in for a fun time.

3:13 PM We’re in hunting mode. The installer has to go back to the VRAD and make sure the right line is being run to the house. The house wasn’t properly numbered at the VRAD, likely due to that the house hasn’t had AT&T service since before the VRAD was deployed.

Long story short, this wouldn’t be happening if you had plain old telephone service (POTS) from AT&T. That said, this isn’t a good thing. U-Verse is targeting the kind of people that don’t have… much less want… an archaic phone line. They’re going after the customer that has already dumped their phone line for VoIP, or their cell phone.

3:22 PM While we’re waiting for the wiring hunt to finish, I guess it’s a good point to talk about my setup. I mentioned the internet part previously, so let’s look at the TV setup.

Right now I have two HDTVs that need to be switched. One has a TiVo HD connected to it. The other is running cable via ClearQAM, with a standard def digital tuner for Comcast On Demand content. Not perfect, but I refuse to pay $7/month to give the second HDTV a non-DVR tuner.

U-Verse will solve this though. Both tuners will be HD DVR, and allow for transferring of recorded programs.

And, what of my TiVo HD? I plan to keep it (as an OTA DVR), but only if TiVo negotiates the rate down. My contract is up with TiVo in April, and if they don’t play ball… it’s getting shut off. Yes, TiVo will negotiate with you on the service rate, especially after your initial one year contract is up.

3:37 PM My U-Verse installer is sitting out in his truck, on the phone. Not good. It means he probably didn’t find the connection at the VRAD to my house… or that something unknown is broken along the VRAD-Home-Indoor chain.

3:41 PM The problem wasn’t the wiring in the house, and it wasn’t the VRAD. It was the circuit in between. This means that a wiring team has to come out, and run a new line up. As I suspected feared, because I didn’t have POTS (recently), this never was run.

Now it’s at-risk that the install can get finished today. The wiring team will have to be deployed immediately, in order to meet the cutoff time. If they’re tied up (no pun), the wiring team won’t be able to make it out. Worse, if the wiring team even does make it out, it’s even more questionable as to if the U-Verse installer can come back to set up the router and set top boxes (STBs).

Now is time for me to start getting nervous. I may be without internet and television service come tonight.

3:50 PM The wiring team has been dispatched, but they have no idea when they’ll come out. It could be within the hour, any hour tonight… or tomorrow. I’m surprised (and not in a good way) that U-Verse doesn’t have some ETA system for the wiring techs.

It’s not reasonable to ask me to sit here for an indefinite period, potentially spanning multiple days… forced to sit at home for every second. AT&T once again forgets people have day jobs. And, in this fiercely competitive market, that’s A Bad Thing™.

So, now I sit, wait, cancel appointments, and lose money. Thanks AT&T!

5:50 PM After waiting two hours, I decided to call U-Verse Customer Service, and demand an ETA for the wiring team. The customer service rep on the phone is working on that, and says that she will call the local office if it’s needed to get me one.

6:50 PM After a first nice-but-incompetent rep, we have progress.

The first rep was nice, but then not nice… and everything in between. She was courteous, but didn’t want to disclose technical reasons. Then, she insisted that I could not get U-Verse deployed for “at least two days.” I wanted to suggest things like reconstructing the orders… and quoting her “I won’t get into that.”

Needless to say, I was not upset when my phone dropped the call a half hour in.

Called back a second time and got Katie. Thank you Katie. This is the kind of support that I was told to expect from U-Verse support… and starting to fear was dead. She re-structured the order locked in back-to-back appointments for the wiring crew, and the installer.

Score card for U-Verse Customer Service now stands at one thumb up, and one thumb down. We’ll pick this up tomorrow.

Update: You can jump to day two’s liveblog right here.

Looking at the lost productivity, even factoring out Christmas as a day off (despite my plan to give myself the gift of scrubbing my email inboxes of messages that I’ve read, then marked as unread), I’ve lost a ton of productivity. It’s a big setback considering the deadlines and timetables I’m working on.

So, I’ve decided to have AT&T’s $10 the-FCC-made-us-offer-it service installed (which runs crawls at 768 kbps down/128 kbps up). Already 1.5 years into their 2.5 years of the forced offering, I think that AT&T might actually wise up and keep offering the plan after they don’t have to anymore… especially in this economy.

With home offices becoming more and more mission-critical (again, especially in this economy), a couple of days of lost productivity can justify a year’s worth of $10/month DSL service as a backup plan.

Plus, there is some indications that AT&T does actually now appreciate the offering that they so much resisted offering. For example, AT&T now offers Wi-Fi roaming, even on the $10/month plan. Why offer Wi-Fi to customers that AT&T thinks are barely profitable? I suspect AT&T wants to keep the plan, just doesn’t want to tell investors that they like offering it. Then, at the end of the FCC-mandated 2.5 years, they can showcase to investors that they have tons of customers on it, and that it wound up being a profitable venture.

Over the past eight years, the FCC has surprised me quite a bit… we’ve gotten net neutrality, national broadband mandates, and broadband for dial-up speeds. That’s a track record that I hope carries over to the next administration.