I have an acquaintance in Atlanta who claims he's got Uverse Fiber to the Home (FTTH). I believe he's confused.

Anyways, he had to suffer through a 12 hour install ordeal the other day, plus numerous hours on phone with Support just to get it working. The internet speed is not appreciably faster than his previous DSL. Gotta believe it's FTTN.

Yes it does!!  My niece just bought a new home not a mile from me and asked me for assistance in planning her TV, phone, and internet companies.  She was leaning towards TWC for all of her services to include phone which was VoIP.  I told her that was a big mistake.  I did finally convince her to at least install a land line with AT&T since she was getting a burglar alarm.  I know some alarms work with VoIP but I'm old fashioned and like land lines for at least that purpose.  Anyway she ordered the line from AT&T and asked if I would be able to show up when the installer came out (I know a little bit about phones, well 30 years worth).  I did and was I surprised when he goes to the utility easement and opens up the pedestal and goes back to his truck and pulls out fiber!!  I asked him if this was going to run to the house and when he said yes I was pi$$ed she was getting it and I couldn't.  Not really just jealous.  The tech told me that in all new subdivisions in our area AT&T does not run copper anymore, just fiber, and everything is fiber to the premise. 

He hooked up the fiber NID outside, hooked up the battery back up inside, punched a small hole in the side of the house to get the power to the NID and she was up and running by about 9 am.  I immediately told her to call and cancel TWC (they were scheduled for the next day) and call to activate UVerse.  She did and a UV tech was on site by noon.  I was impressed!!  I had already wired the whole house with Cat 5e, Cat 3 for phone, and Coax to all of the places she wanted (all 11 in a 1800 sq ft home!!) and all cables ran to her laundry room.  Everything was terminated and ready for which ever service she wanted.  The first thing the UV tech did was call and cancel his tech that was coming to assist him, and then said he would be done in about an hour.  I guess the other tech thought he was pulling his leg so he showed up anyway.  With both there they were done in a little more than 30 minutes (one DVR and one STB that's it no internet yet).  Both UV techs were quite impressed and jealous they didn't have the same arrangement at their house.  I told them not to feel bad I didn't either!!  Now I want to move!!        

I will also add an afirmative to the "does FTTH exist".  I live in the suburb on the far east side of St Louis (the Illinois side of the river) and there is fiber everywhere.  As new developments have gone in, they lay in fiber.  My entire development has fiber as does one where a co-worker lives.  Around here the project was started more than a year ago when SBC was doing the work under a project called "LightSpeed".

On an interesting note, even though I have U-Verse I selected a "traditional" (non-VOIP) phone line.  With the fiber-to-the-premise it made for an interesting install and included mounting an 8-hour UPS to the wall in my basement.

Who says life isn't better on the "Illinois side of the river"? I'm on the MO "west side" in a 45 year old developement with underground copper, which was probably state of the art in 1963.

So is there also copper to your premise (CTTP?) to handle the traditional voice service? Or does your inside phone wiring go from copper to fibre at the NID box? Just curious.

Does UVerse FTTP cost any more?

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Desertnate wrote:

I will also add an afirmative to the "does FTTH exist".  I live in the suburb on the far east side of St Louis (the Illinois side of the river) and there is fiber everywhere.  As new developments have gone in, they lay in fiber.  My entire development has fiber as does one where a co-worker lives.  Around here the project was started more than a year ago when SBC was doing the work under a project called "LightSpeed".

 

On an interesting note, even though I have U-Verse I selected a "traditional" (non-VOIP) phone line.  With the fiber-to-the-premise it made for an interesting install and included mounting an 8-hour UPS to the wall in my basement.

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        nathan u can have phone on fiber and not be voip  fyi

        did they run copper along side your fiber  (i doubt it)

        the ups on the wall is typical of fttp phone service fyi

        even with fiber to the house u can still have errors if the cable in it cat5 or coax is not terminated correctly  (cause problems)

        sounds like from some of your posts that things are as bad as it was for your viewing pleasure...

        after u get settled in and u still have problems ( guys/gals here be more than glad to chime in on possible solutions)  imho

Standard Disclaimer : IMHO

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volvo945 wrote:

Who says life isn't better on the "Illinois side of the river"? I'm on the MO "west side" in a 45 year old developement with underground copper, which was probably state of the art in 1963.

 

So is there also copper to your premise (CTTP?) to handle the traditional voice service? Or does your inside phone wiring go from copper to fibre at the NID box? Just curious.

 

Does UVerse FTTP cost any more?

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Well, I don't know about life being better over here...your gas is 20c/gal cheaper and most of the good shoping and eating places are much closer for you!

There is only fiber going into my house...thought I don't know how many strands.  I followed the construction pretty closely, but somehow missed it when they came out and burried the line up to my house.   I know the phone line is fiber because I had to deal with a completly seperate customer service department and technicians to hook up my phone service.  The phone service also had to be hooked-up before the U-verse guys came out.  It was the phone techs that installed the UPS in order to provide service when the power to the house goes out.  They said it would give me 8 hours, but since they also hung the U-Verse RG off of it, I am curious how long it will really give me.

Inside my house, the U-Verse runs over the COAX wiring and the phone lines run over the CAT5E/CAT6 phone wiring.  From the best I can tell they are completly isolated.  I see copper in the punch block on my basement wall, so my guess is (as you thought) that I have fibre to the house and then the box they hung on the outside has the media converter that puts the signal onto copper.

If it ever quits raining I'm going to look at the boxes on the outside of the house and see if I can figure everything out from the external plant perspective.  Right now, the sod isn't down yet and my yard is a giant mud hole.  The poor ATT techs went through an entire box of those little paper booties the day they came to my house. 

No U-Verse didn't cost me any extra because they are using infrastructure that SBC/ATT already put in the ground.  Around here, when they bring in lines to a new neighborhood or home, it is all fiber.  From the best I can tell, they are no longer laying in any new copper lines.  

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randyl wrote:

        nathan u can have phone on fiber and not be voip  fyi

        did they run copper along side your fiber  (i doubt it)

        the ups on the wall is typical of fttp phone service fyi

        even with fiber to the house u can still have errors if the cable in it cat5 or coax is not terminated correctly  (cause problems)

        sounds like from some of your posts that things are as bad as it was for your viewing pleasure...

        after u get settled in and u still have problems ( guys/gals here be more than glad to chime in on possible solutions)  imho

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The funny part is my phone and internet connections are flawless.  I'm wondering if either my expectations were too high, or I do have a problem with the coax in my house.  I inspected all of the cabling while the house was being built, but there could always be a bad connector somewhere...

Again, thanks for the offer of assistance.  When life settles down, I'll start investigating a little closer.

FTTH is installed in new developments. For existing structures, it's "FTTN" (node, DSLAM, VRAD) via copper.

From a user standpoint, the service is identical; same bandwidth, everything. There is no choice (FTTP/FTTN) offered, at least for now, what you get is what you can get.

The primary difference is that POTS delivered via FTTP is always premises-powered via small UPS to maintain phone service for ~ eight hours (no Internet, no  TV, just phone). For FTTN, POTS can be delivered over the copper like traditional DSL, or it can be "C-Voice" (VoIP) through the RG (in which case, it is also prem-powered like FTTP).

So let me get this straight, there is no advantage (at least for now) having FTTH?  I thought I had read somewhere that FTTH had some advantages over FTTN, but maybe I was mistaken.  I'm interested because we're building a new house in a new subdivision in The Colony, Texas (north Dallas area).  The developer lists AT&T U-verse as a provider for TV and internet (don't see any mention of Verizon FIOS).  Therefore, I've been visiting this forum and reading up on U-verse.

While I'm at it, could I ask a couple of questions at the risk of being accused of thread-jacking:

1.  On the STB, are HDMI and component "hot" simultaneously?  The master bedroom is directly behind the family room.  I thought I might run HDMI to the family room TV, and component (from the STB in the family room) to the master bedroom.

2.  Is the U-verse STB and remote control IR only, or also RF?  This query is related to the question above.  I know I can get an IR blaster.