AT&T U-Verse – Voice
AT&T offers three separate services through their U-Verse branded advance communications offering. This post will deal with voice.
U-Verse voice isn’t traditional wire line POTS service; rather it’s a feature rich digital communication service.
When you have AT&T U-Verse voice service installed, the pair from the Telco will be routed from your MPOE to the residential gateway and then back to your home wiring (though the MPOE). This allows you to keep all your current phones working through their existing wiring plant.
My residential gateway labels the first “POTS” port as line one and two, and has a separate jack for an auxiliary voice connection (the online account management only has options for one or two lines — but since there is an option for zero lines, there may well be an option for a third or even fourth line that simply isn’t displayed).
Remember the gateway is connected to a UPS, so you will be able to maintain voice service for some period of time after the electricity goes out — this allows for E911 during power outages (and yes, AT&T provides E911 capabilities with their U-Verse service).
AT&T currently offers two different levels on their voice plan — “Unlimited” and”250″.
The unlimited plan currently costs $35.00 in my area for the primary line, $15 for a secondary line (not including local, state, federal taxes and fees or FCC line charges); and the 250 is $25.00 for the primary line, $15 for a secondary line.
Below is what AT&T says about the plans…
AT&T U-verse Voice Unlimited
Provides unlimited calling within the U.S. and to Canada, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Marianas for just $30 per month. A second line that shares minutes under the same plan can be added for another $15 per month.AT&T U-verse Voice 250
For just $25 per month, provides 250 minutes of calling each month within the U.S. and to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Marianas and only 5¢ per minute thereafter. A second line that shares minutes under the same plan can be added for another $15 per month.
Notice the discrepancy in the price for the “Unlimited” — like I have already said, AT&T does not engender trust.
I’m guessing that other than the number of minutes of usage you get, the plans are the same.
When you get AT&T U-Verse voice you can have your current number ported (which means you can keep your current number) or have a new number assigned. AT&T of course will charge you extra for non-published or un-listed numbers, and they don’t seems to allow you to have the number listed under an alternate name (as Bell South did).
To me, charging for not doing something is a travesty — and simply a way to make more money; remember they make money on published/listed numbers by selling your address and telephone information to marketing firms (which I believe it should be illegal for anyone to sell any information about me without my express permission and paying me the amount I deem fair — which trust me, no company could afford).
You can manage many (if not all) of the features of U-Verse voice through the Internet, and many through your TV set-top box — I don’t really know how you’d manage your voice feature if you didn’t have one (or both) of the other services.
U-Verse voice include voice mail, call forwarding (no answer, busy, safe, all); call filtering (blocking, screening, exclusive call forwarding); call waiting, do not disturb, anonymous call blocking, locate me (or what some people call follow me ring); caller id blocking, international call blocking, directory assistance blocking… they don’t seem to specifically allow blocking of premium service and third party billing (900 numbers, xxx-976 numbers, collect calls, etc).
The service also offers logs of calls (placed, received, missed) and an address book (which you can use to place calls via the Internet or TV interfaces — I have no idea if you can do it directly from a telephone handset).
I’d say it’s a fairly sophisticated number of features — more than most people will ever need or use for sure.
The “feature” I use…
Well, I block ALL calls except calls from specified numbers. You see, since I don’t intend to keep this number I know that the only ones that will call the number got it from AT&T (not from me) — and are entities I don’t want to talk to… so I forward Google Voice calls (which I also have tight controls on) to it for the moment.
Other than that — I’ve used it to place calls (which I could have done via my cell phone using Google Voice) and send a couple faxes (which aren’t important to me — generally a company that wants me to send a fax I just laugh at and tell them to move into the new millennium).
My feeling is that the price is too high for AT&T U-Verse Voice… it should be on the level of $20 per month for unlimited service, and certainly no more than $25 per month — for 250 minutes it should be on the level of $10 per month. Obviously AT&T seems to feel that they’re offering some type of “premium” voice service, and seem to forget that for most people if they added even $25 per month to the cellular plan they’d be well over what some companies charge for unlimited and have the convenience of a phone they can take with them.
For me, it’s a service I won’t be keeping — I added it to the order to maximize the savings and minimize the installation fee… my calculation is that I’ll have to keep it a maximum of three months and it will end up being almost a wash.
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