AT&T promises multiple HD streams in '07

SAN JOSE--AT&T’s fiber-to-the-node network is delivering 25 megabits per second of bandwidth over its longest access loops and higher speeds over its shortest loops, and will be able to support multiple streams of High Definition TV by the end of 2007, Michael Grasso, assistant vice president of consumer marketing for AT&T U-verse said today.

In a speech at Telephony’s IPTV Workshop, held in conjunction with the VON show here, Grasso said critics of AT&T’s Project Lightspeed FTTN network are wrong when they say it doesn’t deliver enough bandwidth, can’t support HD and won’t scale.

“We are a leader in HD,” Grasso said. “We rolled out HD in the fourth quarter of last year, and we have more than 25 channels of HD programming, which is more than the average cable offering in our markets. Plus, every set-top box we deploy is HD-enabled and every DVR [digital video recorder] is HD-enabled. We have future-proofed our consumers’ homes, and we are just starting. We have only one HD stream to the home today but by the end of the year, we will have multiple HD streams.”

The hard work of building a platform that handles voice, High-Speed Internet, wireless and video on a single network is done, Grasso said, and AT&T is “confident our platform can handle a high volume of customers – we’re putting our foot on the gas.”

AT&T is differentiating its service from cable in multiple ways, including enabling consumers to record four shows simultaneously on their DVRs and providing remote programming of the DVR from a Web portal or a WAP-enabled wireless phone. The company is also promising better value, Grasso said, with service as cheap as $44 a month for 50-channel family-friendly video with DVR capabilities. “We don’t charge extra for DVR service,” he said. Next on the product road map is whole house DVR.

“We have created an environment in which we can build new products and services efficiently and effectively,” he said.