AT&T aims for 10,000 IPTV installs per week

AT&T has reduced the average installation time for its U-verse IPTV service by 13% in the past month, according to Ralph de la Vega, the carrier’s group president of regional telecommunications and entertainment. And the company hopes to continue reducing installation times and increasing the pace of service activations.

Recent process improvements have allowed AT&T to reduce its average U-verse installation time from 7.5 hours to 6.5 hours over the past month, de la Vega said at an investor conference this week.

“My best region is doing 5.8,” he said. “My best district is doing 5.6, and my best technician is doing 4. So I like the trend.”

In recent weeks, AT&T has been averaging between 7,000 and 8,000 installations per week, he said. “Ten thousand is very doable.”

Earlier this month, the company announced having amassed 100,000 subscribers for the IPTV service.

Along with historical improvements in technology costs, de la Vega also cited improvements in video encoding technologies that allow for better use of network bandwidth. “Today we code using 8.5 Mb,” he said. “We now have codecs we’ll put into our network effective next month that do it at 6.5 Mb.”