AT&T adds wireless receive option for U-verse

AT&T today announced a new wireless receiver for its U-verse service that should help the company in achieving two different goals—reducing installation time and satisfying customer demand for greater flexibility in where U-verse -connected televisions can be located within the home.

“When we started to think through how to cut the installation time frame and get rid of wiring, we saw that customers thought it was a cool idea even without the time savings,” said G.W. Shaw, director of U-verse product management for AT&T.

New U-verse customers opting for the new offering will still need one television in the home to be connected to the access network via a wired connection. But additional televisions can be connected to a wireless receiver made by Cisco, which communicates via Wi-Fi with the gateway device underlying the U-verse service. A second device is connected to the gateway to enable the television and the gateway to communicate with each other. All U-verse gateways have Wi-Fi capability built in, which must be enabled in order for the offering to work.

U-verse customers will pay a one-time charge of $49 for the wireless receiver and a $7 per month receiver rental fee. Customers using a traditional wired approach to connect additional televisions in the house also pay $7 a month for each television, but do not entail the additional one-time charge.

Research shows strong customer interest
Before launching the wireless receiver service, AT&T conducted research about how customers would perceive the offering. “Customers said two things,” noted Shaw. “They said ‘We don’t want the ugly cord’ and they said ‘We want a TV where we don’t have a place to plug a cord in.’”

Key findings of that research showed that:
-- Two-thirds of respondents said it was very or somewhat important to have the flexibility to move the TV from one location to another without needing a TV outlet
-- More than 80% of customers said an important reason for having a wireless receiver was so they could place a TV in a room where there is not a TV outlet, such as a kitchen.
-- More than half of respondents said they would relocate a TV so they could have multiple TVs in a room to watch a sporting or pay-per-view event
-- More than 59% said they would relocate a TV to entertain visitors or guests

The new U-verse wireless receiver would seem to be a device that could be used as a stepping stone to giving people the ability to watch television on alternative devices such as a laptop or smartphone—a capability that would eliminate the need to purchase an extra television. Although Shaw declined to comment directly on that possibility, he said the new wireless receiver could be “the start of other options we will be looking at doing—it allows us to start thinking outside the box.”