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AT&T 's Randall Stephenson Talks to Walt Mossberg at the All Things Digital Conference. Worth Watching

Randall Stephenson, AT&T Chairman talks at the All Things Digital Conference...  he talks about churn, the impact of the iPhone, the use of data and how AT&T is managing the volumes of data that is being used on devices like the iPhone.

 

AT&T Will Continue To Make Special Concessions on Pricing for U-verse. TimeWarner Offers Me $100 to Switch. Here's What I Did

My $99 per month U-verse  plan that gives me the whole enchilada of the U-verse 400 package, 6 MB of Internet and U-verse Voice is expiring in mid-June.  TimeWarner in my market is offering something similar, but not quite as extensive at $99 per month.  Plus TimeWarner will give me a $100 rebate to switch, minus the $40 installation fee, giving me a net rebate of $60 per month.

Having made several calls over the last week, I did manage to negotiate the following:

Everything stays the same, but with the following modifications.

 They offered to keep the plan at $99 if I agreed to go to the U-200 plan.  That meant losing Showtime, HBO and a few other movie channels.  I can do without most of the movie channels, but I really do like HBO.  

The friendly customer service person offered me HBO at $14.95 per month.  I said no.   He countered with $5.00 per month.  I said yes. 

My landline service still costs $25 per month, and I am still on the fence about it.  That's $300 per year for service I hardly use.  I could use that money to buy a Kindle or just save it.  I kept the land line, but am inclined to kill it.  

For now, I have won a small victory.  What was going to go back to costing me $179 per month, will now cost me $104 per month - minus of course a few movie channels I can live with out.

I have a video that I am making the tracks the conversations with AT&T which I will try to post this week.

I still believe that AT&T offers a better and more comprehensive service than TimeWarner does.  I just was not prepared to pay a massive premium.  

Stay tuned.

My AT&T Triple Play $99 per Month Offer Expires Next Month: And The Phone Company Is Not Budging on Price

Back in late December, I managed to negotiate a pretty dramatic reduction in my triple play AT&T services from $169 to $99 per month.  

This lead to some pretty amazing media coverage with my story being told in The Wall Street Journal, NPR and even an appearance on Good Morning America.  

In telling my story my goal was to help save the American consumer millions of dollars, especially during this economic downturn.

When the nice people at AT&T lowered my bill, they did so only for six months.  

Well now, my contract is getting ready to expire and after a couple of phone calls to AT&T, they don't seem to budging on price.

So, I have made the decision that if they don't negotiate with me, I am going to kill U-verse Voice and possible U-verse TV, and just keep the Internet service so I can get WiFi and use my big screen TV to watch.... YouTube and Hulu.

Don't get me wrong.  I really like AT&T as a company and what they have managed to pull off and execute in bringing a really high quality and reliable service into my home. 

But I'm not prepared to pay they price they want for the services they are offering.  

I'd rather save my money, and either save it or do something with what would be about a $1,000 a year savings.

Stay tuned.... 

U-verse Pre-wired and Part of San Antonio's First Urban Residential High Rise

Over the last two years, I have been meeting periodically with San Antonio's Ed Cross, whose vision of making the city's urban core a great and fun place to live.  Now with his Vistana ready for move in, Ed decided to go with U-verse that is pre-wired in the building.  Here's my interview and tour....
The Vistana - Urban Residential High Rise Apartments in San Antonio with AT&T U-verse from Alan Weinkrantz on Vimeo.

Nokia E71x for AT&T Review by Nan Palmero

My buddy, Nan Palmero is cruising the isles at CTIA in Las Vegas on the lookout for cool new gizmos, gadgets and toys that you'll soon be able to get from AT&T.  Here's Nan's demo of the Nokia E71x.

AT&T Gets on the Twitter Bandwagon With March Tweetness

AT&T is getting cooler and hipper by the minute.  Here's March Tweetness --  a tool that allows the March Madness audience to engage with each other and feed off the excitement and energy surrounding the games.   March Tweetness alllows fans to find, follow and engage with the most exciting March Madness conversations happening in real-time. You can follow specific games, teams, players, fan groups.

Oh.... follow me on Twitter @alanweinkrantz

Guess Who is the World's Largest Long Distance Telecom Company?

Ok... test time.  

Guess who is the world's largest long distance telecom company?

If you guessed AT&T, you're wrong.

Verizon?  No way!

BT?  Nope

France Telecom?  Sorry.

Nippon Telephone & Telegraph?  Get a life. 

Why it's.... Skype.  Yup.  Skype.  Read more here over at GigaOM.

Update to boxee and updates regarding Hulu on boxee

boxee has just released a new version with the "App Box" (their version of the App Store), an RSS reader optimized for video feeds (including Hulu, Google Video, YouTube, and many others), and a long awaited auto-update feature.  These features are included in boxee for Mac, AppleTV, and Windows (I was told that they will send out an update when Linux is available).         

There is also an update with regards to our meetings with Hulu and their content providers below.  Sadly, they weren't ready to work with them yet.  When they are, they look forward to bringing a more robust version of the Hulu application back to boxee with their help.

You can download the latest version with the app box for Mac here: http://apt.boxee.tv/boxee-0.9.9.5324.dmg

Screenshots of the new build are available at http://drop.io/iloveboxee 

The following is posted at the boxee blog http://blog.boxee.tv/2009/03/06/new-version-hulu-update/ 

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boxee was  started because there was an opportunity in the media center space for a product/company who put the user first, while respecting the rights of content owners. Over the past year and a half, they've listened to users, content owners, investors, working to create that platform.  While I very happy with my traditional U-verse services, boxee expands its capabilities -- and to some degree illustrates a true disruption that big telecos and cable companies face.

Like many great product and technology breakthroughs, these guys did not come from an entertainment or cable background. The fact that it’s becoming easy to consume Internet video on a TV brings into question many of the industry’s business models that developed before the web. That’s part of the reason why Hulu asked to be removed from boxee. our meetings over the past week weren’t able to change that. but the people in the industry “get it”. they are users. they read the blogs. they talk with users. they are trying to adjust to a new reality, but they need time.

Users on the other hand, won’t wait. As seen over the past few weeks, users will take matters into their own hands to get the content they want.  Witnessing this, the boxxee team decided to enable access to a user's favorite content using a new built-in RSS reader optimized for video. Like IE, Firefox, or Google reader, the RSS reader supports Google Video, Yahoo!, YouTube and feeds from many other websites. while it’s not as attractive or robust as our previous Hulu application, it will additionally support Hulu’s public RSS feeds.

The extended support for RSS is part of a new version of the boxee alpha (no update for Ubuntu, yet). it includes two new features that are still under development:

• App Box - this is a first take at an application “store” that makes it easy for users to install new apps and plugins. there is also native support for 3rd party repositories, so you don’t have to rely on boxee as a gatekeeper for what goes into the official boxee app store. for example, you can add dir.boxeehq.com as a repository to get access to all the boxeehq.com apps.
•   
• auto update - long time in the making and really bad form on our part for not having it from the beginning. but better later than never. no need to check on Twitter or our blog to know that there is a new version. now you’ll be prompted to update boxee whenever there is a new release ready.

This is a bleeding-edge release. not for the faint of heart since it did not go through much testing. I was told that the company is on track to release a more stable update on March 24th.

Wanna Get Out of Your Spring Contract and Switch to AT&T? Here's How

If you still drool over wanting an iPhone, but are still on contract to Sprint, here's how to get out of your contract!

Info here via the rascals over at Gizmodo

XSTREAMHD to Offer HD On Demand Content

While AT&T offers a great Video on Demand solution, there is one thing missing to their service offering:  when you view content on U-verse's Video on Demand, you don't get true HD. 

Now, enters the XStreamHD solution that  enables consumers to build unparalleled in-home entertainment networks and enjoy Premium HD content; including 1080p movies, lossless music, electronic games and HDTV anywhere in the home. 

XStreamHD’s whole home HD entertainment solution includes the revolutionary XStreamHD Media Server that networks with multiple DLNA® compatible devices including the compact XStreamHD Media Receiver, TV, PC and game consoles.

Here's my interview with George Gonzales, XSTREAMHD's CEO....