I’ve posted a couple of times about our TV service and U-Verse and Time Warner. (here and here and here and few other places if you nose around)

We really dug AT&T’s U-Verse and were a little miffed that it wasn’t available when we bought the house. We’ve been reluctantly paying Time Warner for a little over a year now and we went with (for the first time in forever) a lower package. We’re normally all-in when it comes to TV packages, but Time Warner just sucks so bad and is so out of touch with what customers want, need and expect that it’s not even funny. To be honest, I miss some of the channels we haven’t had for the past 15 months, but refuse to give TW any more than I have to. We don’t even have cable boxes on the TV’s upstairs because I don’t want to give them the monthly fee. It costs almost $18 just to have a DVR on the big TV. (Yes, $18 a month – broken down as 9.95 for DVR service, $7.64 for a Digital Converter and $0.32 for the remote… Fuckers!)

Anyway, over the past 15 months, I’d occasionally check the AT&T site and try the availability tool. It always told me service wasn’t available at our address. One time at the mall we stopped in and talked to them a little about how we had service and loved it then moved less than a mile away and now can’t get it. We were told that crews were always in the area expanding coverage. We also knew this was true because those crews usually spent months at a time at my wife’s hotel and she even hit them up trying to get them over our way or find out more info.

Then two or three weeks ago, I swung by the availability check tool and punched in our address knowing what the result would be. And I was right. But something clicked this time and I thought, “Why don’t I start punching in addresses in my general vicinity and see exactly where the lines are.

(In all fairness, I had done this before, but not to great extent. Just some random address on each street until I found availability. Nothing detailed or methodical. And I knew we were close, but not covered.)

So this time I start with the guy across the street and get a “no” on service. So I got around the circle of the cul-de-sac and get three more “no” answers for the two house on the end and the house to our right. So then I go to the house across the street at the end (the 6th house of 6 on our little cul-de-sac) and get a “yes” on service. WTF!?

So obviously being on a cul-de-sac, our street hits the perpendicular street and forms a “T” shape. Our street runs east/west and hits the “T” on the east side (the west is the ‘circle’ end of the cul-de-sac) and the perpendicular road runs north/south. Of the six houses on the cul-de-sac (three on the north side and three on the south side) only the easternmost house on the north side shows availability.

I’m trying to paint a picture here.

So I decide to go south down the perpendicular street and find no one able to get sevice on either side of the street. But if I make a right and head west, so that I’m now checking houses who share the woods behind our house (people who we share property lines with in some cases) I’m seeing that they all show it available and two of them actually currently have AT&T service!

So I come back to the “T” and go north on the perpendicular road and find that everyone that direction has service available and a few even use it already. I complete the circle by checking the houses behind the people to our left on the end of the cul-de-se (the next perpendicular street to the west) and find complete availability with some customers sprinkled in.

Ahhh, let me just draw a picture:

The yellow glowing house is us. People in red can’t get service and people in green can. That’s how broken and fucked up it is. My guess was seem to be right in between two VRADs. I don’t know a whole lot about how it works, but I know it’s distance based and that it’s not unusual for odd patterns like this to appear based on the way established wires/cables are running.

I figured I’d either need to go back into the AT&T store or give the 800 number a call and explain the situation and see if they could send someone out to see things firsthand and let me know if there was a way to make this happen or not. All I know is it was frustrating looking out the front window and seeing a house that got service and then looking out the back and seeing another bunch of houses with service available.

Then, no shit, two days later, my wife gets a call from a friend of ours who just moved (into a really nice fucking house/neighborhood). She wanted to let us know they were getting U-verse and wanted to pass along some info knowing we had been wanting it for a while. Basically they were in almost the same situation. Houses all around able to get service, but their address showing not available. The difference is that AT&T just got over to their neighborhood and had salesmen going door-to-door to drum up awareness, interest and sales. So they talked to the dude and explained and he confirmed the weirdness and said that this happens a lot and most times, AT&T just has to come in and “get it working”. I assume this means running a few new cables to shorten the distances, but I have no idea, really.

At any rate, she gives my wife this guy’s name and number.

So on Monday she calls and he shows up at the hotel to talk to her. He gets the info (our address and the addresses around us) and tells her the same thing. Basically, let me get hold of some people and see if we can get this working for you, it shouldn’t be a problem. He’d be in touch.

We heard from him today and he made an appointment to stop by on Saturday. Not sure what for, but it’s a positive sign.

So here’s to me getting my hopes up and maybe, finally, after 15 long months, getting rid of Time Warner and their bullshit once and for all.

If this doesn’t pan out, I might have to consider DIRECTV. I’m not totally against it, but I’d rather not. And I’d still need to use TW for my net connection. So that’s less than optimal too.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.