Worldnet AT&T Worldnet, a dial-up Internet access service, was launched in 1996 to compete with
AOL. As of 2007, AT&T Internet Services was a
trade name for five companies owned by AT&T that provided
Internet service under the
AT&T Yahoo! name: •
Ameritech Interactive Media Services (ameritech.net) • Pacific Bell Internet Services, comprising
Pacific Bell (pacbell.net) and
Nevada Bell (nvbell.net) •
Prodigy, which had been acquired by SBC in 2001 (prodigy.net) • SNET Diversified Group for customers located within
Connecticut. Following AT&T's announcement that it would sell
Southern New England Telephone and
SNET America to
Frontier Communications, SNET Diversified Group was merged into
AT&T Corp. •
Southwestern Bell Internet Services (swbell.net, sbcglobal.net) As of 2008,
BellSouth Telecommunications (bellsouth.net) also provided AT&T
FastAccess Internet service in the
Southeastern United States. AT&T assigned the att.net domain and AT&T Yahoo! Internet service in the AT&T Southeast (BellSouth) Region. New e-mail addresses from these companies typically ended in "att.net", with older addresses retaining the domains assigned to them by e-mail services provided by Maillennium, a system developed by AT&T Labs. In 2010, AT&T announced the migration of all former Worldnet-based accounts to AT&T Dial, AT&T High Speed Internet, AT&T Pre-Paid Internet or a standalone portal or e-mail service. Between April 5 and April 15, 2010, all WorldNet accounts that had not been migrated were suspended. AT&T Dial services were terminated in November 2020. File:AT&T WorldNet logo 96 to 99.svg|AT&T Worldnet logo (1996–1999) Image:AT&T Worldnet logo 1999-2006.png|AT&T Worldnet logo (1999–2006) Image:AT&T WorldNet logo 2006-present.png|AT&T Worldnet logo (2006–2007)
U-verse }}
AT&T U-verse, commonly called
U-verse, was the
AT&T brand of
triple-play telecommunications services, including
broadband Internet,
IP telephone, and
IPTV services in 22 states.
SBC Communications announced its plans for a
fiber-optic network and
Internet Protocol television (IPTV) deployment in 2004 and unveiled the name "U-verse" (formerly "Project Lightspeed") for the suite of network services in 2005. SBC eventually became AT&T in late 2005, and the AT&T name was applied for the service.
Beta testing began in San Antonio in 2005 and AT&T U-verse was commercially launched June 26, 2006, in San Antonio. A few months later on November 30, 2006, the service was launched in Houston. In December 2006, the product launched in Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Hartford, Indianapolis, and other cities in their vicinities. In February 2007, U-verse was launched in Milwaukee. One month later, service was initiated in Dallas and Kansas City. In May 2007, U-verse launched in Detroit, Los Angeles, and surrounding areas. Launch continued in Cleveland, Akron, and San Diego in June 2007. The Oklahoma City and Sacramento launches occurred in August 2007. In November 2007, service was started in Austin. In December 2007, U-verse was launched in Orlando and St. Louis. A controlled launch was also initiated in Atlanta that month marking the first launch in the Southeastern United States. On November 24, 2008, U-verse launched in Charlotte On December 22, 2008, the product debuted in Birmingham. On January 25, 2010, AT&T announced that U-verse was available to over 2.8 million households. In 2008, U-verse availability approached 8 million households and over 225,000 customers had been enrolled, with new installations reaching 12,000 per week. AT&T announced Internet 18 service (then called "Max 18") in November 2008, and Internet 24 (then called "Max Turbo") was announced in December 2009. On May 2, 2011, all DSL customers of AT&T became subject to a monthly use cap of 150 GB. The company began sending users notice of the change in Terms of Service on March 18, 2011. The plan for charging when a user exceeds the limit was to begin doing so if the account exceeds the limit three times over the life of the account, and the charge would be $10 for every 50 GB of overuse for DSL users. At the end of 2011, U-verse was available to more than 30 million living units in 22 states and U-verse TV had 3.8 million customers. By mid-2012, AT&T had 4.1 million U-Verse TV subscribers, 2.6 million Phone subscribers, and 6.5 million Internet subscribers. By the third quarter of 2012, AT&T had 4.3 million TV subscribers, 2.7 million Phone subscribers and 7.1 million Internet. This represents 7% growth quarter on quarter. The actual number of customers is lower, as most customers subscribe to a bundle (such as TV and Phone) and so are counted in both categories. At an analyst meeting in August 2015, following AT&T's acquisition of satellite provider
DirecTV, AT&T announced plans for a new "home entertainment gateway" platform that will converge DirecTV and U-verse around a common platform based upon DirecTV hardware with "very thin hardware profiles". AT&T Entertainment and Internet Services CEO John Stankey explained that the new platform would offer "single truck roll installation for multiple products, live local streaming, improved content portability, over-the-top integration for mobile broadband, and user interface re-engineering." In February 2016,
Bloomberg reported that AT&T was in the process of phasing out the U-verse IPTV service by encouraging new customers to purchase DirecTV satellite service instead, and by ending the production of new set-top boxes for the service. An AT&T spokesperson denied that U-verse was being shut down and explained that the company was "leading its video marketing approach with DirecTV" to "realize the many benefits" of the purchase, but would still recommend U-verse TV if it better-suited a customer's needs. AT&T CFO John Stephens had also previously stated that DirecTV's larger subscriber base as a national service gave the service a higher degree of leverage in negotiating carriage deals, thus resulting in lower content costs. On March 29, 2016, AT&T announced that it would increase data caps on its Internet service on May 23, 2016. On May 16, 2016, AT&T acquired Quickplay Media, a cloud-based platform that powers over-the-top video services.
AT&T Internet On September 19, 2016, AT&T announced that the "U-verse" brand would no longer apply to its broadband and VoIP phone services, renaming them "AT&T Internet" and "AT&T Phone", respectively, while the AT&T U-verse TV brand was maintained. AT&T adopted "AT&T Fiber" as the new brand name for its fiber-based internet service, with the "AT&T Internet" brand continuing to be used for its DSL internet service. In 2014, it launched AT&T Fiber in Austin, Texas with 300 Mbit/s speeds, but as of 2014 top download speeds have increased to 1 Gbit/s (1000 Mbit/s). In selected markets, AT&T began to replace AT&T U-verse TV with a new service based on its DirecTV Now platform,
AT&T TV, in August 2019. On April 3, 2020, AT&T began announcing that U-verse TV would no longer be available to new customers. New customers ended up receiving AT&T TV for TV service. However, by September 2020 AT&T spokesman Ryan Oliver, when asked if AT&T was still selling U-verse, said that “U-verse is available in select locations,” and "AT&T never stopped selling U-verse", even though an AT&T customer attempted to order U-verse, but ended up receiving 2 boxes of AT&T TV instead. In October 2020, the company stopped selling new DSL connections, saying that "We’re beginning to phase out outdated services like DSL ..." As of mid-2020, the company had about 650,000 total DSL connections. It continues to sell its hybrid-fiber service, sold as “AT&T Internet,” which combines fiber trunk lines with DSL last-mile connections for faster speeds. Internet Air competes with similar offerings from
T-Mobile,
Starry Internet and
Verizon. On August 2, 2021, the spinoff of
DirecTV was completed. AT&T TV (which became
DirecTV Stream) and
U-verse TV are now wholly owned services of DirecTV. == Web portal ==