AT&T technicians Tim and Leland came by the house today to install the newly unleashed U-Verse service, offering 10 Mbps downstream and 1.5 Mbps up. As advertised, it does exactly what it’s supposed to, as demonstrated by these Speakeasy Speed Test (Atlanta, GA) results:

While we did have a few issues with the account activation process, a quick call to Tier-2 technical support resolved the issue. The technicians were aware of registration problems through the web site, and with my permission tried a USB installation system of some sort at one point — however, it appeared not to work under Windows Vista.

Like many others in technical circles, I am worried about AT&T’s decision to provide fiber to the node (FTTN), versus Verizon’s FiOS, which offers fiber to the home (FTTH) with up to 15 Mbps both downstream and upstream. When I examined the signal tester that the technicians were using, I did observe a channel capacity of approximately 55 Mbps, so perhaps AT&T is simply testing the waters or provisioning for their television service.

Still, if your options thus far have been limited to Comcast, or 6 Mbps DSL, AT&T’s U-Verse may be just the ticket.