US telecom behemoth AT&T (T) has reportedly registered 2 million customers for its U-verse TV (an IP based TV service) service thereby, achieving its target for the current year. The company has added 1 million customers so far in 2009 (including 240,000 customers in the third quarter) for this award winning service, which is now available to millions of homes across 22 US states.
 
The company also announced the expansion of its U-verse high speed Internet access services with the launch of Internet Max Turbo, offering peak downlink and uplink speeds of 24 megabits per second (Mbps) and 3 Mbps, respectively. The service is available to residential and small business customers in Austin, San Antonio and St. Louis with additional markets to follow in the near future.
 
AT&T continues to experience healthy market penetration of its U-verse services that combine U-verse TV, U-verse high-speed Internet and U-verse Voice. The company’s U-verse services continue to boost data revenues and ARPU (average monthly revenue per user) in the wireline segment.
 
To drive customer adoption of U-verse TV, the company has introduced several new features and extensions such as the total Home DVR (digital video recorder), Video-on-Demand and extensive High Definition channels. Moreover, U-verse TV added 13 new applications in the current year. To expand its video service, AT&T is also offering a co-branded satellite TV service in collaboration with Direct TV (DTV). U-verse TV has roughly 60% subscriber share in new markets.
 
Healthy growth from U-verse TV continues to help AT&T counter increasing competition in the traditional wireline business. U-verse TV is also driving the growth of the company’s broadband Internet business as more than 90% of video subscribers are currently bundled with AT&T’s broadband services. Moreover, more than 75% of U-verse TV customers have signed up for triple or quadruple play bundles.
 
AT&T’s U-verse TV competes with the company’s archrival Verizon’s (VZ) FiOS TV service, which is on track to hit 1 million new subscribers in 2009. U-verse TV also competes with cable TV services offered by leading cable operators including Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Charter Communications. However, U-verse TV can be bundled with AT&T’s wireless service, providing the company a definite competitive edge over cable.
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