Non-residential Packages?

[texasguy37 ACE - Champion]

The update shown below has been made to the U-verse Programming Changes website.  I had no idea that there were non-residential TV packages.  Has anyone else ever hear of these?

November 22, 2010  

Dear Valued AT&T U‐verse® Member:

We hope you are enjoying your AT&T U ‐verse service. We wanted to make you aware that as of December 23, 2010, AT&T U‐verse Buzz (Channels 1300/300), AT&T U‐verse Theatre (Channels 1200/200), and AT&T U‐verse Sports (Channels 1600,600), will no longer be available in the following non‐residential packages: BP200/BH200/BVStan/BBasic/ UGov/UPublic .

We appreciate your business and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. If you have any questions regarding your package or subscription, please visit

att.com/uversesupport for the latest information or call us at 1.800.288.2020. Thank you for being a valued AT&T U‐verse member!

Sincerely,

Your AT&T U‐verse Team 

http://www.att.com/Common/iptv/files/programming/index.html

[Uniblurb3 ACE - Guru]

The "non-residential" TV package could be a Bell-South business TV package for the Southeast region Texasguy.

Found this link for "AT&T Business U-Verse TV":

http://smallbusiness.bellsouth.com/uverse_tv.html

From the link:

"AT&T Business U-verse TV requires purchase of AT&T Business U-verse High Speed Internet Business Edition.".

Can see where businesses such as hotels and motels may subscribe to this type of U-verse service.

But it's interesting if you look at the links to to shop for regular U-verse packages it says: "whether you're a gamer or a business....".

Maybe once they find you're a business there's a separate TV package which isn't widely publicized.

I remember trying to help a fireman in the forum try to get U-verse TV for his firehouse. The city/town was willing to billed and pay for the service. Maybe that's where a "non-residential" TV package ending in "gov" (like in your link) may come in to play.

Would still bet the info from your link is for Bell-South in the Southeast region.

edit: click on "Channel linup" at bottom of first link, enter zip code, check "Small Business".

When I enter my Ohio zip code I can see, "BV-deluxe, BV-standard, BV-Basic" channel lineups, which includes local channels, so this small business U-verse TV service must be nationwide.

[Chitown67]

Non-Residential would be Uverse sales to Hotels, Bars, Prisons, etc.  These packages would not be highlighted to consumers on consumer oriented web sites.  I'm sure if you are a hotel operator, AT&T has a rep for you! lol

P.S If you search through the Dish Network site though, you can find details of their Non-residential service----which is pretty close to ala-carte.

[kryptonite]

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Chitown67 wrote:

Non-Residential would be Uverse sales to Hotels, Bars, Prisons, etc.  These packages would not be highlighted to consumers on consumer oriented web sites.  I'm sure if you are a hotel operator, AT&T has a rep for you! lol

P.S If you search through the Dish Network site though, you can find details of their Non-residential service----which is pretty close to ala-carte.

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This.

The channel owners know they can get more money out of the businesses by running seperate "business accounts."

Many years ago, I found a PDF of DirecTV's business prices.  Whereas they may charge $35.99 for a residental package, that same package might be $80 or $120 for a business.  For a while, the MLS Direct Kick package was $69 for residental customers, but $100 for bars and pubs.  The more popular packages like NFL Sunday Ticket, or NHL Center Ice can be thousands of dollars per season for a business.  Many packages can cost more for a business depending on their seating capacity.

And yes, DirecTV has representatives they send around to make sure everything is legit.  I heard a rumor of a guy running a pub in his basement.  Needless to say, DirecTV was quite mad when they found out the guy was passing his account off as a residential account.

[dhascall ACE - Professor]

As soon as I read the title of your post, I knew it was for Hotels, Assisted Living, Restaurants, Jails and so on.  However, I did not know and still haven't been able to grasp how big U-Verse's non-residential customer base is.  Would they have streams and STB's or would they have one STB for each selected channel and push the signals over some closed-circuit system, like analog cable?  How do dbs based systems in hotels work?

[kryptonite]

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dhascall wrote:

As soon as I read the title of your post, I knew it was for Hotels, Assisted Living, Restaurants, Jails and so on.  However, I did not know and still haven't been able to grasp how big U-Verse's non-residential customer base is.  Would they have streams and STB's or would they have one STB for each selected channel and push the signals over some closed-circuit system, like analog cable?  How do dbs based systems in hotels work?

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That last question is a good one.  I can think of at least one hotel that uses a satellite system, but you use the TV's remote control and change the channels through the TV itself.  Any STB they have is well-hidden in another room somewhere.

[dhascall ACE - Professor]

My gut says that they use one STB per channel and then push it some basic distro service like analog / basic cable.  I have noticed that the PQ in many hotels sucks so maybe they have unique equipment that can put more channels per slot or something.

[Computer-Joe]

Probably no STBs involved. More like 2 or 3 octo-core servers running VMs and each VM runs the STB OS for one channel then all fed into an RF modulators and rebroadcast over the internal coax system.

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[SomeJoe7777 ACE - Geek]

It depends on the hotel, but most that I've seen indeed do use several STBs to tune in each channel, then a cable multiplexer to combine all the baseband video signals onto the hotel cable network.  It becomes kind of like a mini-head end.

Integrated into that head end is all the menu systems and interactivity, and lest we not forget, the PPV.

[kryptonite]

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SomeJoe7777 wrote:

It depends on the hotel, but most that I've seen indeed do use several STBs to tune in each channel, then a cable multiplexer to combine all the baseband video signals onto the hotel cable network.  It becomes kind of like a mini-head end.

Integrated into that head end is all the menu systems and interactivity, and lest we not forget, the PPV.

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It still seems like unless you're at a very fancy hotel, there isn't any on-screen menu in the room.  Many times the PPV is through a different company, like LodgeNet.