Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Students will soon have another option for digital cable service besides Sunflower Broadband.
AT&T U-Verse television service is becoming more widely available for Lawrence residents. The U-Verse bundle is a service that combines high-speed Internet, wireless networking, TV packages from more than 300 channels, DVR and high definition TV.
Marisa Giller of AT&T corporate communications said that the company’s installation rates varied week to week based on customer demand, complexity of the installation, number of TVs on each install and whether the individual is an existing or new customer. She said they did not announce future AT&T U-Verse plans until available to a new area, but were continuously evaluating the community needs and were committed to investing in Lawrence and the state as a whole.
Rod Kutemeier, general manager of Sunflower Broadband said he did not know why AT&T waited so long to deploy U-Verse service in Lawrence, but said it could be because Sunflower customers were happy with their cable and Internet service as it was now.
“Our low pricing and good service has always been why people choose us over the competition,” Kutemeier said. “We don’t do contracts so you’re not locked into anything, unlike other services.
He said Sunflower was welcoming the new competition.
“We’re a local company that has the same channels AT&T offers,” Kutemeier said. “We dropped our rates and are more affordable, so now AT&T is responding by launching another TV service in our area.”
Sunflower is preparing to launch a new Internet product that will be available only to students for the month of August and then available to the general public in September. The new product is called Palladium and is designed for the optimization of video downloads from Web sites such as Hulu, Netflix and other video streaming sites. Kutemeier said Palladium was created because of customer concerns about bandwith overage charges. He said it would not have overage fees and would cost $49.95 per month.
AT&T U-Verse allows customers to build their own bundle, meaning for $49 per month they can upgrade their home phone plan with high-speed Internet, wireless and DirecTV.
To learn more about the AT&T U-Verse package visit www.att.com. For more information about Sunflower’s new Palladium service visit Sunflowerbroadband.com.
— — Edited by Justin Hilley
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Comments
Cable competition increasing across Lawrence
I'd like to dispute the statement that Sunflower has lowered their rates, considering that the television portion of our cable bill went up about four months ago, with no prior notice in any previous bill or by other letter that it would be going up.
Furthermore, Sunflower's customer service is a little on the iffy side. We were having problems with our internet that started on a Thursday evening. We called about the issue on Friday morning, were told that the soonest they could get somebody there would be Monday at best, if not Tuesday, and the CS rep made it sound as if even that soon was going against company policy.
The only reason we haven't switched away from Sunflower is that other services in the area so far require a dish to be put up, which our landlady is unwilling to do to her house (understandably, dishes are unsightly). As soon as AT&T or somebody else is available in the area dish-free, we'll probably be switching over, if for no other reason than that AT&T's DVR capabilities are better (able to record more shows at one time and still watch something else, according to my mother-in-law, who uses AT&T where she lives).