AT&T's U-verse draws fire from Chicago 'burbs

Believe it or not, there are some people who actually watch those local access channels most providers add on to satisfy demands from government bodies in exchange for franchises.

And there are a bunch of them in Chicago's northwest suburbs who are steamed over what they say is AT&T U-verse's sub-par performance; in fact, it's so bad they want the state to step in. Among their complaints are poor audio and visual performance, no closed captioning and long load times.

"(This) puts the local programming into a different, sub-par, class of service," said Peter I. Collins, information technologies manager for Geneva. "The programming is basically streamed on demand like a Web cam, whereas the law has a requirement for equal quality and ease of use for programming."

AT&T says U-verse gives consumers the ability to "call the shots on the programming they want to see, not only from their own city, but from neighboring communities as well."

For its part, Comcast says its cable offering is far superior. "We work diligently to ensure that the picture quality is shown on the same high standard as the commercial channels," said Comcast spokeswoman Angelynne Amores. 

For more:
- See the full story [1] in the Daily Herald

Related articles:
- AT&T U-verse rolls into Chicago AT&T report [2]
- AT&T U-verse costing company more AT&T report [3] 
- AT&T offering U-verse Voice in Detroit AT&T release [4] 
- AT&T U-verse: 30M customer locations by 2010 AT&T report [5]