AT&T to pack a bigger HD punch for U-Verse subscribers

AT&T (NYSE: T) wants to get your video dollar and to obtain that goal, the service provider plans to further enhance its U-verse offering by providing eligible customers access up to four high definition channels.

Set to be available by the end of the year, the new HDTV offerings are made possible through the advent of DSL upgrades and MPEG-4 compression techniques. Without these upgrades, U-verse customers had been limited running only three HD simultaneously.

Speaking during the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment investor conference Thursday, John Stankey, president and CEO of AT&T's operations division, said the new enhancements reflect the ongoing evolution of how far its IPTV service has come over the past four years.    

"We've moved from four standard-definition streams at the onset [when U-verse TV launched in 2006] to at the end of this year introducing four HD streams in a household," he said.

Stankey forecasted a bright future for U-verse, a service he says will bring in $4 billion in revenue this year. During the second quarter, 209,000 new subscribers signed up for U-verse.

For more:
- Multichannel News has this article

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