sbc gives customers u-verse

SBC COMMUNICATIONS INC. ROUNDED OUT its digital lifestyle story last month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, unveiling a DSL- and DBS-based home entertainment service and a new marketing campaign called U-verse.

Starting in mid-2005, a joint venture of SBC and 2Wire Inc. will deliver a home entertainment service that integrates satellite TV programming, digital video recording, video on demand, and Internet content including photos and music. It will be available to any SBC customers with both SBC | DISH Network and SBC Yahoo! DSL services.

While SBC recently announced its IPTV FTTN video strategy in partnership with Microsoft Corp., the separate home entertainment service announced last month is particularly important because it allows SBC to bring the third piece of the triple play — video — to its DSL customers, which in 2004 surpassed 5 million.

2Wire is building the set-top box/home gateway devices that will pull live video services from EchoStar’s DISH Network as well as ondemand video, music and Internet content via DSL. All of that will be delivered in an integrated fashion by a SBC Yahoo! user interface.

The home gateway — one of many new technologies demonstrated by SBC at CES — offers a variety of video-related features to give the user more flexibility than most cable TV offerings provide. That includes the ability to stop a program and restart it from another TV in the home; the ability to record two video programs simultaneously; and more.

CinemaNow Inc. and Movielink LLC will provide the on-demand movies for the home entertainment service, according to Paul Brunato, a 2Wire spokesman.

Using the 2Wire capabilities, customers also can upload photos from their digital cameras or PCs to the 250-gig home gateway; that way, individuals or groups can view pictures on a TV screen. There’s even a feature that allows users to build and store a photo album on the home gateway, says Jason Rhee, product marketing manager of media at 2Wire. The home gateway and a Wi-Fi router/modem from 2Wire also allow users to draw various media — whether video, images or music — from any PC in the house.

Messaging is also part of the mix. The home entertainment service will enable caller ID and e-mail to be displayed as pop-ups on users’ TV screens. Initially, that will include only e-mail tied to SBC Yahoo! Accounts, according to Rhee.

And customers can access content from and program the 2Wire box using any Web-connected computer — even computers outside the house. In the future, SBC expects to offer the ability for users to control the home gateways remotely via Cingular wireless phones.

This home entertainment service — along with a variety of other new services from SBC — eventually will be marketed under the umbrella brand U-verse.

The telco’s consumer VoIP service, which will be called U-verse Voice, will be the first of the company’s offerings to be marketed under the U-verse brand, according to Brooks McCorcle, vice president of consumer marketing at SBC. (The company expects to launch U-verse Voice throughout its territory this quarter.) Over time, however, all of SBC’s video and other IP-related services will be U-verse branded.

McCorcle says the voice service will be marketed primarily through the Internet via banner ads and targeted e-mails. But as SBC launches its Project Lightspeed FTTN network and IPTV and other services later in the year, the U-verse campaign will expand to include more mass-media forms like TV ads.

SBC Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre says at the heart of the U-verse portfolio is Project Lightspeed, the company’s previously announced $4 billion initiative to deploy fiber close to 18 million households across 13 states by the end of 2007. Through Project Lightspeed, SBC plans to deliver integrated IP-based video, voice, wireless and data services.

“Marketing has taken on a whole new light at SBC, and we need it” to promote and educate customers about Project Lightspeed, says McCorcle, commenting on U-verse and the other efforts at SBC to become a force in entertainment.