While a show kickoff speech by AT&T Inc. (T) didn’t offer a detailed vision into the future of the service beyond what’s available today, the company did reaffirm that a tanking economy and shrinking consumer spending will not affect its final year-end U-verse TV goal.
The goal, which AT&T ambitiously stated much earlier in the year, is to have one million U-verse TV customers by year-end. As of the end of the third quarter, the mark stood at 781,000 in-service customers.
“We are solidly on track to exceed one million customers by yearend,” proclaimed Dan York, executive vice president of content for AT&T. “We’re really rolling along.” U-verse celebrated the second anniversary of its commercial launch just months ago.
The projection is worthy of note as economic challenges have had chilling effects on service providers and their infrastructure suppliers. Subscriber losses, layoffs and poor financials have been fairly commonplace in recent months.
In contrast, AT&T’s betting that subscriber adds will continue to be strong in the final six weeks of the calendar year. The third quarter was the largest ever in terms of U-verse TV customer adds in the service’s history.
The one million customer mark appears to be the last of the 2008 U-verse milestones remaining, with the company having rolled out support for simultaneous HD streams to the home, and having completed deployment of its Total Home DVR feature this week.
On the three-screen video front, York expectedly made repeated mentions of the need for content to span platforms, and of ongoing efforts to integrate its delivery assets, all without a single mention of IMS, a unifying core endorsed by others for the tall task.
“We are blurring the lines between our services,” said York, without providing new detail.
Beyond enabling technology, York did mention that the company reached an advertising milestone with three-screen video earlier this year in its delivery of Swampstock, a benefit concert for New Orleans powered by Tim McGraw.
The live event was the first three-screen, ad-driven event for AT&T, according to York, who said financial giant Chase sponsored wireless, U-verse TV and Web content from AT&T.
