AT&T Inc. has reached 1 million U-verse Voice digital home phone lines, two years after AT&T introduced the advanced VoIP service. More than 67 percent of new U-verse TV customers bundle U-verse Voice service.
AT&T added 248,000 U-verse TV subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2009, totaling 2.1 million U-verse TV subscribers in 22 states, and adding 1 million U-verse TV customers in the last year alone. U-verse Voice is available in the120 markets that offer U-verse TV.
AT&T needs to ramp up its VoIP subscribers: Cableco rival Comcast Corp. still leads in the home digital voice game, reporting 7.4 million residential VoIP customers in the fourth quarter. But AT&T’s VoIP milestone is also important from a strategic perspective. AT&T’s goal is to leverage the all-IP nature of its next-generation, fiber-based home communications suite to roll out new features that take advantage of the carrier’s television, voice, PC and wireless platforms, in a blended way. The carrier has hit upon this “three-screen” strategy as a big differentiation point.
“We knew we had the opportunity to revolutionize our consumer business with U-verse and our IP platform, and the growth of our U-verse TV, Voice and broadband services shows we’re on the right track,” said Anthony Tuggle, AT&T vice president of wireline voice products, in a statement. “Customers are choosing U-verse Voice for its reliability, advanced features and unmatched value as part of an integrated AT&T bundle. U-verse Voice will only get better as we continue to launch more calling apps and features.”
Some of those blended features include a single, combined voice mailbox for access to AT&T U-verse Voice and AT&T wireless messages. Subscribers can also view their call logs on their PC or their TV screen, and initiate a call from their PC or TV. Last fall, AT&T started a market-by-market rollout of Caller ID on TV, which lets U-verse TV and Voice customers view caller ID and voice mail notifications on their TV screen.
