Neat-O: AT&T U-verse Techs Can't Follow Directions
By Arlen Schweiger
Florida home prewired for AT&T U-verse turns to a disaster zone.

We've talked to plenty of CE pros who have needed to clean up messes left by cable companies. In this case, the term "cable" company can be used loosely, as in all of the cable strewn about by the AT&T U-verse techs who couldn't follow directions.

Needless to say, the result was not exactly how One Touch Control president Rick Harvey expected to find it. Harvey's team had prewired this Florida home for AT&T U-verse digital television and Internet service, among other systems including Control4 automation, Channel Vision communications, IC Realtime CCTV and DirecTV satellite.



Harvey says it's not uncommon for affluent households there to have both AT&T and DirecTV, whose NFL Sunday Ticket package serves this New York transplant homeowner well for following his Jets. The main U-verse DVR would be used to route recorded content to many of the home's 16 displays.

One Touch Control outfitted this downstairs closet's 28-inch Channel Vision enclosure - one of three in the home - with Cat 5, Cat 6 and coax cabling that gets bundled; communications cabling; CCTV cabling; a Netgear wireless access point (one of four in the house); some extra cabling; and a power strip. It serves as a key area within the home's technology systems, because the Cat 5 and WAP form wired and wireless backbones to the Control4 system, Blu-ray players, Apple TV, Xbox 360, several Macs and PCs and more.

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