AT&T Says U-verse TV IPTV Service Saw Record Subscriber Additions in Q1

US incumbent telco, AT&T, announced last week that its Microsoft Mediaroom-powered IPTV service, U-verse TV, had enjoyed a record first quarter. According to the company, the service attracted a record 284,000 net new subscribers during the quarter, bringing its total subscriber base to over 1.3 million. The service is now available in 93 markets in 19 states.

According to AT&T, nearly 50% of U-verse TV subscribers take one of its two largest video packages, over 90% bundle the service with high-speed Internet, and over 75% receive the service as part of a triple- or quad-play (note: the company recently rolled out in all its U-verse TV markets a promotional bundled offer that provides TV, high-speed Internet and voice service for $30 each for 12 months). "We're focused on delivering a better experience than cable," Jeff Weber, VP of video services for AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, said in a prepared statement. "Our accelerated customer growth shows that the demand for a high-quality TV service with value-added features and integrated services remains high even in challenging economic times."

AT&T says that its new quarterly record for subscriber additions coincided with the first full quarter in which its Total Home DVR service (included in most U-verse TV packages at no extra charge) was available in all U-verse TV markets. It also credited, among other things, three new interactive TV services with contributing to recent subscriber growth: College Basketball from Yahoo! Sports (see below), a 2009 Masters application (see below), and Weather On Demand, an app that was co-developed with Accuweather.com and that has been rolled out widely across AT&T systems over the past few month.

The U-verse TV 2009 Masters app offered a multiscreen mosaic display of live coverage, a regularly updated leaderboard, player scorecards, stats, bios, news updates, tournament photos, a course map of the Augusta National Golf Club, and access to video archives. It was offered at no extra charge and resided on channel 619 for the length of the tournament. It was part of an extensive three-screen offering that also saw AT&T providing 2009 Masters coverage on its VOD service, on its AT&T FanZone broadband video service, and on AT&T wireless devices.

The U-verse TV College Basketball from Yahoo! Sports application, meanwhile, which was rolled out for the 2009 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship, provided tournament brackets, game summaries, box scores, and video clips of game analysis and commentary, and also allowed viewers to set up their own personalized tournament brackets. It was offered at no additional charge, and was accessed through the U-verse TV service's AT&T U-bar interface (note: the latter allows viewers to receive customized sports, weather, stock and traffic information on their TV screen). In order to set up their personalized brackets, viewers had to use their U-verse High Speed Internet account to log in at att.net and then click on "Sports" to pick the teams they thought would advance. They could complete their bracket any time from when the brackets were first announced until the beginning of the NCAA Championship's first game. Once the championship began, viewers could track the accuracy of their team picks by viewing their brackets on the TV screen: correct picks were highlighted in green and incorrect picks in red.