Pair Bonding Enables AT&T's U-verse To Reach More People

Ever heard of AT&T U-verse? Unless your neighborhood is one of the few scattered about America with access to U-verse, there's a good chance that you haven't heard about it. Basically, it's a rival for cable carriers, DirecTV, DISH Network and Verizon's FiOS. It's a fiber-based system that provides Internet, TV and phone service just like any other telco, but AT&T has struggled in reaching plenty of homes while installing the technology. Once a node is built, the reach is rather short, so unless your home is really near a node, chances are you're out of range.

But now, that may be changing. AT&T has announced that it's "deploying a new, but long-promised, technology to reach more homes with its U-Verse service, which provides cable TV and higher Internet speeds." Basically U-verse just extended its reach, and that's a great thing for consumers in need of telco competition. The process that makes it happen is called "pair bonding," which essentially sends signal over a pair of power lines at once in order to extend reach. According to reports, this will enable each node to extend another 1000 or 2000 feet, which is obviously enough to rope in quite a few more subdivisions.


The company is being quiet as to exactly how many more homes now have access, but estimates are close to 30 million. Pair bonding from AT&T has been talked about since 2008, and we're hoping that now that the roll out has begun, they won't slow down until it's implemented in all of the 22 states that they serve. More competition, please!