AT&T Widens U-verse TV to 325K North Texas Homes

Raising the ante against Time Warner Cable in Dallas-Forth Worth, AT&T said U-verse TV and Internet services are now available to more than 325,000 homes in the North Texas area, up from about 200,000 in April.

AT&T also said U-verse TV subscribers in the Dallas-Forth Worth area would be the first to receive several new features the telco said are designed to “further differentiate the service from cable.”

The new features, currently available for no extra charge, include U-bar, which delivers local weather, stock, sports, and traffic information to TV screens; access to AT&T’s YellowPages.com via U-verse TV; and Yahoo! Games, such as sudoku, solitaire and chess.

AT&T, which launched U-verse TV in the Dallas-Forth Worth market in March, earlier this month said the video service had passed the 100,000-subscriber mark across its entire footprint.

Time Warner Cable, meanwhile, is in the process of rebuilding its Dallas system, obtained from Comcast as part of the Adelphia Communications deal.

TWC chief operating officer Landel Hobbs on Monday said Dallas had to be almost completely rebuilt. He estimated the operator has completed its rebuild of about 75% of the 275,000 homes passed in Dallas and will finish the job by the end of the year.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the estimated population of the Dallas-Forth Worth metropolitan statistical area was more than 6 million as of July 2006.