The Verizon FiOS/AT&T U-verse story has been an engineering and capital expenditure story for several years; now it is a marketing story. Verizon has what is arguably a superior product, at least in terms of bandwidth delivery, and Verizon has achieved a 3:2 dominance in the market over AT&T. However, in the last three quarters, AT&T has been outselling FiOS by substantial (35%-40%) margins. Why is this happening? This report will look in to some of the marketing differences to seek the answers. It will also explore the many other differences between theses two services.

On May 29, 2003, the then three largest RBOCs (BellSouth, AT&T, and Verizon) announced that they had adopted a common set of technical specifications for the delivery of fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP). In other times, the announcement of the FTTP RFP (and the subsequent RFP for GPONs) would likely have been viewed by most with a big yawn — just another technical standardization. However, in those times, (this was in 2003-05,) this was — and it continues to be today — the biggest news in the telecommunications world, perhaps the biggest in years.

In 2010, this story continues to be the biggest thing in telecommunications. Verizon and AT&T have become, in five short years, major video providers via FiOS and U-verse. They are now both ranked in the top 10 for U.S. video providers. Most of the other companies on that list have been in the video business for decades. We expect that by the end of 2010, Verizon and AT&T will respectively serve 3.5 million and 3.0 million video customers. Also, they both rank consistently at the top of customer satisfaction polls covering video customers.