• by Emily Burg , April 5, 2007

AT&T is attempting to compete with rivals' bundled services offers of telephony and cable television by offering new video customers one year of free high-definition television if they subscribe to its U-verse fiber-to-the-node network or its co-branded satellite TV service, offered in partnership with EchoStar and DirecTV.

AT&T television services are available in 22 states. It offers 25 channels of HD programming through U-verse, and up to 31 HD channels through satellite. Content includes movies, sports, news, lifestyle and pay-per-view. U-Verse customers have to subscribe to the U-Verse standard definition television package.

New AT&T/DISH customers, in the 13 states previously served by SBC, get $20 in mail-in rebate credits for the first 10 months and $40 in mail-in rebate credits for the last two months. New DirecTV customers, in the nine states previously served by BellSouth, will get $10 monthly bill credits that offset the $9.99 monthly HD fee, if they subscribe to Triple Choice, the combination of voice, data and video services that BellSouth and DirecTV have sold.

The free, one-year service offer is valued at $240 and is one of the first consumer promotions the company is featuring across its post BellSouth merger footprint. "Free access to HD programming for a year gives consumers yet another reason to select AT&T over the competition," said Rick Welday, CMO, AT&T consumer marketing, in a statement.

If customers decide to maintain the service, AT&T will have an edge on revenue streams from the traditionally higher HD service fees in the post-merger territories.

In a separate announcement, AT&T, which is an official partner of the U.S. Olympic Team and USA Gymnastics, announced that it has developed exclusive content providing a behind-the-scenes look at the nation's top gymnasts which will appear on its blue room Web portal.

Called "USA Gymnastics: Behind the Team," the 25-part series chronicles the USA Gymnastics team as it trains for the Olympics, and will include interviews and footage of current and former athletes and coaches. The content will be managed by The Marketing Arm, Dallas, with the first Webisode debuting later this month.

Blue room already has Olympic gymnast content live, with Deon Sanders interviewing Nastia Liukin during a day in her life as part of its "Home Turf" interactive series. In the interview, Nastia mentions being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by her cell phone alarm, and Deon congratulates her for getting AT&T product placement in the segment.