AT&T Launches $200 Cash Back Deal for U-verse TV

In one of the largest and aggressive TV promos to date, AT&T Inc. (T) has begun offering $200 cash back to those who go online and order its U-verse TV service. It requires a mid-tier programming package or higher and they must take the service for at least a month.

Subscribers need not sign up for a term agreement or buy U-verse Internet or U-verse Voice, to cash in on the alluring deal. Price breaks, credits and cash back deals almost always require a minimum one-year contract and subscription to a second or third bundled service.

They also are typically focused on buying multiple services in a bundle as opposed to AT&T’s, which is focused on programming packages.

The promo, which extends to Jan. 31, 2009, is the perhaps the most powerful evidence of AT&T’s effort to expand its U-verse customer base. The telco recently added multiroom DVR and two concurrent HD streams to the over two-year-old service.

The qualifying U-verse content packages include U200, U300 and U400.

AT&T U-verse TV U200 line, which starts at $59 a month, features more than 190 of the most popular channels, including news, movies, and children’s and family entertainment, plus local channels and 34 digital music channels.

AT&T U-verse TV U300 line, which starts at $79 a month, features more than 240 of the most popular channels including 31 premium movie channels, like Starz, Encore, SHOWTIME, The Movie Channel, and FLIX, plus local channels and 34 digital music channels.

AT&T U-verse TV U400 line, which start at $119 a month, features more than 300 of the most popular channels including 49 premium movie channels, like HBO and Cinemax, and the most watched sports channels, plus local channels and 34 digital music channels.

All packages include three U-verse receivers, one with a DVR. Additional receivers cost $5 apiece per month.

The consumer must be a customer at the time the offer is processed online or by phone for a redemption check. Customers must have the service at least 30 days, and at the time the reward (a check) is processed.

The offer also represents a sizable break for consumers to sign up for U-verse TV as their TV offering, while possibly using Internet and VoIP from one or more other providers. It also demonstrates the value to AT&T of promotion U-verse TV, and with a key consumer shopping season looming large.

AT&T could be taking a page from the sales and marketing book of Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), which last year offered free midsize HD TVs to new FiOS customers, until they ran out of HD gear, and substituted digital cameras. Unlike AT&T, Verizon promoted the free TV offer in a long-running series of TV ads and direct mail pieces.

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