AT&T To Buy DIRECTV for $67 Billion
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with this combo, AT&T could potentially spin off Uverse and all their old copper plant. Why spend billions upon billions upgrading old copper when they've got wireless and satellite for everything nationwide? It's exactly what Ergen wants to transform Dish into.
I doubt they will get rid of the copper plant. They may try to offload the DSL lines like VZ did, but U-Verse fits nicely with DIRECTV. They can cut the video feed from U-Verse and have competitive internet speed with cable.
True, it is DSL from the neighborhood box that is connected to the plant via fiber. But it also represents a lot of work to make sure the box is close enough to the home to provide a decent speed. DSL (6mbit max from AT&T) represents the minimum investment from AT&T.
att techs are union when the acquisition is complete the unions will be representing direct tv techs also.
No WAY....Tell you why. U-Verse techs which have been around since the start of that service, are still not included in the agreement with the CWA.
AT&T is making this deal for their bottom line. The possibility of taking on direct employees is remote. Most D* techs work for service providers, not the company. I see no reason why AT&T would want to take on a bunch of new techs and then have to negotiate a union deal with them.
Should this deal go through, I'm not anticipating any changes to the installation/service structure. Now do I see AT&T gobbling up the employees of other people's companies. Why would they?
Who knows what the long term plans are but the short term will be no changes.
First thing to change will be bundles getting offered.
After that it its anyone's guess. There were rumors of AT&T upgrading copper to fiber. Let's face it 6mbps uverse is hardly competitive and will only be less so as streaming becomes more main stream.
AT&T already has a rather large install department, adding dish installs would be trivial. I wouldn't want to be an independent D* shop / installer.
Otherwise who knows? I doubt much changes in the short term except any cost saving synergies like billing and support even that will take time.
First thing to change will be bundles getting offered.
After that it its anyone's guess. There were rumors of AT&T upgrading copper to fiber. Let's face it 6mbps uverse is hardly competitive and will only be less so as streaming becomes more main stream.
AT&T already has a rather large install department, adding dish installs would be trivial. I wouldn't want to be an independent D* shop / installer.
Otherwise who knows? I doubt much changes in the short term except any cost saving synergies like billing and support even that will take time.
EHHH WRONG....I have a friend who works at AT&T. The "Premise" techs are not part of the current contract with the CWA.
What is it with unions that makes you so wishful?
Unions are on their way out. Union membership in the US is down to about 7%( Private sector) and continues to fall.
Anyway, back to the deal itself.
Bingo...If anything along the lines of field personnel, AT&T may cross train their U-Verse techs into satellite.
The one good thing out of that is the materials, vehicles and PROPER tools to do the job would all be provided by the company. Contractor techs would be out of luck. Don't know about retailers. If I were a retailer tech, I'd have in the back of my mind that I may be out of a job in a year or so.
Also, the large HSP's such as MASTEC are a mystery. That's a lot of experience in the field. I think it would be to AT&T's advantage to maintain that system. Of course I don't get to be in that meeting.
But you already have BTN if you're interested in College Sports and Crime TV if you wish to follow the off-field activities of SEC coaches and players.
Dishfan,
What are you worrying about?
My Uverse customer service has been better than dish or direct.
Ive had them since they arrived in South florida some 3 years ago.
I think a merger with Direc might be a good thing.
Only time will tell.
This acquisition reminds me of a song by Huey Lewis and the News.
Sometimes Bad is Bad.
To all DTV customers I hope it works out well for you,I sincerely do.In my mind ATT will run it into the ground,as said before time will tell.
Sometimes Bad is Bad.
To all DTV customers I hope it works out well for you,I sincerely do.In my mind ATT will run it into the ground,as said before time will tell.
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AT&T-DirecTV Merger Shows Telecom And Television Are Now The Same Business
A few years ago, the idea of a satellite TV provider merging with a phone company might have seemed weird. For AT&T T +0.6% and DirecTV, in a landscape where television and telecommunications are increasingly cross-pollenating into one mutant industry, it may represent the best chance for long-term survival.By joining forces in a $67 billion deal, AT&T and DirecTV are essentially copying a page from the playbook of Charlie Ergen, the billionaire chairman of Dish Network and Echostar. A year ago, Ergen tried and failed to buy Sprint, believing the future of subscription TV isn’t about piping signals into homes but beaming them to mobile devices. Dish Network made $14 billion in revenue last year doing the former but lacks the wireless data network it needs to do the latter.Ergen lost Sprint to a rival bid from Softbank's Masayoshi Son, but it didn’t shake his belief that there’s not much future in selling satellite TV subscriptions as a stand-alone service, nor his willingness to say as much to whoever’s interested. On Dish’s recent first-quarter earnings call, he laid out the logic yet again: We saw the world changing six years ago into several different technologies, right? We had the home covered on a nationwide basis, but there were things such as broadband. There was something called OTT [ie. over-the-top, or TV via internet protocol] that was starting to be used around the world, and then there was mobile. And all those things have to come together, and they come together in the ecosystem of communications.The AT&T-DirecTV deal is Ergen’s vision writ even larger. While Ergen said it “probably makes a little less sense strategically” than the one he would’ve done and knocked DirecTV’s price tag as “too frothy for our board to look at,” all the pieces are there: DirecTV gets access to AT&T’s 73 million wireless subscribers, while AT&T inherits a wealth of relationships with programmers and content partners, above all the exclusive rights to the NFL’s coveted Sunday Ticket package. AT&T is already a minor player in TV with its U-Verse service, which has fewer than 6 million subscribers; now, in a stroke, it has more than four times that many, plus another 18 million in Latin America.About the only piece of the ecosystem AT&T-DirecTV doesn’t have covered is broadband. The would-be mergees say their union will accelerate AT&T’s rollout of high-speed broadband to 15 million new locations, most of them in rural areas where broadband penetration is scant. That still leaves the parties of that other big telecom merger, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, as the biggest providers of broadband by far.But the gain in size from swallowing DirecTV still leaves AT&T better equipped to grapple with Comcast-Time Warner.
A few years ago, the idea of a satellite TV provider merging with a phone company might have seemed weird. For AT&T T +0.6% and DirecTV, in a landscape where television and telecommunications are increasingly cross-pollenating into one mutant industry, it may represent the best chance for long-term survival.By joining forces in a $67 billion deal, AT&T and DirecTV are essentially copying a page from the playbook of Charlie Ergen, the billionaire chairman of Dish Network and Echostar. A year ago, Ergen tried and failed to buy Sprint, believing the future of subscription TV isn’t about piping signals into homes but beaming them to mobile devices. Dish Network made $14 billion in revenue last year doing the former but lacks the wireless data network it needs to do the latter.Ergen lost Sprint to a rival bid from Softbank's Masayoshi Son, but it didn’t shake his belief that there’s not much future in selling satellite TV subscriptions as a stand-alone service, nor his willingness to say as much to whoever’s interested. On Dish’s recent first-quarter earnings call, he laid out the logic yet again: We saw the world changing six years ago into several different technologies, right? We had the home covered on a nationwide basis, but there were things such as broadband. There was something called OTT [ie. over-the-top, or TV via internet protocol] that was starting to be used around the world, and then there was mobile. And all those things have to come together, and they come together in the ecosystem of communications.The AT&T-DirecTV deal is Ergen’s vision writ even larger. While Ergen said it “probably makes a little less sense strategically” than the one he would’ve done and knocked DirecTV’s price tag as “too frothy for our board to look at,” all the pieces are there: DirecTV gets access to AT&T’s 73 million wireless subscribers, while AT&T inherits a wealth of relationships with programmers and content partners, above all the exclusive rights to the NFL’s coveted Sunday Ticket package. AT&T is already a minor player in TV with its U-Verse service, which has fewer than 6 million subscribers; now, in a stroke, it has more than four times that many, plus another 18 million in Latin America.About the only piece of the ecosystem AT&T-DirecTV doesn’t have covered is broadband. The would-be mergees say their union will accelerate AT&T’s rollout of high-speed broadband to 15 million new locations, most of them in rural areas where broadband penetration is scant. That still leaves the parties of that other big telecom merger, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, as the biggest providers of broadband by far.But the gain in size from swallowing DirecTV still leaves AT&T better equipped to grapple with Comcast-Time Warner.
I have not read this whole thread so I don't know if this has been mentioned.
I can't help but wonder if this idea has crossed the mind of ATT executives.
This merger could make UVerse TV deployment a whole lot easier by making VRAD's with a built in DirecTV receiving station to serve a neighborhood instead of having to fiber feed the TV content to the VRAD. Internet is a different story, but by not needing to waste trunk line (VRAD to switch) bandwidth on TV channels it may be easier to get away with feeding the VRAD's internet connection with existing bonded copper pairs instead of having to run new fiber.
EDIT: Just heard on my local news something about "moving streaming to the DirecTV side to save AT&T a whole lot of bandwidth" sounds like they're already thinking something like I'm thinking.
I can't help but wonder if this idea has crossed the mind of ATT executives.
This merger could make UVerse TV deployment a whole lot easier by making VRAD's with a built in DirecTV receiving station to serve a neighborhood instead of having to fiber feed the TV content to the VRAD. Internet is a different story, but by not needing to waste trunk line (VRAD to switch) bandwidth on TV channels it may be easier to get away with feeding the VRAD's internet connection with existing bonded copper pairs instead of having to run new fiber.
EDIT: Just heard on my local news something about "moving streaming to the DirecTV side to save AT&T a whole lot of bandwidth" sounds like they're already thinking something like I'm thinking.
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