Well if you have the corporate statement that says that, great.....If not it sounds like opinion?
DirecTV fires Installers
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Nope, heard from several current and recently laid off DirecTV employees, satellite engineering folks and not just installers. The new ATT vision is TV without any satellites and the time frame is 5yrs. Plus several customers around here have had trouble with their IRDs and a truck was rolled to fix, only to have the installers do everything they can to get the customer on ATT fiber and abandon the satellite hardware. Its a shame but its coming.
so all those customers that can only use satellite will be forced to move to dish?
att is willing to give up that many subscriptions?
yeah, dont see that happening anytime soon
No, it appears ATT will transition customers to fiber and upcoming technologies within the next 5yrs. So far DirecTV has recently disbanded their group that flies several satellites, canceled all new satellite orders and are doing other things that are only in line with transitioning off satellites. I'm not speculating or making things up, I hear this from recent ex employees who are aware of the plans and were affected by the new ATT direction. Personally I think its very sad to see what ATT is doing to DirecTV.
Have you noticed over the last several years how the frequency of outages and impairments have grown? DirecTV has gone from humans watching lots of live video screens to catch problems to automation that cannot catch brief and reoccurring glitches in audio and video. Problems that used to be found and fixed quickly can go on for hours because the automation can't detect it. In the last several years DirecTV has also laid off many of its technical workforce that maintains the equipment and much of the time there is nobody at an uplink center with the knowledge to fix a problem and they end up calling other people at home to try and find a resolution to an on air problem.
Apparently its all about profit now and it will be much cheaper for ATT to deliver video like the various streaming companies. No customer equipment to install or maintain, no truck roll to fix a problem, everything will be handled remotely in the future when the satellites are out of the picture. ATT is looking at things like Netflix, they have over 100 million streaming customers and no installers or hardware to wast profit. ATT is able to stream things that Netflix cannot, which is its entire channel lineup and its coming, like it or not.
Have you noticed over the last several years how the frequency of outages and impairments have grown? DirecTV has gone from humans watching lots of live video screens to catch problems to automation that cannot catch brief and reoccurring glitches in audio and video. Problems that used to be found and fixed quickly can go on for hours because the automation can't detect it. In the last several years DirecTV has also laid off many of its technical workforce that maintains the equipment and much of the time there is nobody at an uplink center with the knowledge to fix a problem and they end up calling other people at home to try and find a resolution to an on air problem.
Apparently its all about profit now and it will be much cheaper for ATT to deliver video like the various streaming companies. No customer equipment to install or maintain, no truck roll to fix a problem, everything will be handled remotely in the future when the satellites are out of the picture. ATT is looking at things like Netflix, they have over 100 million streaming customers and no installers or hardware to wast profit. ATT is able to stream things that Netflix cannot, which is its entire channel lineup and its coming, like it or not.
do tell what technologies? there are simply places they serve with sat that have no other option.
if they want to run fiber to me great, im all for it.
its cheaper to launch a sat than provide fiber to all those areas without any other option
havetn seen these issues. disputes dont count as everyone has them
well did see one, but it was my local that lost the transmitter/uplink for a few days
again, you miss the customer base, rural america. we have 2 choices, dish or directv
can you name one company that is not about the profit? its why a business exists
The new technologies I'm aware of are DIRECTV NOW over new ATT 5G circuits and I think they are working on streaming the full lineup over broadband, but I forgot some of the things that were mentioned. I don't have answers for everything and I'm just repeating what was told to me by ex DirecTV people.
Do you have cell phone with 4G service where you live now? If so you should have 5G service with DirecTV streaming at some point in the future and that fixes the satellite problem for ATT.
Over 5yrs ago I saw a prototype cell service streaming device for DirecTV that looks like a small upside down tapered bucket that mounted to a dish type J pole. The person familiar with it said it will pull streaming services into the house from cell towers and could also repeat to other similar units and I think it could also take in a broadband source from one customer and feed service to a nearby unit at another house. Back then it was mentioned it could bring broadband to places where fiber was not possible and could also potentially replace consumer dishes for TV.
The clock starts now, check back in 5yrs to see if this all comes true. Like I said before, I'm not speculating I'm hearing this from DTV people.
Over 5yrs ago I saw a prototype cell service streaming device for DirecTV that looks like a small upside down tapered bucket that mounted to a dish type J pole. The person familiar with it said it will pull streaming services into the house from cell towers and could also repeat to other similar units and I think it could also take in a broadband source from one customer and feed service to a nearby unit at another house. Back then it was mentioned it could bring broadband to places where fiber was not possible and could also potentially replace consumer dishes for TV.
The clock starts now, check back in 5yrs to see if this all comes true. Like I said before, I'm not speculating I'm hearing this from DTV people.
i have verizon 4g, att is spotty at best here
heck they wont even have 4g wireless home internet to more than 1million rural homes for 2 more years
i doubt 5g will come for at least 10 years, iirc there is not even a standard yet
5g cellular will have cell towers on telephone poles...it will be similar to wifi..will it work?..It's still being invented
5g uses millimeter waves
problem is they have issues with foliage and wall penetration
so that need to be fixed
The "tower" will be a lot closer than 4g cellular..I agree there will be issues or cable would have gone wireless along time ago. ..Verizon has something that works well in Boston..but it's more like a router on a pole
5G has range and penetration issues. I’ve read that ATT is working on a “sorta secret” technology, which is probably some variant of 5G. And I remember how BoPL was going to transform the world.
You won’t see 5G in Lake Woebegone.
“... canceled all new satellite orders ...”
You can read this two ways. If DTV canceled existing satellite orders, I’d have seen it in Aviation Week. And probably see it on billboards. OTOH, I don’t know if any are on order now.
Now, maybe they canceled plans to order new ones.
The DTV Ka satellites were intended for Internet service, and could return to that use. They MIGHT be cost effective against much more powerful new satellites, since most of their cost has depreciated away. Someone might buy them for that purpose.
But I suspect any degree of success in the planned MEO and LEO Internet satellites will put paid to that idea. Even if such schemes are fully successful, they won’t have the capacity to deliver TV services to all the rural users of today, as compared to satellites.
Five years is too quick. We won’t see 5G deployed by then, to any significant degree. And I dare say my son won’t live long enough to see 5G in Tinytown Nebraska.
You won’t see 5G in Lake Woebegone.
“... canceled all new satellite orders ...”
You can read this two ways. If DTV canceled existing satellite orders, I’d have seen it in Aviation Week. And probably see it on billboards. OTOH, I don’t know if any are on order now.
Now, maybe they canceled plans to order new ones.
The DTV Ka satellites were intended for Internet service, and could return to that use. They MIGHT be cost effective against much more powerful new satellites, since most of their cost has depreciated away. Someone might buy them for that purpose.
But I suspect any degree of success in the planned MEO and LEO Internet satellites will put paid to that idea. Even if such schemes are fully successful, they won’t have the capacity to deliver TV services to all the rural users of today, as compared to satellites.
Five years is too quick. We won’t see 5G deployed by then, to any significant degree. And I dare say my son won’t live long enough to see 5G in Tinytown Nebraska.
I was told they canceled all satellite orders, don't know if that included any that were in the works and backing out of an existing contract can get expensive. They are still using some of the Ka sat transponders (Spaceway) that were intended for internet use and I have not heard of any future use for them.
Ah this "Directv is phasing out satellites in five years" Bullsh!t is back. They've got a new satellite under construction, it hasn't been canceled. I could see them canceling plans to for instance replace the satellite at 119 since they won't need it after they drop MPEG2 SD in 2019. Maybe at one time they wanted to keep a satellite up there to keep Dish from taking those transponders, but they might have decided it wasn't worth the expense.
Anyone who thinks it is significantly cheaper to deliver to customers via streaming than satellite lacks math skills. It costs as much as $400 million to build/launch a modern communications satellite, so people see numbers like that and think "OMG satellite is so expensive" but do the math. The satellites are built for a lifespan of 15 years but typically last longer - sometimes much longer (D8, launched in 2005, has fuel life lasting through 2034!)
If we assume Directv needs one satellite at 101, two each at 99 and 103, plus one in-orbit spare, that's six satellites. Total cost if they were building and launching them all from scratch would be $2.4 billion, if we assume an average life of 20 years that's 240 months or $10 million per month. Directv has well over 20 million satellite subscribers now (used to be 20 million but in the last couple years they've been adding a lot to Directv as they've been pushing new customers there instead of Uverse TV because their content cost is $14/month cheaper with Directv due to the expensive contracts AT&T signed for Uverse)
Let's call it 20 million customers because the additions to Directv will eventually reverse once they've taken all the Uverse customers they can and cord cutting slowly eats away. That means it would cost Directv 50 cents per customer per month to build and launch the six satellites they need. Of course they have satellites up there already which have some life left, some of them many years since they were recently launched, so they don't need to spend the $2.4 billion and start from scratch. So it is really much less than 50 cents a month to operate the current fleet.
Even if delivering stuff via streaming was free (it isn't) that's not a big enough difference to matter. Especially when the expectation these days is for streaming to cost a LOT less than traditional cable/satellite. They can't cut the price by just 50 cents a month to reflect their (maximum, if delivery via streaming was free) cost savings, they'd have to cut it by tens of dollars to compete with other streaming alternatives. Why would any sane company do that? Keep offering the satellite product, and offer the streaming product as well, and let people decide which meets their needs. Even if the number of satellite customers eventually is cut in more than half to only 10 million, that's still less than a buck a month they're paying for those satellites.
Anyone who thinks it is significantly cheaper to deliver to customers via streaming than satellite lacks math skills. It costs as much as $400 million to build/launch a modern communications satellite, so people see numbers like that and think "OMG satellite is so expensive" but do the math. The satellites are built for a lifespan of 15 years but typically last longer - sometimes much longer (D8, launched in 2005, has fuel life lasting through 2034!)
If we assume Directv needs one satellite at 101, two each at 99 and 103, plus one in-orbit spare, that's six satellites. Total cost if they were building and launching them all from scratch would be $2.4 billion, if we assume an average life of 20 years that's 240 months or $10 million per month. Directv has well over 20 million satellite subscribers now (used to be 20 million but in the last couple years they've been adding a lot to Directv as they've been pushing new customers there instead of Uverse TV because their content cost is $14/month cheaper with Directv due to the expensive contracts AT&T signed for Uverse)
Let's call it 20 million customers because the additions to Directv will eventually reverse once they've taken all the Uverse customers they can and cord cutting slowly eats away. That means it would cost Directv 50 cents per customer per month to build and launch the six satellites they need. Of course they have satellites up there already which have some life left, some of them many years since they were recently launched, so they don't need to spend the $2.4 billion and start from scratch. So it is really much less than 50 cents a month to operate the current fleet.
Even if delivering stuff via streaming was free (it isn't) that's not a big enough difference to matter. Especially when the expectation these days is for streaming to cost a LOT less than traditional cable/satellite. They can't cut the price by just 50 cents a month to reflect their (maximum, if delivery via streaming was free) cost savings, they'd have to cut it by tens of dollars to compete with other streaming alternatives. Why would any sane company do that? Keep offering the satellite product, and offer the streaming product as well, and let people decide which meets their needs. Even if the number of satellite customers eventually is cut in more than half to only 10 million, that's still less than a buck a month they're paying for those satellites.
I'm only repeating what DTV employees are telling me. I probably have more insight on how DTV works than most people on this forum and I believe what I'm hearing. Plans can always change but this is what seems to be the push right now. 5yrs will tell us if it comes true.
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