AT&T Told to Sell DirecTV by Hedge Fund Investor

I wonder how many of that lost 1.1M went to Dish?

We should have a pretty good idea soon.

DISH has been losing subs fairly badly too, although nothing like DirecTV has been. My guess is that most of the folks leaving DirecTV are either getting cable TV from their broadband provider or going with some kind of streaming service(s), whether that's a live channel service like YouTube TV or just on-demand stuff like Netflix and Hulu.
 
Sure, it would have taken time to build but, in the hypothetical analysis, the COST over time to build it out would have been the same as what they dropped in one fat bundle to buy DirecTV. Again, go back to the initial comment that sparked this discussion: instead of spending that $48.5 billion on DirecTV, AT&T could have spent the same amount on fiber-to-the-home broadband deployment. Yes, they'd have to pay for the fiber and pay for the engineers and labor to deploy it. I don't know how many miles/addresses they could have passed for $48.5 billion, but I'm thinking quite a few. And all those would be in addition (or in place of) the 14.5 million fiber-available addresses that they ended up doing after the 2015 DirecTV acquisition anyhow. So obviously, yes, AT&T very much has the capacity, even in addition to operating DirecTV, to do a large-scale FTTH deployment. What makes you think they couldn't have done an even larger one without running DirecTV too?

Again, the question is to what extent the company (and its shareholders) wants AT&T to spend large sums on infrastructure in the near-term in early to maximize long-term profits. That's often a hard sell.
Right now, I don't see ATT buying ANYTHING of cost, for awhile.
 
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Yes. The loss of DTV subs may be only slowing the decline of Dish subs. But I’m still looking forward to the Q3 results. And especially, in Q1, the year on year comparison for both satcos.


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AT&T sold off the whole network in CT because they didn’t want to spend the money making upgrades. They abandoned their UVerse platform here.
 
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Shut it down or somebody kept the video part going?


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Right now, I don't see ATT buying ANYTHING of cost, for awhile.

Totally agree. Right now, their challenge is to put together the pieces that they have so that they can get them working together with this new bigger engine firing on all cylinders. Pay down that debt that they took on while still paying out shareholder dividends. And to that end, I do see them selling off some non-core assets if they can. At some point (sooner rather than later if activist hedge fund Elliot Mgmt gets its way), I do see them trying to sell off or spin off the DirecTV business. But I think they'll want to shift as many of those subscribers over to AT&T TV (or at least HBO Max) as possible first. In a few years, when DirecTV is much smalller (and DISH has also presumably suffered additional losses), I don't see the government standing in the way of their merger.
 
They sold everything to Frontier who didn’t know what to do with it.

OMG, Frontier is just a dumpster fire. They have Verizon's and AT&T's scraps that they didn't want any more. Management seems clueless. They have built out a bit of FTTH in a few areas but I don't see that company surviving. The few valuable assets that they have will get sold off. All those old phone/DSL lines will cease to be used in the next few years as everyone will use other IP pipes: cable or fiber if available, otherwise fixed 5G/4G or low-earth-orbit satellite. And all TV service will move to some form of IP distribution (with the exception of DBS satellite, which will stick around for years to serve those without any other option).
 
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I think we all agree that ATT wants to milk DTV of as many subscribers as possible, onto their online offerings of the day. This does not appear to be working out as well as they expected. The next year should be very interesting.

Maybe Sling will send ATT a Thank You note.


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I think we all agree that ATT wants to milk DTV of as many subscribers as possible, onto their online offerings of the day. This does not appear to be working out as well as they expected. The next year should be very interesting.

Maybe Sling will send ATT a Thank You note.

My view is that AT&T's streaming offerings have been half-baked up until now and we still haven't seen what the final products will be. Here's what we're waiting on:

First, let's see how AT&T TV is packaged and priced when it rolls out nationwide this fall. I think it will be more compelling than the not-quite-ready-for-primetime offering that they're currently selling in the test markets. I'm still expecting revamped channel packages with pricing and features that will be competitive with YouTube TV. (The trade-off will be that AT&T TV's main package automatically includes HBO Max but fewer sports channels while YouTube TV has more sports channels but no premium on-demand service built in.)

Second, let's see what HBO Max offers and how much it costs when it debuts next spring. I think it's shaping up to be a VERY compelling bundle of content -- everything in HBO plus a whole lot more, including exclusive new Max Originals -- for about the same price that HBO currently sells for ($15-16). Between HBO Max on one side and Hulu/Disney+ on the other, 2020 is going to be a tough year for Netflix.
 
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A media expert Porter Pibb says Elliott Management is wrong about AT&T.

AT&T stock dives after CFO shares 'tough decisions' over blackouts

“Not reimbursing subscribers for the loss of CBS content is not helpful and the re-acquisition costs will be significant," Bibb said. "Netflix has mastered CRM and provides an appropriate model for AT&T and all others entering the streaming wars.”

“Elliott Management is dead wrong in criticizing AT&T for acquiring TimeWarner, and should focus on Verizon, which has no center or second revenue stream and consists only of dumb pipes, which will become less and less profitable as new competitors like T-Mobile/Sprint begin to take Verizon wireless subscribers,” he said.
 
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Good. Good news for Dish.

I think Dish can siphon off many former DTV customers.


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