Even if 1 in 10 need help in setting up a streaming device, that's still a lot cheaper than a cable or sat TV truck roll. A teenager in a Smart car can handle it...
AT&T Should sell DIRECTV to DISH
- Thread starter Scott Greczkowski
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You must be buying awfully cheap vans then, and not paying the techs much. And not equipping the trucks with any tools or spares. All the streaming device support vehicle needs is a minimum wage kid with maybe a spare device in his pocket. You can't afford a Smart car? Buy a motor scooter for him to use...
Everytime we roll a truck, it cost the company $168 ... that was from a few years ago, so maybe $200 now.You must be buying awfully cheap vans then, and not paying the techs much. And not equipping the trucks with any tools or spares. All the streaming device support vehicle needs is a minimum wage kid with maybe a spare device in his pocket. You can't afford a Smart car? Buy a motor scooter for him to use...
That already happens, they show up on every install if the sub doesn't already have ATT Wireless.
Line of site?... experience..trees..mountains etc
Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
How about apartments and condos with windows facing the wrong direction...
Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
Long ago..there were long discussions on this board about such things..back when satellite was growing by leaps and bounds..dish had 14 million customers...sad to see how far they have fallen...the entire paytv industry has fallen
Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
It's just one more in an ongoing chain of advancing technology transitions. As a child I listened to The Lone Ranger, Sky King, and many other radio shows with a homemade crystal radio. In my teens I was watching black and white TV on a round screen. In my late 20's I was watching color TV on a Heathkit TV I assembled in my basement. And on and on... The only constant in life is change...
I was going to quote posts but there is too much information and I'm lazy today....
I don't see any other argument but that delivery of Satellite services is tremendously more expensive than streaming it. In just about every way, equipment, truck rolls (If they need to send someone to help set up streaming it would be a fraction of the cost - in fact they may indeed hire the teenager next door lol) expectation of needing to replace satellites, and more.
So with that in mind, even if At&t has to take a loss as I believe they would in shedding Directv some of that loss is offset in what they won't have to spend going forward. In the fourth quarter earnings call last year At&t said "We have a customer base left on the streaming that's growing, and is a highly engaged.... We like where we are in how we're positioning the streaming product," Not sure I see anything even approaching that type of glowing remarks about Satellite service.
And in November the CEO said we have launched our last satellite. And finally the theme they were portraying was their focus on lessening debt. Sounds like the shedding of Directv if possible to me.
The more I give it thought the more I see a path for the two satellite companies to merge. Directv/customer base is worth more to DISH than any other media company. If satellite is less appealing now than in the past what makes us think another media company will bail out At&t and take on that service? Sure there will be tire kicking but I bet advisers within the companies will advise it isn't a good risk.
If DISH could negotiate programming contracts with around 25+ Million they have a far better chance of staying around for awhile. They still have to find a way to expand into other areas but it gives them more time while serving a part of the population who does not want streaming, can't stream, does not want cable for various reasons, want more reliability and capability of signal with power loses etc.
None of that means it is an easy path even if DISH acquires/merges. They still have to distinguish themselves from Cable, they have to find a way to be consistently less expensive which generally they are, and find other ways to stand out as a better alternative.
The FCC is a different issue. I believe they will approve a merger of some type, BUT - I also think they have to believe both services will not be able to survive without it just as they did with Satellite radio.
I don't see any other argument but that delivery of Satellite services is tremendously more expensive than streaming it. In just about every way, equipment, truck rolls (If they need to send someone to help set up streaming it would be a fraction of the cost - in fact they may indeed hire the teenager next door lol) expectation of needing to replace satellites, and more.
So with that in mind, even if At&t has to take a loss as I believe they would in shedding Directv some of that loss is offset in what they won't have to spend going forward. In the fourth quarter earnings call last year At&t said "We have a customer base left on the streaming that's growing, and is a highly engaged.... We like where we are in how we're positioning the streaming product," Not sure I see anything even approaching that type of glowing remarks about Satellite service.
And in November the CEO said we have launched our last satellite. And finally the theme they were portraying was their focus on lessening debt. Sounds like the shedding of Directv if possible to me.
The more I give it thought the more I see a path for the two satellite companies to merge. Directv/customer base is worth more to DISH than any other media company. If satellite is less appealing now than in the past what makes us think another media company will bail out At&t and take on that service? Sure there will be tire kicking but I bet advisers within the companies will advise it isn't a good risk.
If DISH could negotiate programming contracts with around 25+ Million they have a far better chance of staying around for awhile. They still have to find a way to expand into other areas but it gives them more time while serving a part of the population who does not want streaming, can't stream, does not want cable for various reasons, want more reliability and capability of signal with power loses etc.
None of that means it is an easy path even if DISH acquires/merges. They still have to distinguish themselves from Cable, they have to find a way to be consistently less expensive which generally they are, and find other ways to stand out as a better alternative.
The FCC is a different issue. I believe they will approve a merger of some type, BUT - I also think they have to believe both services will not be able to survive without it just as they did with Satellite radio.
Put simply, broadcast is still cheaper than unicast. AT&T and others want to go streaming because it is all OPEX instead of CAPEX, which Wall Street currently likes. The thing is, as you lose customers, it becomes less cost effective to do satellite delivery. This is happening at the same time streaming costs slowly come down. Eventually I expect streaming delivery to actually cost less than Satellite.
A couple of years old and not specific to Dish/DirecTV:
Going over the top: streaming vs satellite
Where Does the Future of Satellite TV fit into the Future of Television?
The Future of Satellite TV: Why is it Still Viable?
First off, it’s worth pointing out that space remains expensive. In 2008, NASA estimated that it cost $10,000 to put a pound of payload in Earth orbit, and stated a goal to reduce that cost to hundreds of dollars per pound within 25 years and tens of dollars per pound within 40 years. According to its latest prices, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has already got that figure down to $1,529;that’s still $90 million per launch of an expandable Falcon Heavy rocket. Add in satellite build costs, and you don’t see much change from $300 million per satellite.
However, once they are on station they can cover an enormous area. Astra 3B, for example, at orbital position 23.5º E, was launched in May 2010 and has 64 transponders, carries 243 channels (132SD, 110 HD and 1 UHD), and reaches 35 million households, including 3.5 million satellite homes across MENA, Europe, Russia and the CIS.
Cost Effective
That makes satellite a remarkably cost-effective way to reach large numbers of people. This is especially true in emerging markets and large territories with dispersed populations, where the cost per home of deploying broadband and DTT technologies can rise quite significantly as population density falls outside of urban areas. It’s an extreme example perhaps, but the rich markets of Australia are distributed at a rate of 3 people per square kilometer, an audience almost tailor-made for satellite.
If you do the math, it just isn't...not yet anyway.
Cost effective - Problem with analysis in the U.S. It assumes wrongly you are actually expanding into sparsely populated areas, exactly what Cable has not done overall. If only Satellite cared about the less populated areas before what is changed now? In fact At&t was the very first, followed by FIOS to say "No Mas." We are done stringing lines unless we are made to where we actually signed an agreement to.
I am familiar with OPEX VS CAPEX and yes At&t is all about the OPEX. They told Ct. years ago they would no longer maintain Pots service/lines because of the cost, they closed almost all service centers, repair centers etc. Ct. fought back and At&t left Ct. Doing the same in other States now.
And you help make my point as you lose Satellite customers Streaming become more attractive because of costs. I do not necessarily agree I see streaming becoming less expensive either that it has now or that it will partly because of Court allowed monopolies. My Brother in Law maybe five months ago mentioned to me he is spending about 2/3 of what he was with DISH and current customer discounts to get the same programming up from about 1/3. That included Spectrum going from $39.00 limited time offer to now $65.00 and no offers because they are the only high speed internet game in town there, So still a savings but it has shrunk.
I was specifically talking about the cost to AT&T to stream the content to the subscriber, which probably costs them as much as content acquisition right now assuming an average viewer. Bandwidth for live, transcoded streams is expensive, even on large scales. If they had 19 million DNow customers, what it costs to deliver the content via streaming (bandwidth) over 18 months is roughly equivalent to a building and launching a brand new satellite which will last for decades based on the math I've seen. That bandwidth cost will come down over time, but, right now at least, it is a slow decline because demand is still very high. Yes, at some point it will be less expensive in all likelihood. Another factor in this is AT&T desperately wants to shrink their workforce, again to please Wall Street. Switching to streaming accomplishes that, even if it is actually costing them more in the short term.
Bandwidth costs to the subscriber should also continue to come down in theory, albeit with large variation based on market conditions, but consumers will likely pay more over time as base speeds are increased which is an excuse to raise rates.
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Right. But think about how much money AT&T would save if they only had to send the sales consultant, and not the actual installation technician, when a new customer was setting up AT&T streaming TV service. (And even then, we're only talking about maybe 25% of new customers who would need ANYONE at all to come out because everyone else can follow the simple instructions included with the Osprey C71 box: 1. connect the box to power; 2. connect the HDMI cable to the box and your TV; 3. turn on your TV to the correct HDMI input and follow the on-screen instructions to pair the remote control; 4. follow the on-screen instructions to connect your box to your home's wifi network; 5. enter your AT&T account user name and password on-screen; 6. (optional) enter your Google user name and password to connect your box to Google services, such as the Google Play app store, your YouTube account, etc.)
Keep in mind that, in all likelihood, the great majority of future customers who subscribe to their upcoming streaming cable service ("AT&T TV") will be among the 15 million (and growing) subscribers to AT&T home broadband (AT&T Internet or AT&T Fiber). For those customers, AT&T TV would be delivered entirely over AT&T's own network (at least when the customer is watching at home). That should lessen the cost of provisioning streaming TV vs. a situation like Hulu, who does not own any of their customers' last-mile connections.
In order to more efficiently handle video traffic, AT&T would also have the option of enabling dynamic variable bitrate multicast streaming for AT&T TV to customers on their own network; it would simply require some server-side/network changes as well as a firmware update to the home gateways that all AT&T Internet/Fiber subscribers must use. There will be a transition period for a year or more when they'll be operating both Uverse TV (which uses always-on multicast for some or all linear channels, hogging up quite a bit of network bandwidth) and AT&T TV. When they're able to completely shut down Uverse TV, that will open up significant bandwidth for AT&T Internet subscribers. (Won't matter much for AT&T Fiber subs, who enjoy much faster speeds.) At that point, if not before, I expect we'll see AT&T TV employ multicast on the most popular linear channels/live events (e.g. popular sports, etc.).
That would make sense for those AT&T broadband customers. The new service would have to be built very differently from DNow, which is apparently using Akamai for CDN.
