And other than the 12 million fiber customers they promised when they bought DirecTV, which, unlike Charter, they actually seem intent on meeting their commitment.
Did ATT Just Throw Dish A (small)Lifeline?
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And other than the 12 million fiber customers they promised when they bought DirecTV, which, unlike Charter, they actually seem intent on meeting their commitment.
Another thing about twisted pair going to fiber: There are many areas, at least in California, that have direct buried cable serving entire neighborhoods. These cables are not in conduit so there is no easy, read cheap, way to replace them with fiber. In my exact neighborhood, served by AT&T, we have DSL at 1.5 available. Why is that? It is because AT&T didn't want to spend the money to place a conduit across a major street to serve the Serving Area Interface with a fiber feed. So, half of my neighborhood, about 150 homes, got the shaft. When that took place, I immediately went to Comcast which gives me 90 down and can go up to 1G.
DirecTV is crazy doing this. Really. My aunt and uncle live in the country with no cell service or high speed internet and all that works is DirecTV. They are going to be screwed and of course AT&T does not care that they won't be able to get service no more. They had Dish but that stopped working when trees started to block the signal.
Also 5G is just hype just like 4G and 3G before it. Rural areas are still going to be stuck with slow satellite or no internet and only the big cities who already have HSI will benefit form 5G. Then in a few years they will promise 6G and chop off the rest of the UHF channels for OTA and again promise Rural areas but only big cities will benefit.
Also 5G is just hype just like 4G and 3G before it. Rural areas are still going to be stuck with slow satellite or no internet and only the big cities who already have HSI will benefit form 5G. Then in a few years they will promise 6G and chop off the rest of the UHF channels for OTA and again promise Rural areas but only big cities will benefit.
I don’t think Verizon can abandon the copper either.
The cost of maintaining copper gets to the point where they are forced to go to fiber
Also streaming live channels over the internet is unreliable heck even streaming live audio is still unreliable on slower connections (just try it on your mobile phone when taking a walk outside). This is why on demand streaming is more popular as it buffers ahead.
Satellite TV will be around for several more years before the customer base shrinks to the point that it makes no economic sense for AT&T or Dish or *somebody* to continue offering it using the satellites that are already in orbit. But, yes, five years from now, I do think that satellite TV will look like a sort of niche thing for rural residents plus commercial establishments like sports bars and hotels. AT&T's CFO said on a quarterly earnings call earlier this year that "the company will continue to rely on satellite video delivery for rural areas for the foreseeable future." But between T-Mobile's plans to offer 5G home broadband over their new 600 MHz spectrum starting in 2019, plus multiple companies including SpaceX aiming to offer global low-earth orbit satellite broadband in the early 2020s, plus local rural co-ops, white space wireless broadband, etc., the US population who can only get pay TV via DirecTV or Dish is going to dwindle over the next several years.
A year from now, I expect that pretty much all of AT&T's marketing efforts and pricing incentives will be directed at their OTT services, with satellite TV being a largely unadvertised back-up option for those customers who require it. It's certainly possible that free installation will no longer be offered for new customers at some point. Perhaps AT&T and Dish won't even handle installation directly themselves in a few years, leaving it up to self-installation and third-party installation. I can imagine AT&T choosing to spin off or sell their satellite TV business after they have migrated the bulk of their customer base over to IP/OTT-based TV platforms. Perhaps it will merge with Dish's satellite TV business, either under Dish itself or under a third party.
At any rate, I think satellite TV (DBS) is in long-term decline but, for those who want or need it, I don't see it going away until the mid-2020s at the earliest and the early 2030s at the latest (at which point DirecTV's current fleet of satellites will be largely exhausted, or so I've read).
A year from now, I expect that pretty much all of AT&T's marketing efforts and pricing incentives will be directed at their OTT services, with satellite TV being a largely unadvertised back-up option for those customers who require it. It's certainly possible that free installation will no longer be offered for new customers at some point. Perhaps AT&T and Dish won't even handle installation directly themselves in a few years, leaving it up to self-installation and third-party installation. I can imagine AT&T choosing to spin off or sell their satellite TV business after they have migrated the bulk of their customer base over to IP/OTT-based TV platforms. Perhaps it will merge with Dish's satellite TV business, either under Dish itself or under a third party.
At any rate, I think satellite TV (DBS) is in long-term decline but, for those who want or need it, I don't see it going away until the mid-2020s at the earliest and the early 2030s at the latest (at which point DirecTV's current fleet of satellites will be largely exhausted, or so I've read).
EVENTUALLY they will let the DBS business go, but they’re launching a new satellite next year with an at least 15 year lifespan. T14 and T15 are not old at all. The article cited was the ‘source’ that they were ‘dropping’ the DBS business, not AT&T. As a matter of fact they’ve just started testing RDBS (reverse DBS band) transponders on T14 or T15, for additional 4K content. They wouldn’t be doing all of this if they were completely dropping DBS in a short timespan.
I don’t see DIRECTV exiting the satellite business any time soon.
I think there will be a hybrid box that does both streaming and satellite.
When that’s available they will make the set top boxes switch to streaming during rain fade.
When everyone has those boxes, the transition will begin.
I don’t think AT&T Is just going to abandon 14 million customers
I think there will be a hybrid box that does both streaming and satellite.
When that’s available they will make the set top boxes switch to streaming during rain fade.
When everyone has those boxes, the transition will begin.
I don’t think AT&T Is just going to abandon 14 million customers
Yes, I can sure believe that. The number of viewers that have cut the cord or are looking into it, and increasing daily. Right now not many streaming services offer many locals. But that will change. There is Sling (Dish) and Direct Now. The number of companies have increased in the last year or so. There a a few small nitch streaming companies that are offering a bunch of diginets. Not on Roku or Fire TV as yet. But even Spectrum is planing a cable package much like what they offer via cable, but streaming. I have had Roku since 2013 and wow has it changed. When I first got it, there was mostly a bunch of small companies running old movies, tv shows. Now HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Prime, Hulu, are all on there. More live streaming too. HBO for one on the Fire TV, with all channels either on demand together and you can stream them live. There are even Cord Cutter weekly programs, much like Charlie Chat but aimed at cutting the cord. You can check out "Cord Cutters". Another 5 years, the whole industry will change. I live in a rural area, but Spectrum (Charter) is available with 100 down. No DSL out here. But at least we have a decebnt internet with no caps. I will still stick with Dish as at this time I cannot find a package like AT250. But wait, that may be coming too.
Aren’t there more than 14,000,000?
Last I remember reading at the end of Q2, 2018 there were still 19,000,000 give or take.
Your likely correct. I knew the Directv numbers where higher than dish.
I think it’s 14 mil after you take out Directv now and Latin America
I think LEO satellites for tv broadband and phones are the future I wonder why they took so long to do it. It solves all the problems.
I think it will definitely take longer than mid 2020’s for satellite to go away. A successful LEO service launch could accelerate it though. 2030s something may change.
I think it will definitely take longer than mid 2020’s for satellite to go away. A successful LEO service launch could accelerate it though. 2030s something may change.
A bit of an off-topic thought here, but if they launch LEO satellites, I wonder if that means C-band and Ku satellite broadcasts will go away, too? I could see LEO satellites solving the rural internet problems we currently have, but will they also be for commercial use?
The concept has been around for years. It just had to wait for the satellite and launch technologies to catch up to it. SpaceX for example, expects to launch 70+ smaller satellites with a single launch soon. Nothing of that magnitude has ever been done before, but with the thousands of satellites needed for an effective LEO Internet service, it's a primary requirement.
SpaceX just got FCC approval last week for Starlink, their planned LEO constellation of 12,000 satellites. Half of them must be in place within six years, by 2024, with the remainder in place by 2027. I'm pretty sure I've read that they want to begin offering service before 2024, though, well before the whole system is in place. The first phase of the system will consist of "only" 1,600 satellites and, even at that point, a computer scientist believes the network would be very profitable for SpaceX and "would exhibit dramatic latency improvements between most conceivable access points" versus our existing internet infrastructure. If they must have 6,000 in place by 2024, perhaps the 1,600 satellites of phase one will be operational by, what, 2021?
SpaceX's Starlink internet constellation deemed 'a license to print money'
At any rate, once something like this is available, it's hard to see how anyone using a rooftop dish for TV wouldn't just switch to this instead, given that it will offer gigabit broadband with low latency over which any kind of TV/video service could ride (including Starlink's own TV service if they wanted to get into that business like pretty much every other broadband provider currently does).
Also depends on the cost... if it's like ViaSat, Hughes or any of those, who charge ridiculous monthly rates because they're the provider of last resort, then IMO nothing will change...
Suppose they want $149.99 per month for the 1GB speed. I'm paying Consolidated $49/mo for 20mbps down/1.5 up. I won't be willing to pay $100 more per month regardless of how fast it is.
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SpaceX isn't getting into this huge venture only to serve that slice of rural dwellers who don't have any other choice besides old-school satellite internet (which is crappy and, as you say, ridiculously priced). Their Starlink service should be able to compete quality-wise with wired broadband providers in cities and suburbs and I expect it will be priced to do so. Just think about the global scale that Starlink will have -- and scale drives down the cost per user. Tech columnist Bob Cringely believes that SpaceX need only break even on the internet service itself for the whole venture to be profitable for them because SpaceX will be making money by also carrying other companies' payloads alongside their own Starlink sats on all their frequent rocket launches in the coming years.
If it's like everything else, we'll be subsidizing those other areas where workers make $1 a day. Not complaining, just being realistic. I'll be very glad to see an affordable internet service as I'm one of those whose only choice is satellite or cellular.
I really hope you're right. It would be a game changer. Right now, rural telco's (slow DSL) and satellite internet (ViaSat, Exede, Hughes) are able to charge what the market will bear because there is no competition.
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