Directv to shift away from Satellite?
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Well like the rep att said, "they are two different services marketed at two different demographics" but if thats the case why are they putting down one product while glorifying the other.
If you had a satellite service and rolled out a similar broadband service, and were going to eventually phase out the satellite service, how would you advertise your broad band service? Why would you load more customers on something that you might pull the plug on? It should be obvious what's happening here.
It should be, but it seems that it isn't obvious to everyone. Some people seem to think having Directv available via streaming means they must be planning to shut down their satellite service once the streaming service is equivalent. Even though doing so would mean throwing away their existing investment in satellites - including one new one that's currently under construction. Once that new one is in orbit their existing fleet should be good for at least a decade.
After the new IP delivered version of 'full Directv' coming end of this year is available and the initial kinks are worked out, no doubt AT&T will sell it in preference to the satellite version - with no need to send an installer because they can just ship the customer clients for a self-install it will cost them less up front. But that doesn't mean they have any reason to quit selling the satellite service, let alone shut it down, they just need a way of recovering that extra cost. Perhaps they will make people pay it up front, or pay for it over time by requiring a longer contract term for satellite or via higher monthly fees. Once installed though the satellite customer actually costs slightly less to deliver service to - each IP/streaming customer requires additional network resources, as well as additional storage for their cloud DVR.
The cost to deliver satellite is really only incurred when a new one is built and launched, but after T16 is in orbit they shouldn't have to worry about replacement satellites for at least a decade, so satellite service will continue at least that long.
I agree with what your saying here with once exception ... I don't think D* can have contracts like they do anymore, at least for the Streaming service unless other major companies also do .... otherwise they won't get the sub Because of that in a lot of cases.
No doubt the DirecTV owned satellite fleet has some years left but they don't stay in orbit for free. Each satellite needs constant telemetry monitoring and station keeping every couple of weeks. ATT/DirecTV has disbanded the internal group that took care of station keeping so they probably contracted Intelsat or similar for that task and its not free.
Even with viable satellites in orbit it might be cheaper to walk away from them in 5yrs or whenever the parallel broadband service is fully built out. Many of the satellites are very DTV specific and could not be re-purposed for resale but the orbital slots are worth a fortune and ATT could be eyeing that.
Even with viable satellites in orbit it might be cheaper to walk away from them in 5yrs or whenever the parallel broadband service is fully built out. Many of the satellites are very DTV specific and could not be re-purposed for resale but the orbital slots are worth a fortune and ATT could be eyeing that.
Unless the orbital slots are worth many billions of dollars I don't see how it could make business sense to try to forcibly move existing customers off satellite until the satellites are aged to the point where they might need to replace them. I realize station keeping etc. isn't free, but that cost is still pretty small compared to the long term cost of replacing satellites as needed, but even that is only 50 cents/month per customer at their current subscriber levels.
Current subscriber numbers are dropping..not increasing..so the cost keeps going up...when enough are moved off satellite the satellites will be too expensive to maintain
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Anyone know how they are going to get all the streaming rights for DirecTV over IP vs DTV NOW? They don't have all the locals or cable channel streaming rights for DTV NOW. Is it because AT&T is doing it on their own DTV box vs the Apple TV and Roku TV boxes?
Its 50 cents per subscriber per month now, including replacement costs for new satellites as needed. If they lost 75% of their satellite customers, that would still be only $2/month for each subscriber. Hard to imagine people who want satellite because they have poor broadband, are in boats/RVs or simply because they have had satellite for years and "if it ain't broke" would balk if Directv passed that cost onto them with a 'satellite surcharge' - it would be about a 1.5% increase in today's bills which average $128 per customer.
Sure, if they got down to a million satellite customers that's probably the breaking point, but we are many years away from reaching that.
I'd put the end of the road for DBS somewhere around that decade mark, i.e. 2028. But it'll be a pretty bleak, long tail. Seeing rooftop dishes or knowing anyone who uses one will be a pretty rare thing by 2025. It certainly won't make sense to ever build and launch new replacement satellites (after, perhaps, the one you claim that AT&T will launch soon). As more and more Americans, including rural dwellers, gain access to broadband and OTT-delivered video alternatives (e.g. T-Mobile TV via long-range 600 MHz LTE/5G, as well as a cheaper "full DirecTV" via OTT), you'll see the numbers on DBS rapidly dwindle, increasing the per-sub costs for installing, operating and supporting the service. And during that time frame, I think you're going to see the continued erosion of the overall linear channel TV model too, as more and more viewers migrate to services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney's forthcoming OTT service, HBO (or whatever it morphs into as it becomes a portal for various AT&T-owned content), etc. Once a broad variety of live sports become available via standalone OTT services apart from traditional linear channel bundles, that's all she wrote. So DBS will be a shrinking slice of a shrinking pie.
The more interesting question, I think, is whether AT&T holds onto their DBS all the way until it dies or can they find a buyer for it in a few years? Dish and DTV use different satellites but there would be some sort of economy of scale, I would think, in a single company operating all of them -- one set of channel contracts, one set of in-home STBs, zero direct competitors. (Of course, for the government to approve such a merger, one or both operations would likely have to be in dire straits.)
I'm not convinced that Dish can survive another five years on their own. Sling TV isn't going to save them. Ergen is going to spend a little money to build out a fig-leaf of a 5G IoT network so that they can keep squatting on their spectrum in hopes that someone buys them out for it. But I don't see that happening. The last FCC auction to sell TV spectrum for refarming into cellular didn't fetch the kind of prices that many had anticipated. With the advent of 5G, plus low-earth orbit satellite internet (SpaceX, etc.), plus the expansion of fiber and symmetrical D3.1 cable internet (not to mention the opening up of various bits of unlicensed spectrum and whatever other technologies, such as AT&T's AirGig, end up bearing fruit), I don't see there being a huge hunger for Dish's spectrum to serve as additional last-mile pipes to consumers.
Yup, I have the fastest speed available in my rural area, 3 Mbps. Barely good enough for streaming Netflix in SD. I might be able to get a satellite Internet connect but with it's high latency and very stingy bandwidth cap it would not suit my needs either. Satellite TV is my lifeline.
One set of channel contracts would take years to reach - some of the contracts are as long as 10 years. It isn't like AT&T has one set of contracts yet, they aren't even close. It would also take many years to get to a place where you could have one set of STBs. Even if they wanted to merge today there wouldn't be much in the way of savings, because as you say satellite's market share will erode over time. Other than the usual corporate merger savings of using it as a way of shedding staff in support roles like accounting, call centers and so forth.
After AT&T spent all this money to acquire and integrate Directv - including making contracts that work for both satellite and streaming/IP - it wouldn't make sense to sell them. Once the T16 satellite is operational they won't need to worry about replacements until late next decade so it isn't like operating the satellite business is going to cost them all that much. The next generation clients look to be designed to used by both satellite and IP customers of 'full Directv' so they will already have the economies of scale on STBs - and from day one without having years of supporting two families of STBs. The Genie 2 will still be unique to satellite, but they could get around if they wanted to - put the tuners in the LNB and support attaching USB hard drives to clients for storage. Since the next generation clients will run the apps instead of the server running them, tuners and storage are all future Genies will be doing.
My guess is that they'll run the satellite service until it shrinks to a point where it isn't worth replacing the satellites, at which point they'll just announce a date when it will be shut down with at least a year's notice (since you know well in advance when a satellite will run out of fuel) and offer to switch them to the IP version.
What if they had the HS-27 with the new interface that is on the HR-44, HR-54 and HS-17 and C71K/KW client boxes would have Android TV? That way the C71K/KW would be a hybrid client box for DTV over SatelliteTV and IP. When the C71K/KW would be connected to SatelliteTV it would boot up to the new SatelliteTV interface that is out now and you would press a home button on that new voice remote we saw in the Osprey guide and that would take you to the full Android TV screen. That way DTV could do APPS better than having the current APP bar that is used now. Also be able to use DTV over IP for free for bad weather backup.
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well what is the plan for sports bars books / etc to get 8-16 live feeds at the same time? Pay 250/mo for cell + 1000/year for each sports pack? Local cable will crush them other then NFLST.
Well, those "usual" merger savings aren't nothing. But a bigger deal would be the pricing freedom that would come from no longer having another DBS competitor to contend with. In a few years, about the only people I can imagine sticking with DBS will be those who really have no other option (i.e. no broadband provider which could also serve as an MVPD and/or allow for various OTT video services) and that number is going to keep dwindling. So if DTV and DISH were to merge, and could have that shrinking rural captive market all to themselves without competing over it on price (as happened with Sirius and XM Radio), that would be quite a boon to the survivor.
And as for a single set of STBs, I didn't mean replacing all of the old ones, I simply meant having the economy of scale of using only one model for all new/replacement STBs going forward. (Although, for replacements/upgrades, there may still be hardware differences in the home server/tuners depending on which rooftop dish/satellite fleet it was mated to.)
Maybe, although again, I have to ask: have you ever worked at DirecTV? Do you have any friends who do? Are you privy to the numbers their accountants pore over? You seem quite confident about their operational finances. But based on what? Meanwhile, Inclined Orbit, who has either worked there or at least knows guys who do, seems to have a different take on the future long-term feasibility of AT&T operating DBS.
BTW, what's your take on DISH?
No idea what pricing models for sports may look like a decade into the future. But it would be no problem at all for a local broadband provider -- Comcast, Charter, Verizon, AT&T, etc. -- to reliably offer 8 to 16 live feeds of whatever sports that the bar would be willing to pay for. That's no big deal with multicast IPTV. 16 live feeds of 4K HDR, even at 30 Mbps (which I'm sure won't be needed in a decade as compression codecs advance from HEVC to AV1, etc.), amounts to under half a gig of bandwidth. A decade from now, 1 Gbps connections won't even seem fast any more. Much faster speeds will be common.
People forget, or ignore, that OTT is under priced now, to gain subscribers. There are real costs in IP delivery, and these will only increase. Both to the providers, and to the subscribers.
There are inherent efficiencies in delivering a stream to millions, as opposed to delivering millions of streams.
Dish will be in fine fettle five years from now. And, is suspect, ten years from now.
As IP delivery true costs emerge, satellite prices will seem more reasonable, and there may be a resurgence in the satellite business. ATT may miss this.
An STB that can support satellite, OTT and OTA May cover all bets and be a good seller.
I don’t have a lot of respect for AT&T’s judgement
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There are inherent efficiencies in delivering a stream to millions, as opposed to delivering millions of streams.
Dish will be in fine fettle five years from now. And, is suspect, ten years from now.
As IP delivery true costs emerge, satellite prices will seem more reasonable, and there may be a resurgence in the satellite business. ATT may miss this.
An STB that can support satellite, OTT and OTA May cover all bets and be a good seller.
I don’t have a lot of respect for AT&T’s judgement
Sent from my iPhone using the SatelliteGuys app!
Yup, its all Doom and Gloom, Sat will be gone in a matter of a few years, maybe weeks ....
I'm already shaking in my boots because I will no longer have TV when the Sats all fall out of the atmosphere ....,
leaving us only with streaming options ....
Ya wanna know what this IS going to do ?
Its going to raise EVERYONES Internet prices to outrageous levels.
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