Dish to resell AT&T internet?
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With the soon launch of the Hopper+ Dish customers will require internet service to use all the Google applications. So Dish has entered into a distribution agreement with AT&T to sell high speed internet. I wonder what sort of price break Dish customers will get on AT&T high speed internet. Living in the country I am stuck with Spectrum at $79.99 per month for 200 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload.
If AT&T isn't available now, then its not likely it will be anytime soon...Don't see Dish laying new lines
I don't understand the fuss, Dish has been packaging and reselling other providers Internet service for years, from DSL to cable to satellite.
I'd be surprised if there's any price break for combining DISH and AT&T Fiber/Internet. Because you don't even get a bundling discount for combining either DTV or DTV Stream with AT&T Fiber/Internet, and AT&T still owns 70% of DTV! AT&T Fiber is actually pretty darn price competitive to begin with and they seem to front-load any available discounts via Visa gift cards for new subs. (You get $300 or so of those when you sign up via att.com and get even more from Rakuten if you click through them as your referrer first.) They no longer even do a first-year discount on your monthly price, after which you price jumps up. Pricing now starts in most areas at a flat everyday regular price of $55/mo for 300/300 and that includes non-optional equipment rental and unlimited data. They're pretty serious about stealing away business from cable broadband.
This deal marks the second significant partnership between Dish and AT&T lately. Awhile back, the two struck a deal for Dish's cellular/wireless business (which includes brands like Boost and Ting, plus whatever Dish decides to brand their new home-grown one currently dubbed "Project Genesis") to primarily use AT&T's 4G/5G network while Dish builds out their own 5G network over the coming years. And now we have this reseller agreement for Dish to offer AT&T wired home internet service.
All this is leading up to Dish and AT&T announcing that they're going to merge their pay TV services: Dish and Sling on the one hand and DirecTV and DirecTV Stream on the other. They'll put all of them into a jointly owned private LLC with both companies getting to pick board members. Knowing Ergen, he'll prevail in ensuring that Dish has more control over the joint venture than AT&T (which shouldn't be that hard given that AT&T's current JV partner, private equity group TPG, only owns 30% of DTV but has day-to-day operational control). But the two companies will split the declining profits of the joint Dish/DTV group as satellite/cable TV sunsets over the next decade. By joining them together, they'll enjoy cost savings (e.g. combined billing, operations, customer support) and also eliminate each other's only direct competitor in satellite TV.
My guess is that this deal will be announced either this Dec. or early next year. The main worry that both sides have is that the federal government will try to block the merger, as they did 20 years ago in 2002. But obviously, times are different now, with both services bleeding subs and an increasing portion of US homes having multiple options for video entertainment via broadband. Still though, there will remain a small but significant slice of Americans, mainly rural and skewing elderly, whose only choices will be DTV or Dish, so a merger won't be good for those folks.
Being sensitive to the regulatory risk, I suspect AT&T and Dish won't want to announce the deal during the lead-up to election season. Too risky, as political candidates may denounce the deal as a talking point on the campaign trail, possibly whipping up public sentiment against the deal and increasing the chances that the FCC or DOJ would move to block it, or failing that, apply concessions to protect rural consumers from price gouging (which they absolutely should do, IMO).
So that's why I think the deal gets announced after election season is over. Announce it between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the public is thinking about other things, not so much politics and big business. Or maybe the deal doesn't get hammered out until early 2023. At any rate, I think they'd want to have the deal completed and fully operational before 2024, when once again the country is back in election season, but an even bigger one because the presidency will be on the line.
The other option would be to wait until 2025 but that's too risky for a number of reasons. Depending on who wins the White House, the next admin may be more, not less, likely to try to stop a joint venture merger deal. And in the meantime, both sides will have seen millions more satellite subscribers cancel service. If a deal wasn't announced until Dec. 2024, it would likely be close to a year, let's say fall 2025, before the joint venture would be fully operational.
And Dish, in particular, would find fall 2025 to be getting dangerously close to the time when their current satellite fleet will no longer be sufficient to sustain nationwide service with those hundreds of local channels. Their sats only have an expected fuel supply of 15 years and all but one of their current 11 sats will have hit or exceeded 15 years of service by the end of 2026 (maybe a bit sooner, can't exactly recall). Dish will need to be making alternate arrangements for customers well before that date. Sure, it's possible, even likely, that some of their sats will exceed the stated 15-year lifespan, but depending on that is kind of like continuing to drive down the interstate when your gas gauge is on empty as opposed to taking the next exit you see and refueling. Neither Dish nor DTV will shoulder the huge expensive of building and launching another satellite because it just no longer makes financial sense given the dwindling numbers of sat TV subs they have. But DTV has a younger satellite fleet than Dish and theirs should remain operational into the early 2030s -- by which point, cable TV may no longer exist as we know it anyhow and, even if it does, the number of Americans who want to receive it via satellite would likely be so small that they would no longer constitute a viable nationwide business anyhow.
So clearly the answer is that a combined Dish/DTV joint venture will shift to broadband-based delivery of service where possible (e.g. DTV Stream) while shifting their dwindling combined base of satellite customers over to the DTV satellite fleet, which will last them long enough until the whole satellite TV business dies.
So, in summary, both services are bleeding subs and need to join forces to reduce costs and competition. There's some risk of political backlash leading to the federal government trying to stop a merger, or place conditions on it that AT&T and Dish wouldn't like. To reduce the risk of that, they'll want to announce the deal outside of election season, which at this point in American life is basically all year every even-numbered year. So their choices come down to a 2023 merger or a 2025 merger. But waiting until 2025 is undesirable for both sides -- undesirable for DTV because they're losing subs faster than Dish and may well be the smaller of the two by then; undesirable for Dish because they're losing satellites sooner than DTV and will be under the gun to address that problem by then. So expect Dish and DTV, along with their streaming siblings, to merge in 2023, with the deal announced as soon as this Dec.
Edit: One last point suggesting a 2023 merger is that AT&T's current JV partner in owning/running DTV, the private venture group TPG, is rumored to have only committed to a 3-year timeframe on that situation. They formed that JV in Aug. 2020.
All this is leading up to Dish and AT&T announcing that they're going to merge their pay TV services: Dish and Sling on the one hand and DirecTV and DirecTV Stream on the other. They'll put all of them into a jointly owned private LLC with both companies getting to pick board members. Knowing Ergen, he'll prevail in ensuring that Dish has more control over the joint venture than AT&T (which shouldn't be that hard given that AT&T's current JV partner, private equity group TPG, only owns 30% of DTV but has day-to-day operational control). But the two companies will split the declining profits of the joint Dish/DTV group as satellite/cable TV sunsets over the next decade. By joining them together, they'll enjoy cost savings (e.g. combined billing, operations, customer support) and also eliminate each other's only direct competitor in satellite TV.
My guess is that this deal will be announced either this Dec. or early next year. The main worry that both sides have is that the federal government will try to block the merger, as they did 20 years ago in 2002. But obviously, times are different now, with both services bleeding subs and an increasing portion of US homes having multiple options for video entertainment via broadband. Still though, there will remain a small but significant slice of Americans, mainly rural and skewing elderly, whose only choices will be DTV or Dish, so a merger won't be good for those folks.
Being sensitive to the regulatory risk, I suspect AT&T and Dish won't want to announce the deal during the lead-up to election season. Too risky, as political candidates may denounce the deal as a talking point on the campaign trail, possibly whipping up public sentiment against the deal and increasing the chances that the FCC or DOJ would move to block it, or failing that, apply concessions to protect rural consumers from price gouging (which they absolutely should do, IMO).
So that's why I think the deal gets announced after election season is over. Announce it between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the public is thinking about other things, not so much politics and big business. Or maybe the deal doesn't get hammered out until early 2023. At any rate, I think they'd want to have the deal completed and fully operational before 2024, when once again the country is back in election season, but an even bigger one because the presidency will be on the line.
The other option would be to wait until 2025 but that's too risky for a number of reasons. Depending on who wins the White House, the next admin may be more, not less, likely to try to stop a joint venture merger deal. And in the meantime, both sides will have seen millions more satellite subscribers cancel service. If a deal wasn't announced until Dec. 2024, it would likely be close to a year, let's say fall 2025, before the joint venture would be fully operational.
And Dish, in particular, would find fall 2025 to be getting dangerously close to the time when their current satellite fleet will no longer be sufficient to sustain nationwide service with those hundreds of local channels. Their sats only have an expected fuel supply of 15 years and all but one of their current 11 sats will have hit or exceeded 15 years of service by the end of 2026 (maybe a bit sooner, can't exactly recall). Dish will need to be making alternate arrangements for customers well before that date. Sure, it's possible, even likely, that some of their sats will exceed the stated 15-year lifespan, but depending on that is kind of like continuing to drive down the interstate when your gas gauge is on empty as opposed to taking the next exit you see and refueling. Neither Dish nor DTV will shoulder the huge expensive of building and launching another satellite because it just no longer makes financial sense given the dwindling numbers of sat TV subs they have. But DTV has a younger satellite fleet than Dish and theirs should remain operational into the early 2030s -- by which point, cable TV may no longer exist as we know it anyhow and, even if it does, the number of Americans who want to receive it via satellite would likely be so small that they would no longer constitute a viable nationwide business anyhow.
So clearly the answer is that a combined Dish/DTV joint venture will shift to broadband-based delivery of service where possible (e.g. DTV Stream) while shifting their dwindling combined base of satellite customers over to the DTV satellite fleet, which will last them long enough until the whole satellite TV business dies.
So, in summary, both services are bleeding subs and need to join forces to reduce costs and competition. There's some risk of political backlash leading to the federal government trying to stop a merger, or place conditions on it that AT&T and Dish wouldn't like. To reduce the risk of that, they'll want to announce the deal outside of election season, which at this point in American life is basically all year every even-numbered year. So their choices come down to a 2023 merger or a 2025 merger. But waiting until 2025 is undesirable for both sides -- undesirable for DTV because they're losing subs faster than Dish and may well be the smaller of the two by then; undesirable for Dish because they're losing satellites sooner than DTV and will be under the gun to address that problem by then. So expect Dish and DTV, along with their streaming siblings, to merge in 2023, with the deal announced as soon as this Dec.
Edit: One last point suggesting a 2023 merger is that AT&T's current JV partner in owning/running DTV, the private venture group TPG, is rumored to have only committed to a 3-year timeframe on that situation. They formed that JV in Aug. 2020.
