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AT&T Buying DirecTV for $48.5 Billion
AT&T is acquiring satellite TV provider DirecTV in a deal worth $48.5 billion. This will bring 20 million more U.S. television subscribers under AT&T's roof, making it the second biggest TV provider, behind Comcast. The deal is subject to regulatory approval, and to help that along, AT&T says it will sell its 8% stake in America Movil, which is a competitor to DirecTV in some areas.
"By acquiring the country’s biggest satellite television operator, AT&T will help bolster its competitive position against Comcast. Though pay television is considered a mature market whose subscriber growth has slowed dramatically in recent years, the business nonetheless generates billions of dollars in cash. ... Part of the attraction may be DirecTV’s ample cash flow. While its business has shown little growth in recent years, it generated about $8 billion in earnings last year. Much of that will go toward future investments in growth, AT&T said, including bidding at least $9 billion for wireless network capacity that the government plans to auction off soon. By gaining satellite TV, AT&T may also be able to free up capacity on its existing broadband network."
AT&T can't be allowed to get any bigger than it is now. They had to break it up once already.
Now, take that AT&T from its shareholders and just liquidate it. Disgusting.
They are the last real competitor to terrestrial cable tv. And the only one whose DVR was bright enough to back up 10s when you fastforwarded through a commercial and released when you saw the show start whizzin' by.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
We know where all the money they should be using on upgrading their network is going.
If you spent HALF that on your network you'd crush your competition! What a crock of shit.
Nooooooooo!!!
who gives a f*k? cable television is something noone cares about... and anyone who does is a dumbass... this is the age of the internet.
You will give a fuck when the only choice for video will be 240kbps youtube/netflix or AT&T 3D, high def. video from their own 'competing' service.
Or when voip is blocked with "random jitter" but their service is working at optimal 64kbps.
cable television is something noone cares about [in] the age of the internet
That might be true once decades-long carriage contracts between the networks and the cable system operators expire and once decades-long contracts between the major professional and collegiate sport leagues and the networks expire. Until then, we're left with games that get blacked out online if shown on national or regional cable networks.
We have too low prices and too much speed. Think of the poor telecoms! They are just struggling to stay relevant and if only they owned all the last miles then how could they grab amazon and Netflix by the balls and tripple dip since they already charge both ways?
http://saveie6.com/
No reason why my bill should pay to run cable for people who live in the middle of no where
Because the people who grow the food you eat need a way to find the best market to sell the food that they grow.
who gives a f*k? cable television is something noone cares about... and anyone who does is a dumbass... this is the age of the internet.
Right and what if 4 years from now your internet connection must include TV and HBO at $200 a month or NO internet for you! (soup Nazi voice from Seinfeld)
http://saveie6.com/
So all the big inside players can get their stock orders lined up before the hoi polloi.
Two companies I refused to do (any more) business with trying to become one company I won't do any business with.
How long til we end up with just ATT&T and Comcast as players?
Cannot help but observe how convenient it will be for the American surveillance state when we have only two sources for delivery of media and internet to the home. But I'm sure this is just paranoid lunacy, right?
A little over 10 years ago, Comcast merged with AT&T Broadband, which was the USA's largest cable television operator at that time. Now it comes down to one AT&T operation versus another. If divestiture hadn't happened, they might still be a utility, which is probably why we had divestiture.
Customer growth with UVERSE was not happening fast enough -- content distributors (Disney/ESPN, premium movie channels, Scripps Networks, etc.) charged AT&T more because they did not have the subscriber numbers to leverage lower channel costs. After the merger, I expect those contracts to be renegotiated for much lower costs per subscriber for AT&T. Not that the consumers will see any of those savings...
I am afraid that, by owning a satellite television provider and a satellite internet provider, AT&T will proclaim that they have fulfilled the "universal service" mandate and refuse to upgrade any more legacy copper wire plant. There have been rumors that AT&T will not run new copper lines to a home or business if they are covered by any cell phone tower or any competing phone provider (including VoIP from another provider); nor will they replace faulty or noisy existing copper lines, since you could get service from a competitor.
It acquired AT&T's Cellular and Long Distance businesses as part of the deal, so really it was just reintegrating AT&T assets with SBC. Calling the new entity AT&T isn't entirely incorrect, since both were divisions of Ma Bell before the breakup.
You got that backwards. They will be eff'n you.
Is this the "competition" that is supposed to "self regulate" the internet providers once net neutrality is dead?
Satellite TV With UVERSE for backup due to rain fade even at a lower bit-rate will be so cool
Okay, so let them make that part of the "cost of doing business", like other just about every other business has to do. Farmers also have to have fuel to operate and haul equipment, seed, fertilizer/herbicide/pesticide, and product to and from "civilization", and they manage to do that just fine without my fuel getting taxed extra to pay for their fuel. I'd argue that fuel is a lot more important to the process than cheap high-speed Internet.
Fuel Tax in the USA /. which is pretty hard given all the competition but you have won the /. lottery this night my friend.
IRS definitions for non-taxable fuel uses "On a farm for farming purposes"
You might want to do a little research BEFORE embarrassing yourself on
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
You could probably buy a country with that much money. Like, if you offered Castro a large briefcase full of $48 billion, I think he'd probably go for it. Just saying, you can buy a shitty satellite TV company or Cuba. One of them, you can start assembling an army and working toward world domination. One you can beam reruns of "Friends" to customers you hate.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
FCC, please explain to us how this merger would benefit us consumers.
If ISPs started forcing such deals on it and we failed to demand ISPs be deprivatized, then we'd kind of deserve to be screwed over like that.
How the fuck is that good for competition?
Seriously I was being sarcastic, but how the fuck was that allowed to pass with the FCC?
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Actually, the breakup of Bell did some amazing things for a while. All of the regulations made the phone companies play nice. Things were pretty sweet for a while. Then we took it for granted, started deregulating, and here we are again.
Common Carrier rules were pretty awesome when we had them. Back in the heady days of Dial Up, you could start an ISP pretty easily. The big telephone companies HAD to lease you connections at a decent price. Competition was there. ISPs competed on service. There were choices. It was awesome.
Now we've lost that and Comcast is one of the most hated companies in America. Because Free Market!
Assholes always preaching the gun. Meanwhile less than half the population bothers to vote. Lets actually USE the ballot box before we switch to the ammo box, huh? I mean, I get the allure, but that sort of things has a really shitty history of actually working.
Hell, if we all organized and stopped buying NIKE products until they told congress to behave, then moved from company to company just NOT buying products, we'd get immediate action. We could NOT do things and if we did it in an organized fashion, shit would change.
Or you could try taking your AR-15 and going up against military hardware and training. Good Luck!
Say goodbye to affordable internet and tv boys & girls....
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Of course we know that too much competition is just CONFUSING to an average american. Thats why everything is bound to converge around two "choices" of everything. Demolicans or republicrats, Lockheed or Boeing, AT&T or Verizon, Intel or AMD ..
Its all free market, yes ?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
That gives them 12 hours for the fires and pitchforks to die down... By morning.... ...look waffles!
There were choices. I could use one phone company for local service and another for "long distance". In the USofA a phone call to a location as far as sixty miles distant was a "toll call" that required additional fees. Rates were lower after 5 PM so people waited to call friends.... A co-worker said his MOM started a long distance phone business!
a sheit of a company buying another sheit of a company
4 years from now, i will have google fiber for 70$ a month with a gigabit connection... and theres nothing any of the cable companies can do about it.
I am a DirecTV customer. I live in a rural area and my only choice for internet is DSL. I use a CLEC, as opposed to CenturyLink who sucked big time. I am very happy with my internet connection and don't understand why you folks who get everything bundled are worried about this merger. Here's why, I pay around $150 per month for DirecTV with two DVRs and a few other boxes. I also pay around $70 per month for my internet service which I am happy to have. So if you complainers are getting phone/TV/Internet bundles with more than a 5MB/s data rate for less than $220 per month, please just stop your whining. You will never have to pay so much for so little unless you move somewhere there is no cable.
who gives a f*k? cable television is something noone cares about... and anyone who does is a dumbass... this is the age of the internet.
This, of course, is hyperbolic nonsense, as reflected by the numbers. As of 2012, the top ten cable tv providers in the US had a total of over 59 million subscribers. Perhaps someday no one will give a "f*k" about cable tv, but today is not that day.
Forget demand, you'll have to outbid them on the congressman auction. Good luck!
the people who buy it generally buy it because the bundle costs less with cable than it does without, or they are dumbasses who dont realize how to watch their shows online.
Imagine how much they will charge now. It will be awesome.
the people who buy it generally buy it because the bundle costs less with cable than it does without, or they are dumbasses who dont realize how to watch their shows online.
People who watch all of their shows online are a tiny fraction of viewers in total, and people who don't share your attitudes in this regard aren't "dumbasses"; they just have different preferences and priorities than you have.
The same standards should be applied to AT&T acquisition.... and they should be blocked since it would reduce competition in markets where AT&T already has a terrestrial cable monopoly/duopoly.
Well, that's just 2 years of subscription fees at $100/head, and there are lots of plans more expensive than that. In fact, it's just over 1.5x annual revenue, which isn't necessarily a bad deal for a mature industry with a large subscriber base and a rapidly increasing revenue. I mean, hey, you're competing with cable so it's more of a race to see who can raise rates the fastest, rather than find the bottom dollar service cost.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
They're still elected with votes, and elections aren't outright frauds in this country at this point. Special interests play a game of FUD to keep voter apathy high enough to keep their guys in. If they mess up and more voters actually care to vote their politicians out, no amount of lobbying or campaign contributions can stop that.
They would have to mess up spectacularly to get your average voter to care about it, but that's precisely what the example Billy came up with. I think people would be outraged if they had to pay a $200 cable bill in order to get internet, to the point where they WOULD vote to change it finally.
Unless you're suggesting that ISPs are SO powerful that they'd declare a military junta rather than allow internet service to be nationalized.
If the choice is Tweedledee and Tweedledum and both got a nice 'bonus' check, good luck.
You'll need double good luck to get the GOP to agree to nationalize anything.
No, again, you're confusing cynicism with wisdom. We are often left with only two bad choices because of voter apathy. The primaries are open. They would be democratic if anyone bothered voting.. Tweedledee and Tweedledum can't endorse something massively unpopular and still get the nomination no matter how much corporations would love it, and if they did, there would be third parties.
Well naturally. That's why they wait until elected to pull their about face on the issue.
Oh great, higher rates for crappier service. QOS is the last thing on AT&T's mind.
No good deed goes unpunished.