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AT&T Considers Buying Time Warner (bloomberg.com)
In what would likely be one of the largest telecommunications takeovers in American history, Bloomberg is reporting that ATT has discussed the idea of a possible merger or other partnership with Time Warner Inc (may be paywalled; alternate source). Bloomberg reports: The talks, which at this stage are informal, have focused on building relations between the companies rather than establishing the terms of a specific transaction, the people said, asking not to be identified as the deliberations are private. Neither side has yet hired a financial adviser, the people said. Acquiring Time Warner would give ATT, one of the biggest providers of pay-TV and of wireless and home internet service in the U.S., a collection of popular programming to offer to subscribers, from HBO to NBA basketball to the Cartoon Network. ATT CEO Randall Stephenson has been looking to add more content and original programming as part of his plan to transform the Dallas-based telecommunications company into a media and entertainment giant. Time Warner Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bewkes is a willing seller if he gets an offer he thinks is fair, said one of the people. Bewkes and his board rejected an $85-a-share approach in 2014 from Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox Inc., which valued Time Warner at more than $75 billion. Last year, ATT paid $48.5 billion to acquire satellite-TV provider DirecTV, its biggest deal in at least 10 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. ATT has been developing an internet-based version of the pay-TV service, called DirecTV now.
Dear AT&T,
We already tried it. It didn't work out so well. You should learn from our mistakes.
Sincerely,
AOL
How about buying Yahoo too then they can be the unholy trinity:
The most despised web search engine, a highly reviled telecommunications company, and a cable company (they're all evil).
EA will be relegated to only the 2nd most evil entity on earth.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Charter
This is going to be fun!
Ezekiel 23:20
TFA is about Time Warner Inc, a separate entity from TWC.
The Feds should block this one if it ever comes close to being attempted. We have an absolute dearth of competition as it stands now. I looked at moving from Time Warner for my internet and found AT&T is the only option in my area. TW is okay, but overpriced and I have never heard a good thing about AT&T. Allow the two to combine and I get the worst of both worlds.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The only economic system the West hasn't tried on a serious level is Distributism and sadly, Distributism is the only system that answers this economic problem of having a faustian bargain of monopolies or government control. When a business has to operate on that dichotomy, society turns over the work to a non-profit corporation that manages the infrastructure as a social good, works fairly with the private sector and is sufficiently powerful to resist undue political pressure.
If that sounds almost feudal, well it is influenced by the old feudal system. Under Distributism, such a corporation would not be state owned. It would be the equivalent of a feudal lord with a letter patent granting rights and authority to operate. That means Congress could still act and force its hand, but it would take Congress acting with a serious majority and mandate.
The Time Warner that ATT wants is Warner Bros content, and cable content like Cartoon Network. Time Warner Cable is the cable and Internet provider which was purchased by Spectrum. This clearly an attempt by ATT to compete with Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.
"Ones and zeros were everywhere. I even think I saw a two!" - Bender
The current AT&T is not the original AT&T. It's the company that bought parts of AT&T and renamed itself AT&T. Also, Comcast and the original AT&T had already merged years ago...
If it was the original AT&T, their service would be more reliable and their network better engineered.
Seriously, Southwestern Bell sucked in all aspects of its service. When it bought PacBell customer service collapsed and general reliability problems started coming up out here in CA. I had the original AT&T Wireless mobile service here in San Diego and I seriously don't ever remember going under 3 bars anywhere, and this was over a decade ago. After SBC sucked up the old AT&T and took on its trade name, it didn't adopt old AT&T's engineering or reliability practices, or even AFAICT its work ethic....
I do sometimes wonder what it's like to work for AT&T Corporation now, which lives on as the long distance subsidiary...
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Coming next season on HBO:
GAME OF PHONES!
Will Daenerys get a dead connection? Will the White Walkers expand their data plan? Find out more in the final season of Game of Phones.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch