AT&T/DirecTV- the coming end of the satellite side of things

[Akula]

The AT&T head honcho has said they won't be launching any more satellites for the DirecTV service- the existing setup will continue for now, but they plan to transition to a pure streaming service over time.

http://relatednews.net/75409/att-just-declared-the-end-of-the-satellite-tv-era-in-the-us-quartz/

My analysis: This is an understandable move for them- satellites and orbital launches to GEO are rather expensive. Most US homes are watching via streaming services now anyway. However, for a lot of consumers this is not really a good thing. I personally like satellite TV because our local cable company is missing some important features on the TV side (no whole home DVR for some reason). Also, if our home internet goes out (say, a major failure on the cable trunk) we can still watch TV at least. This will bring that to an end. Furthermore, extremely rural locations can ONLY depend on satellite services for such things- telcos have shown zero interest in trying to cover rural areas with high speed internet or even regular cable TV. Yes, last mile service is expensive, but this is going to leave exactly ONE satellite provider (assuming Dish doesn't fold or reinvent themselves too) to choose from.

I hadn't planned to cut the TV cord, but it looks like it's going to be cut for us, like it or not.

 

[Towen7]

There is a LOT of unused satellite capacity. Not launching any new ones doesnt mean that the service shuts down any time soon.

 

[Akula]

There is a LOT of unused satellite capacity. Not launching any new ones doesnt mean that the service shuts down any time soon.

I hope so... I can't imagine there's a timetable of a year or even three on this.

 

[Huey]

I truly don't know how the internet works, or at least distributed, but don't they use satellite's for that as well?

 

[Flint]

I truly don't know how the internet works, or at least distributed, but don't they use satellite's for that as well?

No, the latency is far too high to put the internet on satellite. The only time the internet is put on satellite is for the last mile for very remote locations who cannot get fiber. And even then it kinda sucks.

 

[Huey]

No, the latency is far too high to put the internet on satellite. The only time the internet is put on satellite is for the last mile for very remote locations who cannot get fiber. And even then it kinda sucks.

Gotcha. For some reason I thought at least parts of the internet were handled by satelites.

 

[Flint]

Gotcha. For some reason I thought at least parts of the internet were handled by satelites.

No, not really. Take a look at this map of all the submarine fiber cables crossing our oceans:

That's not even a current map, there have been a few dozen massive new fiber bundles dropped across our oceans since then.

Satellite is inconsistent, is more regulated by international governments, is stunningly expensive, almost impossible to repair, and limited in bandwidth. If I have almost the entire microwave spectrum already being used for a downlink in, say, Bethesda, Maryland, I cannot add more signal - the available bandwidth is used up. With fiber I can just run a few more fibers into the building.

 

[MatthewB]

This past August I had a 60 foot pine tree smash into my roof during a massive summer storm we had tore my A/C in half, punched a dozen holes in my roof, knocked down my block wall fence and knocked out my Directv sat dish. I was patient and called directv to reinstall my sat dish but after two appointments and two no shows I told them to kiss my ass. I tried their streaming service but had far too many audio issues with sound cutting out every few seconds then when it came back on the audio would be out of sync. what made it harder is directv steaming has no number to call to speak with anybody you have to do everything by Internet chat. That got tiresome when every day you would have to chat about the audio issue. So switched to Hulu Plus and I love it. Along with that and Netflix and my Vudu I have more entertainment than I can handle. I don't miss Directv one bit.