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FCC approves AT&T's acquisition of DirecTV

AT&T has fiber? Heck, they don't even have any copper in my County.
Congrats AT&T, you'll soon have access to alot of satellites.
 
Yes. AT&T has lots of fiber deployed in areas where they provide landline and wired Internet services, using both FFTN and FTTP. They have been expanding that fiber footprint for some time and had already committed to passing approx 10M additional locations. This announcement adds about 2M to that.
 
I'll be dead & long after that before big AT&T will ever run any fiber in the fastest growing Counties on the country. San Marcos right now is the fastest growing city on the state & maybe in the country....at least thats what Community Impact Newspaper says.
 
Believe it or not AT&t is not going out of their way to NOT provide service to you. I'm sure AT&T would love to have the cash and infrastructure to place, use, support, and upgrade fiber to ever home in the country. Where they arent already an RBOC, to build that out would be phenomenally expensive. The words "phenominallly expensive" don't even begin to convey the costs. And that doesn't even include the legal and regulatory hurdles it takes to do that.. just take a look at Verizon's FIOS business plan. Even where they already have a presence it's a huge expense. I can't quote numbers but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find how many BILLIONS the company is spending on greenfield and overbuild projects within the territories they already have access to.
 
Thats cool. AT&T has enough to "as you said" expand by 12M additional locations & purchase DirectTV......sounds to like their not hurting.
 
Yep, that's how it works. Big corporations have all this money laying around so the hoard it and acquire other big corporations and screw all their customers just cuz they can.
 
If AT&T doesn't decide to spend the money and build out their fiber they're going to run out of customers for internet no matter whose TV they're selling. Around here, AT&T doesn't go above 25Mb download speed. At my house it's way less because AT&T refuses to even bother fixing the copper line from the node to my house. Last time I subscribed to them it was a really poor product in terms of reliability. Meanwhile, Charter STARTS at somewhere around 60Mb. I routinely turn in speed tests well over 100Mb (I just clocked one in at 125Mb).

Sure, AT&T can sell a completely inferior product or they can upgrade their infrastructure. The latter may be expensive, but sticking with the former is even more expensive in the long run. However, they day they run fiber down by street is the day I switch back to them. It's really up to them.
 
They are clearly upgrading. The agreement with the FCC is deploy fiber (gigabit) to over 12 million people. So... Clearly they are upgrading.
 
Another Comcast. However, I doubt there exists poorer customer service, although a 2nd would be horrible.

Rope
 
I just think that AT&T buying DirectTV is a waste since most folks are considering cutting the "cable".
Wait till they have to pay Russia to send up a rocket to replace a satellite and have it blow up.
 
That's a reasonable prediction but one that I'm sure was considered before spending $40B on the acquisition. I have no knowledge of what's going to be offered but I suspect that we'll see new streaming and on-demand options added to the menu. I don't think AT&T wants to be a "home TV" provider per-se. They want to sell the internet access. I think the merger gives them access to the video subscriber base that gives them the leverage needed to negotiate new delivery options... therefore making it easier to "cut the cable". Maybe that's a service like Sling, I don't know.

Having personally tried several "cable cutting" options I think there is a real opportunity for a company, like AT&T/DirecTV, to bring together all the content people actually want and make it easier to access from anywhere; home, mobile phones, tablets, whatever. I have access to video content from a lot of sources but searching all of them individually is a hassle. Some content is available on the TV but not mobile, some one AppleTV but not Roku, or Ruku but not AppleTV. Some local things like live sporting events or live local news aren't easy to get on a mobile device. Maybe a combined AT&T and DirecTV can work that out.

I guess what I'm saying is that I think/hope that AT&T isn't trying to be just a TV provider. I hope they are working to be more like Amazon... where the goal is to get the customer exactly what they want, where they want it, and how they want it.

Again. I need to reiterate that I am an employee of AT&T. I am not representing them here. I am sharing my personal opinions based on publicly available information.
 
DirectTV owns spectrum and satellites. That is worth more to AT&T than their TV service. The single most limited resource in the world of connecting people is radio spectrum and without growing the amount of spectrum they can provide service with, AT&T is screwed. They cannot just turn off their 2G service to reallocate it to 5G in five years as there are too many people with old feature phones and the allocation of the spectrum was designed all along for simple voice communications and would need to be redesigned. It also means writing off all the infrastructure used by the 2G networks. It is a mess, but AT&T has a plan.
 
Maybe your right Flint. DirectTV also owns a big NFL service. Thats one or two customers. But AT&T needs to start laying fiber & alot of it. Hope they have 40B to spend on infrastructure & equipment.
 
Define "a lot". Does adding FTTP to 12M homes (in addition the what they already have installed and in-progress) not meet that definition?
 
AT&T has no service within 20 miles of me. I live between Austin & San Antonio.
Not everybody wantswant to live in huge cities like Houston, Dallas Metro, Austin, NY, etc.
I like small towns & understand with that comes the lack of stores & services. But 12M new homes is not much. In Austin alone there are over 110 people a day that move there.
Houston grew over 125,000 & Dallas grew over 135,000 from July 2011 to July 2012 (just did a quick google).
 
Got it. "A lot" means whatever it takes to get to your house even if they don't currently have service in your area. They should re-write the federal, state, and local law regarding RBOC locations and operating restrictions in order to build fiber nodes and central offices to get service to you, specifically.

It's worth noting that there are already millions of homes with access to AT&T FTTP and FTTN networks. What were discussing here is adding 12M new homes in addition to the ones already served and with projects in-progress. I don't have the time to look them up but there were several announcements over the last year and a half of FTTP builds and the amount of money being invested in those.

The reality is that there are real restrictions in place making it impossible or prohibitively expensive to move into markets where they don't already have a presence. Google, the richest tech company on the planet, has fiber in only small parts of a few cities.

I'm completely confident that if AT&T could feasibly provide fiber service to Case del Barney they would. So would Google, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner ... and a whole host of other companies.
 
Damn Towen, sorry I got your panties all wet. I have no interest in getting AT&T land line, cell, or internet.
Have a nice day Sir !
 
Towen7 said:
I guess what I'm saying is that I think/hope that AT&T isn't trying to be just a TV provider. I hope they are working to be more like Amazon... where the goal is to get the customer exactly what they want, where they want it, and how they want it.
Click to expand...

This actually puts AT&T in a very unique position as far as this goes. With DirecTV, AT&T now has not only their old style landline phones/DSL service and the related (but not identical) UVerse internet/TV/VOIP system, but also satellite TV, and (here's the kicker) wireless phone service. So unlike companies like Charter, Comcast, Google, and
Time Warner (likely to be swallowed up by Charter), AT&T also has a very significant presence in the mobile space. Meanwhile, unlike T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint, AT&T has products in the at-home space as well. This puts AT&T across all spaces- wherever you are, AT&T will have a product that can come to you. Not only the usual bundle discounts for home/wireless/TV service, but even the possibility of unique offerings for DirecTV service on your mobile phone (and not just DirecTV's Anywhere service). I'm betting they've thought this one through.

I am hoping AT&T really does make a solid push for FTTP, as much as I like Charter for internet service, I'd indeed be interested in rolling my wireless, TV, and internet service into one big bundle (right now, it's three separate companies, about to be two, since I have AT&T wireless and DirecTV). If this means an even easier way to get the content I want, it's winning all the way around.

Of course, the flip side could be higher prices and lousier service due to less competition. It just depends on how things go.
 
I'm excited to see what'll be offered. I think there is a real opportunity to simplify and streamline all of the streaming options. Maybe since AT&T will have a play in all the spaces it'll be able to do something new.
 
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