AT&T Demands Payment On $500 Million DISH Note

[ERSanders]

AT&T $500 Million Demand...a Head Fake?

Just a thought.

Could it be that AT&T still has some interest in Dish and is making the $500 million notes demand as a strategic maneuver?

This would drop the Dish share price in anticipation of making a lower offer in a short time. They still need the customer base and front-end infrastructure with FIOS.

 

[Mr Tony]

merged a couple threads together so we didnt have 3 threads of same thing floating around

 

[GaryPen]

Never pull on a loose thread. The whole sweater will unravel.

 

[rad]

At the rate AT&T is moving, I think they might in some time just completely ditch their satellite deals. Frankly, they don't need it. There's a market for some of us (I won't be moving away from dish as long as we have a vacation house that we can take boxes to when on vacation).. but yeah.

If they move with UVerse at the same rate they did with Lightspeed (put RT's in remote areas for DSL service) I think they'll need to keep a DBS company in pocket to cover the unserved areas. When I moved to Austin 2 years ago, AT&T was then installing VRAD's and there are still many areas within the Austin city limits, not to mention the surronding areas, where there is no activity going on to expand UVerse.

 

[OoTLink]

Weird rad, they pretty much covered all of NorCal that I can think of. XD

Damn VRADs are already getting vandalized here too!

 

[harshness]

The HR2X's do support ATSC OTA now with an addtion of a AM21.

This is the integration of which I speak. Features that the 622HZ has that the HR21 doesn't:

OTA tuner
PIP/Side-by-side
HomePlug networking
RF Distribution
USB mass storage archiving support (as opposed to married eSATA)
IR Blaster (ability to control recording devices)
Full keyboard remote (unique to the HZ)

The agile RF distribution will become less and less of a desired feature as more and more folks get HDTV sets, nobody's going to want to connect a NTSC signal to their nice new HD set.

I've got more than one HDTV, but I still have more analog devices (both TVs and recorders) than digital devices.

Don't understand your Tivo/2Wire comment, why would D* need to contract with 2Wire when their HR2X's do just about all the 2Wire box does now from what I can see?

They would need someone like 2Wire to bring all of the things together in a functional package. DIRECTV hasn't finished what they've started with the HR2x series after almost two years and rather than finishing it, they seem to be engaged in creeping featuritis. AT&T is looking for a finished package (that's why they did the HZ version of the already great ViP622) and DIRECTV hasn't demostrated the discipline to get it done.

 

[harshness]

Could it be that AT&T still has some interest in Dish and is making the $500 million notes demand as a strategic maneuver?

It could be that AT&T doesn't want to cut their investment in half in the event that they have to cash their shares out.

 

[rad]

This is the integration of which I speak. Features that the 622HZ has that the HR21 doesn't:

OTA tuner
PIP/Side-by-side
HomePlug networking
RF Distribution
USB mass storage archiving support (as opposed to married eSATA)
IR Blaster (ability to control recording devices)
Full keyboard remote (unique to the HZ)

That's assuming that AT&T says that those features need to be made available in one box. And get off your horse about the OTA tuner, so it's a box that sits on or under the HR21's, it provides an OTA tuner.

I've got more than one HDTV, but I still have more analog devices (both TVs and recorders) than digital devices.

That's you and that's now, I'm the opposite I have more HDTV's then SD and even the SD sets have HD STB's on them for better PQ. You're also assuming that the RF distribution for a SD signal is a must have, I don't assume that.

They would need someone like 2Wire to bring all of the things together in a functional package. DIRECTV hasn't finished what they've started with the HR2x series after almost two years and rather than finishing it, they seem to be engaged in creeping featuritis. AT&T is looking for a finished package (that's why they did the HZ version of the already great ViP622) and DIRECTV hasn't demostrated the discipline to get it done.

Yes, DirecTV hasn't finished the HR2X series, they do keep adding new features/functionality to it. That's something that I like to see, new value added features being added to existing hardware vs. having the consumer go purchase some new hardware like E* does (have a 622, want HD VoD, sorry, go buy a 722). What AT&T IMHO will be looking at is which company will get them the most customers and make them the most $'s. If AT&T really wanted to make sure their customers had a finished package I'd be able to get voice mail or call waiting caller ID on my POTS line, sorry AT&T doesn't provide those services on our switch.

 

[John Kotches]

I'm with ERSanders, $500 million converted to a stock buy out nets something like 16 Million shares.

Given the split into content (Dish) and hardware/satellites (Echostar) I wonder how the voting stock stands these days? I seem to recall that CE had a majority of the voting shares but I don't know if that remained the case.

Cheers,

 

[ERSanders]

I'm with ERSanders, $500 million converted to a stock buy out nets something like 16 Million shares.

Given the split into content (Dish) and hardware/satellites (Echostar) I wonder how the voting stock stands these days? I seem to recall that CE had a majority of the voting shares but I don't know if that remained the case.

Cheers,

You can be certain of that! If he is anything he is a control freak (which has worked to my advantage I might add).