Back in the olden days...dish was investing millions into new locals and stuff like mpeg 4 technology..directv was not...at one point dish almost caught directv...then newscorp saved directv..investing millions..somewhere it was sold off..not profitable enough... eventually it ended up in att
Charlie figured out he could make much more money losing customers rather than churning them...it cost atleast $700 to install someone only to have them stolen away couple years later by directv who had a better promotion
So he let the less desirable customers leave and kept the good high paying ones
Att is just following his business model..its too expensive to add customers and remain profitable