Had a feeling this was coming:
AT&T eats a $15.5 billion impairment charge as DirecTV debacle continues
AT&T lost 617,000 Premium TV customers in Q4 and 3 million in the calendar year.arstechnica.com
Had a feeling this was coming:
AT&T eats a $15.5 billion impairment charge as DirecTV debacle continues
AT&T lost 617,000 Premium TV customers in Q4 and 3 million in the calendar year.
I was just referring to the fact that they had to recognize the loss of value of the DirecTV assets. That goodwill is going to drag down earnings a bit until they can get rid of it. It doesn't make any difference with respect cash flow, but it looks bad on paper. Essentially they are finally admitting to the reality of it.
Found a better way...make people work from homeOne way AT&T (and others) make money as they lose customers is layoffs:
AT&T and Verizon have cut 95K jobs in five years
About a fifth of jobs at the US operators have vanished in the last five years and the layoffs will probably continue.www.lightreading.com
I bet AT&T is wishing they had been more aggressive with their fiber rollout right about now. They had essentially stopped, but they would have had even bigger subscriber gains if they had continued. Now they think it is a good idea again, all of the sudden. Ditto for Verizon. I can see not thinking it is worth hooking up rural customers, although power co-ops in NC don't seem to have any problem making money doing that, but there are plenty of rich neighborhoods which they bypassed for no discernible reason. The writing was on the wall 15 years ago that FTTH was the way to go in the long run.
The government should of stepped in and helped....Sure is funny how many have no clue that the government put electricity, phone lines, and roads across our country....Everyone knew the computers and internet were the future!
Verizon never stopped...just quit adding new cities...the new big thing is ultra wideband 5g...telephone pole antennas..fiber too expensive
They stopped in a lot of places, at least unless the local governments made them meet contractual agreements. My niece just bought a house in Henrico, VA, and half her neighborhood has FiOS while the other half does not. It has negatively affected property values in the parts that don't have it. The HOA is trying to get the county to make Verizon finish the job (which they submitted plans to do originally), but they are being stonewalled and told Verizon isn't running any new fiber in that market.
AT&T Fiber's penetration in my neighborhood was about 75% before the pandemic. After some serious issues with Spectrum in April/May 2020, that is more like 90%+. Now Spectrum is finally offering deals on their upper tiers. I could get 400/20 for $50/month for 2 years, if I was willing to change to Spectrum. I'd rather pay $70/month for symmetrical gigabit that includes HBOmax. I don't love the AT&T "router," but other than that, the service has been great compared to when we had Spectrum before.
I wish we had Fiber here, and at those prices to boot ...
$50/mo for what you're getting isn't good but it's hard to get broadband (anything 25 Mbps or faster) at a regular ongoing price for much less. Lots of places offer faster service with higher data caps (or no cap at all) for that amount but the starter tier is usually pretty close to $50. My parents have 25 Mbps service with Comcast. They use their own modem and router and the regular price is now $53/mo, although it comes down to $43/mo with paperless autopay.
