AT&T exploring Deal to sell off DIRECTV.

[Juan]

What happens when you have questions on how something works ?
Or a bill you have questions about ?
Or your service isn't working ?

Well..these same great minds thought up 5g fixed cellular with customer do it yourself install...they neglected to consider the wavelengths they were using were too short to pass thru walls and a external antenna needed to be installed with a clear los to the cell antenna...the signal booster soloution is hit or miss...what happens is that " visible" or what ever reseller is responsible for customer service...not there problem...sounds great until profits fall

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[ncted]

Looks to me that this visible is still using APPLE phones and Samsung Phones and all the others, so that shows that Cell Phones are NOT GOING AWAY ...
Sure you can bring your own phone, why not, you had to pay for it any ways ...

Btw, what network are they using ... Verizon ? Att ?? unless its entirely wireless, which still needs something to run it, you'll still have up keep to pay for.

Btw, $40 a month per device is NO Deal.

If I recall, T-Mobile was that Cut cost cell phone company ... till that wasn't making them enough money .... hmmm, it comes down to Money again ... look where they are now ... they are no longer a low cost company, that motto went out the door and is gone forever.

This is just the next in line, they will be around for awhile, either make it, or fade off like others.

Visible uses Verizon and is prepaid, so it is going to be heavily deprioritized in some places (like where I live). This is Verizon's experiment to break the old postpaid model -- they own Visible. No storefronts, limited customer/tech support staff, BYOD, and a simple web/app interface for managing your account make it very low overhead with minimal labor requirements. The infrastructure is mostly outsourced these days anyway. American Tower and others own the towers. Lines are leased from whoever has fiber in the many areas where the wireless company isn't also a provider. These are the ways in which Verizon and AT&T (and now T-Mobile) manage to lay off thousands of people a year. The only way to continue to increase profits in a saturated market like wireless is to get rid of expense, and labor is almost always a company's biggest expense.

 

[Juan]

Visible uses Verizon and is prepaid, so it is going to be heavily deprioritized in some places (like where I live). This is Verizon's experiment to break the old postpaid model -- they own Visible. No storefronts, limited customer/tech support staff, BYOD, and a simple web/app interface for managing your account make it very low overhead with minimal labor requirements. The infrastructure is mostly outsourced these days anyway. American Tower and others own the towers. Lines are leased from whoever has fiber in the many areas where the wireless company isn't also a provider. These are the ways in which Verizon and AT&T (and now T-Mobile) manage to lay off thousands of people a year. The only way to continue to increase profits in a saturated market like wireless is to get rid of expense, and labor is almost always a company's biggest expense.

Thanks

 

[Jimbo]

Visible uses Verizon and is prepaid, so it is going to be heavily deprioritized in some places (like where I live). This is Verizon's experiment to break the old postpaid model -- they own Visible. No storefronts, limited customer/tech support staff, BYOD, and a simple web/app interface for managing your account make it very low overhead with minimal labor requirements. The infrastructure is mostly outsourced these days anyway. American Tower and others own the towers. Lines are leased from whoever has fiber in the many areas where the wireless company isn't also a provider. These are the ways in which Verizon and AT&T (and now T-Mobile) manage to lay off thousands of people a year. The only way to continue to increase profits in a saturated market like wireless is to get rid of expense, and labor is almost always a company's biggest expense.

I can't wait to see how many HOURS it takes to get ahold of someone if/when you have a problem or question.
Websites don't have ALL the answers.

The diy person may like this .... My Parents would NOT, they would have no way to know what they were purchasing or what happens when Mom pushes a button and something ELSE happens than what she expected .... Sorry Mom, No One to help you ......
They laid off all the employees ... gotta love these companies with no staff.

Thier customer base will be thrilled when they have an issue with a Cell tower .... and they say, well, its serviced by Someone else ... they'll get to it soon ....

 

[Jimbo]

How does ANY of this have to do with the Thread Topic ?
Shouldn't this have its Own thread in a different Forum section ?

 

[Juan]

How does ANY of this have to do with the Thread Topic ?
Shouldn't this have its Own thread in a different Forum section ?

It kinda shows what is happening to directv...its being ripped apart and the cash is being wrung out...only the dry bones will be left when att is done with it

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[navychop]

I must add that I still pay much less for my T-Mobile service than I paid ATT. And the service more than meets my needs.

 

[Jimbo]

I must add that I still pay much less for my T-Mobile service than I paid ATT. And the service more than meets my needs.

Who's towers does T Mobile use ?
Just asking, I don't remember.

 

[ncted]

I must add that I still pay much less for my T-Mobile service than I paid ATT. And the service more than meets my needs.

I wish T- Mobile would get off their butts and do something about coverage in the Carolinas. Every time I spend time with my sister-in-law, I pay close attention to how often she loses signal on her T-Mobile iPhone and compare it to my AT&T Prepaid iPhone. I don't want to give any more money to the Death Star, but I haven't found anything better that doesn't cost a lot more.

 

[navychop]

T-Mobile has their own towers. They rent tower space just like everyone else.

They got a big chunk of the former TV frequencies, 600MHz, and have been adding antennas to support that. Part will be 5G. Slower than mm wave, but much longer range with better penetrating power thru walls, etc.

They are the #3 provider, and may become #2. Especially as they incorporate the former Sprint frequencies. Their customer count has been growing rapidly the last few years. Coverage has improved considerably, but has a ways to go.

 

[NYDutch]

I can't wait to see how many HOURS it takes to get ahold of someone if/when you have a problem or question.
Websites don't have ALL the answers.

The diy person may like this .... My Parents would NOT, they would have no way to know what they were purchasing or what happens when Mom pushes a button and something ELSE happens than what she expected .... Sorry Mom, No One to help you ......
They laid off all the employees ... gotta love these companies with no staff.

Thier customer base will be thrilled when they have an issue with a Cell tower .... and they say, well, its serviced by Someone else ... they'll get to it soon ....

The twice I've had questions for Visible support that I couldn't fix using the extensive help pages I've had an appropriate answer by email within an hour. At $25/mo using their "Party Pay" feature, my primary use is data at 150-200 GB/mo with the Visible SIM in a Verizon 7730L hotspot. I haven't noticed any significant slowdowns on congested towers over the past year, just the usual temporary slowdowns I saw even when I had a Verizon direct plan. Even with the slowdowns, streaming hasn't been effected very much.

 

[slice1900]

Who decided $20 billion was going to be the selling price? Are there any legitimate offers on the table at that number?

Stories around the rumors have mentioned that price. There are not only no legitimate offers, there is nothing to indicate that AT&T is actually looking to sell. It is ALL rumor currently.

I figure $20 billion is the absolute bare minimum AT&T would accept. That's less than five years of cash flow at the current rate. They can't sell for less than about $15 billion, if they did they'd actually make their debt ratio worse which sort of defeats the purpose of selling.

Today I saw an article claiming $20 billion would be the price for AT&T to sell "just over half" the business. I don't see anyone valuing at $40 billion, or anything close - this just goes to show how flimsy things are behind these rumors and why no one should get too excited about them coming true.

 

[Inclined Orbit]

I believe ATT will sell or spin off the Latin American DirecTV service and affiliations with Sky Brazil and Sky Mexico and I'm surprised that hasn't happened already. That is a money making side of the business and should be attractive to someone out there.

I see the US side of DirecTV as a big turkey because ATT has severely degraded its value and there is no simple fix to regaining their premier status in the direct to home satellite business. They have laid off most of the talent responsible for any innovation and cutting edge technology advances and much of the maintenance people that keeps everything running smoothly. With the current number of maintenance personnel its impossible to perform proper periodic maintenance and they can only react to equipment failures, which will increase exponentially as time goes on.

Then there was the 5yr plan to get off the satellites and deliver all content via broadband like fiber, 5G, etc. We are several years into that plan and the longer it goes the worse shape the satellite fleet will be in with no plans for building any replacement spacecraft. Any potential buyer that is satellite business savvy will look at what ATT has done to DirecTV and probably cringe. I think it will have to sell very cheap because it will cost a lot of $$ to put it back together and hire more people if satellite is to remain the primary delivery for content.

If a company intends to deliver content via broadband only, then what is to stop someone from starting from scratch? ATT has stated they wanted to copy the Netflix business model so there would be no satellites, no dishes, no receivers, no warehouses, no installers, no expensive uplink centers, no uplink center employees, etc. All they would need is a plan, some good software and app weenies and some massive Internet connectivity. Then start negotiating with content providers and advertising like crazy. Why would you buy a satellite company if your goal was to provide content via the Internet? Doesn't look good for ATT from my point of view.

 

[CSM]

Something must be going on at AT&T they now want to sell Xander.

AT&T Reportedly Shopping Its Xandr Ad Unit In Strategic Shift

AT&T, which ended the first half of 2020 with $153 billion in net debt, is reportedly shopping its Xandr advertising unit.

deadline.com

 

[N5XZS]

Maybe Pluto TV free streaming service buy Direct TV and convert into a half pay TV and half FTA satellite TV services!

That will be the day and make everyone's happy and a fair tradeoff, so to say at least!

 

[chiodo]

I doubt Charlie would be interested in spending anything close to $1 billion for DirecTV, he'd be better off spending close to half of that on a huge promotional and advertising campaign to get whatever is left of DirecTV satellite customers. But also it's hard to do when you dont carry the popular channels, like HBO and FSN sport nets.

I think he'll wait until the new owners will want too pawn off whatever is left of DTV.

 

[Jimbo]

T-Mobile has their own towers. They rent tower space just like everyone else.

They got a big chunk of the former TV frequencies, 600MHz, and have been adding antennas to support that. Part will be 5G. Slower than mm wave, but much longer range with better penetrating power thru walls, etc.

They are the #3 provider, and may become #2. Especially as they incorporate the former Sprint frequencies. Their customer count has been growing rapidly the last few years. Coverage has improved considerably, but has a ways to go.

If they Rent space, they don't have thier own ....

Passing who ?
Verizon, ATT ...
It really depends on what your counting.

 

[slice1900]

We are several years into that plan and the longer it goes the worse shape the satellite fleet will be in with no plans for building any replacement spacecraft.

Why would they need to build any replacements? Once they've dropped MPEG2 SD which looks like it is happening next year, everything older than D11 is no longer needed. The existing fleet should be fine until at least the late 2020s.

Heck, D8, which they don't even need once MPEG2 is done, has fuel life until 2034 despite being built for a design life of only 10 years which expired five years ago.

 

[Claude Greiner]

I doubt Charlie would be interested in spending anything close to $1 billion for DirecTV, he'd be better off spending close to half of that on a huge promotional and advertising campaign to get whatever is left of DirecTV satellite customers. But also it's hard to do when you dont carry the popular channels, like HBO and FSN sport nets.

I think he'll wait until the new owners will want too pawn off whatever is left of DTV.

Yeah I remember when Directv bought Primestar and Charlie paid some big bucks to find and convert customers.

Granted he backed out of his word and found ways to screw us out of what was ours, but it has been done.

They did the same thing when Directv bought USSB, and when some of the smaller cable companies went out of business.

But it ain’t gonna work this time. Your giving up a lot to be a Dish customer. No HBO, no regional sports and constant programming disputes.

And nobody gives a F about Kangaroo technology either.

The hopper is not a reason to downgrade your Tv service and switch to Dish.

 

[SamCdbs]

Behind a paywall, but the Sports Business Journal reports that AT&T is close to a deal with Sinclair to sell AT&T Sports Networks, which are the RSNs for Pittsburgh, Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and Houston regions, plus a 40% interest in the Seattle RSN, still carrying the unfortunate Root Sports brand.

AFAIK, the rest of the old DirecTV sports, which mostly consisted of producing the Dan Patrick and Rich Eisen shows has moved to NBC. I would assume that the RSNs would get reincorporated into Sinclair's Fox Sports Net branding.