AT&T To Buy DIRECTV for $67 Billion

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I hope that regulators squash this proposed merger if it gets that far. The last thing consumers need is fewer choices and bigger media companies with more power.
 
AT&T reportedly nearing $50B DirecTV deal that would make it America’s top pay TV provider
If at first you don’t succeed… buy, buy again. According to a report from Bloomberg on Monday afternoon, AT&T is in advanced talks to acquire pay TV giant DirecTV. Multiple unnamed sources tell the news organization that the deal could cost AT&T about $100 per share, or a total of roughly $50 billion.“Under the plan being discussed, DirecTV management will continue to run the company as a unit of AT&T and DirecTV Chief Executive Officer Mike White plans to retire after 2015, said the people, asking not to be named because the information is private,” Bloomberg’s Alex Sherman and Jeffrey McCracken reported.As noted in an earlier report on the possible deal, a successful acquisition would make AT&T the top pay TV provider in the United States with nearly 26 million subscribers.
 
I'd love to see Dish merge with either AT&T or Verizon and the work force from Dish be eligible to get into one of their unions to stop the company from pushing its employees around. There is a reason why Dish is the worst company to work for and I'm sure Direct isn't too far behind for nearly the same reasons.

Yes this is on topic? WTH?
 
Ugh. They better not let ATT take over customer service call lines... When I have a DSL outage its generally 30-40 mins before I can speak with someone.
 
AT&T has tried to buy into the TV market before. Remember they bought a bunch of cable companies in the late 90s, the effort failed and they divested them. They spent 105 billion to assemble the cable system, became the largest cable system, then ended up selling it off to Comcast for 47.5 billion, making Comcast the largest cable company...
 
DirecTV approached by AT&T about a possible acquisition

AT&T has tried to buy into the TV market before. Remember they bought a bunch of cable companies in the late 90s, the effort failed and they divested them. They spent 105 billion to assemble the cable system, became the largest cable system, then ended up selling it off to Comcast for 47.5 billion, making Comcast the largest cable company...

That was literally a different AT&T, today's AT&T is really the baby bell SBC (Southwestern Bell) with an amalgamation of Pacific Bell and Ameritech that it bought in the late 1990's. In 2005, the baby bell SBC bought out the old Ma Bell you are referring to and changed its name to AT&T. In 2006, they merged with Bell South and formed today's AT&T. If you will remember, prior to this merger AT&T Wireless was known as Cingular, a joint venture of SBC's Wireless and Bell South Mobility, (as an aside, they acquired the "old" AT&T Wireless in 2004).


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That was literally a different AT&T, today's AT&T is really the baby bell SBC (Southwestern Bell) with an amalgamation of Pacific Bell and Ameritech that it bought in the late 1990's. In 2005, the baby bell SBC bought out the old Ma Bell you are referring to and changed its name to AT&T. In 2006, they merged with Bell South and formed today's AT&T. If you will remember, prior to this merger AT&T Wireless was known as Cingular, a joint venture of SBC's Wireless and Bell South Mobility, (as an aside, they acquired the "old" AT&T Wireless in 2004).

That is true, but is there really any difference between SBC and AT&T? They both were cut from the same cloth and sewn back together....
 
I wonder if some old AT&T folks got nailed on their pensions.


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That was literally a different AT&T, today's AT&T is really the baby bell SBC (Southwestern Bell) with an amalgamation of Pacific Bell and Ameritech that it bought in the late 1990's. In 2005, the baby bell SBC bought out the old Ma Bell you are referring to and changed its name to AT&T. In 2006, they merged with Bell South and formed today's AT&T. If you will remember, prior to this merger AT&T Wireless was known as Cingular, a joint venture of SBC's Wireless and Bell South Mobility, (as an aside, they acquired the "old" AT&T Wireless in 2004).


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Well put ... :)

Technically, the Old was AT&T ....
The New is at&t ...
 
I still have a pink receipt from AT&T Broadband before they sold to Comcast, I can't make out the year but I think is 2000 or 2001
 
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Well, the BreakingNews/BreakingMoney twitter account just tweeted a bit ago that AT&T will announce the acquisition of DirecTV tomorrow. But then, their source is BuzzFeed, of all places, so be sure to have your grains of salt handy.

Mergers like this are bad for everybody. We don't need less competition and bigger telecom/media companies; Comcast needs to be broken up, not allowed to get even bigger by buying up TWC. And if this deal goes through, I'm done with D*.
 
as always, fewer choices for the consumer is never a good thing. directv is big enough that a buyout is not needed to be competitive, and this will only result in less options and higher fess for the customer, imo i just really hope they keep some D* customer service in the US, if they outsource it to someone i can't understand i'm cutting the..... signal?



edit- i keep reading articles about how this will allow ATT to bundle better. who in the world woudl get DSL when cable internet is available? I live in a major urban area, ATT fastest speed is 1.5mbps, my cable is 30mbps.
 
Exactly. My neighborhood ONLY has ATT DSL, so Im paying $51 a month for 6mbps down, and when I ask about Uverse service, their answer is don't count on it for a long time.

I have a VZW hotspot that gets 4g at 15mbps down, but the bandwidth cost keep me from using it because of streaming. Ridiculous.
 
Maybe AT&T will use this merger to finally divest themselves of landlines,DSL,& U-Verse,especially U-Verse TV. Hypothetically,they could sell U-Verse,including TV & their proposed 1gbps internet service to Google,sell or shut down their DSL/landline service,& then offer bundles with Directv & wireless home phone/wireless internet service. That most likely will be the direction they'll go.
 
I'd even be happy if they could expand satellite internet for better performance and no bandwidth caps.

Everyone wants to shove streaming down our throats yet some days I can't get full quality on ESPN3. Its nuts.
 
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