DTV & DISHTV, Wife said she heard they are merging next week on CNBC today?

Just call and renew the preferred customer offer every 2 years?


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How exactly does this work? My contract runs out in January. I have been haggling with them each time my contract is up. I already plan on going down one plan and cancelling the locals to reduce my bill.
 
How exactly does this work? My contract runs out in January. I have been haggling with them each time my contract is up. I already plan on going down one plan and cancelling the locals to reduce my bill.
The traditional tactic has been to threaten to switch providers because the other guys will install free, er, actually pay you 100s to do so, and give a big monthly discount for a year or 2. Then if the incumbent won't give enough, you go ahead & switch, usually requiring a 2 year commit. Then at the end of that 2 years or when the incumbent's deal runs out, rinse & repeat.

Needless to say, this discourages DBS loyalty and virtually dares subscribers to think about cutting them loose altogether.
 
I have no idea which equipment will prevail. It could be DTV because they have a few million more subscribers. Or maybe it will be Dish if a DTV satellite fails first. Only time will tell.....
I want to know what actually becomes part of the sale of DISH to Directv. Does it include the satellites themselves? Does it include the uplink centers? Does it include the satellite receivers themselves? At one time the receivers were made by Echostar. Then DISH became the name on the receivers. But Echostar made receivers for Europe too at one time I thought. I think for the foreseeable near future, both companies will still operate till they decide which receivers they will go with and which gets thrown out.

I remember back in 2002 the first time they tried to merge they had plans to download software so either companies' receiver could work with either Directv or DISH signals. They even had a big dish that had lnbs for all the western satellites like 110,119 and 101. That was before eastern arc was added in 2008. So I see a transition that will take a long time and I think many of the subs that are on the fence, will just churn rather than change out everything for a different satellite service and especially if it is higher than they are paying now. So this will lead to more churn and losses.
 
I want to know what actually becomes part of the sale of DISH to Directv. Does it include the satellites themselves? Does it include the uplink centers? Does it include the satellite receivers themselves? At one time the receivers were made by Echostar. Then DISH became the name on the receivers. But Echostar made receivers for Europe too at one time I thought. I think for the foreseeable near future, both companies will still operate till they decide which receivers they will go with and which gets thrown out.

I remember back in 2002 the first time they tried to merge they had plans to download software so either companies' receiver could work with either Directv or DISH signals. They even had a big dish that had lnbs for all the western satellites like 110,119 and 101. That was before eastern arc was added in 2008. So I see a transition that will take a long time and I think many of the subs that are on the fence, will just churn rather than change out everything for a different satellite service and especially if it is higher than they are paying now. So this will lead to more churn and losses.
From the YouTube video ^, it sounds like Dish will keep their cellular spectrum and infrastructure, and minority ownership of the company. Everything else to DTV.

He made some mention of a possible software change to make the receivers compatible. But I don't think there will be any way to avoid a dish+LNB change when the first satellite fails.

The combined company can, of course, operate much more efficiently than two separate companies. Given the competition from streaming, to avoid more churn I think they really need to lower prices.
 

Echostar to offer direct to device?

DIRECTV Sweetens Offer.