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from the nuke-it-from-orbit-it's-the-only-way-to-be-sure dept.
AT&T Explores Parting Ways With DirecTV:
Telecom giant considers fate of DirecTV satellite unit as cord-cutting saps subscriber base
AT&T Inc. is exploring parting with its DirecTV unit, people familiar with the matter said, a sharp reversal from Chief Executive Randall Stephenson's strategy to make the $49 billion bet on the satellite provider a key piece of the phone giant's future.
The telecom giant has considered various options, including a spinoff of DirecTV into a separate public company and a combination of DirecTV's assets with Dish Network Corp., its satellite-TV rival, the people said.
AT&T may ultimately decide to keep DirecTV in the fold. Despite the satellite service's struggles, as consumers drop their TV connections, it still contributes a sizable volume of cash flow and customer accounts to its parent.
AT&T acquired DirecTV in 2015 for $49 billion. The company's shrinking satellite business is under a microscope after activist investor Elliott Management Corp. disclosed a $3.2 billion stake in AT&T last week and released a report pushing for strategic changes. Elliott has told investors that AT&T should unload DirecTV, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.
Related: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/09/18/1656205
Like Blockbuster, DirecTV, Dish, etc. are extremely slow to catch onto the whole Netflix/Amazon Prime Ad-Free, pick-what-I-want-to-watch model.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 20 2019, @11:26AM (2 children)
I once worked at a financial company place that used them for telecom, if your bill is less than six figures they are pretty crap at commodity service delivery, but if your bill is six figures or larger they're really a pleasure to deal with.
Kinda like IBM; If you have five mainframes and more 3745 than I could count and a data center over an acre in size and an onsite field circus team, they're an absolute joy to deal with, but if you bought a single desktop "IBM" PC at walmart, its gonna be phone support hell.
I can't think at the top of my head of any service provider industry who can provide decent service across a range of more than 4 or so orders of magnitude of cost. Maybe automobile stealerships are right on the cusp of working or not working?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday September 20 2019, @02:49PM (1 child)
Does IBM even make any desktop "IBM" PC's any more? Let alone sell them at walmart?
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 23 2019, @11:25AM
Oh no no, "Lenovo" owned now by Chinese. But in the old days... And the point stands, send them over $1M/yr and they treat you VERY well but Joe6Pack isn't going to have much fun.