AT&T buys DirecTV for $48.5 Billion

[Mr Khan]

VanceIX said:

Mr Khan said:
The only way this'll effect my family (who i no longer live with anyway) is that their package deal between DirecTV and their Verizon home phone/DSL will probably go bye-bye (or not, given regional monopolies, its not like my parents could choose AT&T for home phone or DSL ever).

The only loss of competition is in areas lucky enough to be wired for AT&T's fiber-optics network, Uverse, since Uverse TV could compete with DirecTV. Anywhere not wired for Uverse is basically not effected competitively.

True, although a large portion of the southeastern states have U-Verse availabilty, so it's gonna hit us (I live in Florida) pretty hard. 

 

Although the two products are not directly competitive in a lot of cases. Satellite sort of remains "poor man's cable" to a certain extent, so DirecTV could be AT&T's down-market alternative even in areas where Uverse is offered.