AT&T buys DirecTV for $48.5 Billion

[VanceIX]

Mr Khan said:

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.

Good point. It'll all depend on how ATT handles the pricing. Most areas only have three or so television network providers, and if ATT controls two, there's a good chance they'll raise prices on DirecTV, if only to push more customers to U-Verse.