AT&T is being sued by the United States Department of Justice to stop the AT&T merger with Time Warner. It looks like the CEO of AT&T Randall Stephenson just dropped a bomb to try to diffuse the DoJ's case. You probably know that AT&T provides Internet, video (with DirecTV), phones, and mobile.
The big news is that AT&T's DirecTV will start offering a $15.00 a month streaming video service. The new service, called AT&T Watch, doesn’t include any sports programming. A lot of video customers complain that they are required to pay for watching sports shows when they never watch them. Often there are mandatory sports surcharges even if customers don’t like to watch any sports channels.
One drawback in having your hands in a lot of baskets is that you wind up with a lot of competitors across a wide playing field. With video, AT&T competes against fellow teleco Verizon as well as Internet and Cable companies Charter and Comcast. Its satellite brand goes up against Dish TV. In the wireless arena they have their old rival Verizon and T-Mobile and Sprint who have just started merger noises again.
AT&T Watch will be free to AT&T wireless customers. At least according to Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche, but will be available for purchase by prospective customers no matter who their current cable TV or Internet provider is now. At this time we are not sure about AT&T U-verse Internet and TV customers.
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