Recent reports and rumors roaming around the tech world these days focus mainly on the said intent of AT&T to buy DirectTV for a rough of $50 billion or $100 per share. AT&T is rumored to buy DirectTV by people familiar with the undergoing negotiations who preferred to preserve their anonymity because the deal and its details are not yet public. However, since this leak, many financial and tech analysts started sharing their opinions related to this subject. According to them, this may become a historical deal. In the words of Alex Sherman and Jeffrey McCracken from Bloomberg News,
The purchase would give AT&T a national satellite-TV provider to combine with its wireless, phone and high-speed broadband Internet services as competition ramps up. The pool of pay-TV customers is peaking in the U.S. because viewers are increasingly watching video online, and the combination would keep DirecTV from being on its own with just a TV offering and no competitive Internet package.
The deal is supposed to be officially announced in about a week from now, but by the looks of it, AT&T is apparently coming up from behind its competitors, as Comcast Corp. is trying to buy Time Warner Cable Inc. since the beginning of this year. While considered a “industry-redefining deal” by AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, the acquisition process involving Comcast and Time Warner Cable is still slowed down by the regulatory steps necessary to be taken.
Back to the fact that AT&T is rumored to buy DirectTV, the same undisclosed sources said that DirectTV will still operate independently as an AT&T unit ran by its own management team. DirectTV is the largest satellite TV provider in the United States and it is clear that AT&T takeover will consolidate the company’s position not only in the U.S., but in Latin America too, according to some analyses conducted by specialists.
AT&T would be getting a pay-TV business that’s expanding in Latin America and generating higher monthly bills from U.S. customers. DirecTV’s exclusive content includes the National Football League Sunday Ticket package and products such as Genie, a multiroom digital video recorder.
For now, AT&T is on the verge of expanding its services on a very large scale and even if the regulatory hurdle will take about 12 months, it seems that there is no turning back. We will soon witness the “holistic market” the specialists are talking about for years, with a few tech giants running the show. All we can do is wait for more details about the deal between AT&T and DirectTV to leak or get officially confirmed.