
AT&T loses nearly 1M TV customers after raising DirecTV prices - furcyd
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/07/att-loses-nearly-1-million-tv-customers-after-raising-directv-prices/
======
zelon88
" _...When the Department of Justice tried to stop the merger with Time
Warner, AT &T told a judge in a May 2018 court filing that the merger "will
enable the merged company to reduce prices." Instead, AT&T raised prices for
DirecTV Now multiple times. DirecTV Now currently offers two plans that cost
$50 or $70 a month, and the service charges extra for premium networks. AT&T
also raised prices for its DirecTV satellite and U-verse TV services in
January while simultaneously making it more expensive for customers to cancel
TV or Internet service. ..._"

This should be illegal. I don't mean fines, either. An executive somewhere
cooked up a plan to lie to regulators, lie to shareholders, lie to their
customer base, and lie to the general public. The only way to make large
companies stop acting like they're above the law is to throw some millionaire
executives in jail. A regular jail, none of that "bookcase in your cell" shit.
Even if the plan didn't come from them. They steer the ship in times of
prosperity; they sink with the ship when it goes off course and gets a hole.

~~~
noelherrick
I don’t think jail is the solution to this or many other problems that we
imprison people for on a regular basis. I understand the anger at watching
someone lie and get away with it, but fines and clawbacks are a great fit for
those types of crimes. We really don’t want to pay for someone to go to jail
and we don’t want the possibility that they’ll become a repeat offender-which
seems more likely if you remove they from family and society.

~~~
zelon88
We're not talking about a stolen candy bar. Slap the perps wrist and they get
the point.

Executives will make a dishonest decision knowing the consequences. Then
they'll make $100m off the decision, get fined $20m by Uncle Sam, get a $20m
golden parachute, and then do it all over again next week. Because it made
financial sense to break the law at that time.

Fining a billion dollar company because an individual decided to lie is a
consequence-less punishment in the same way that stealing a $1 cheeseburger
from McDonalds corporate is a victimless crime.

------
t34543
TV is rubbish these days. Not only the last mile delivery but all the content
is so watered down it will rot your brain.

My two favorite networks Discovery and the History channel are dead.

I cut the cord in 2008 over shady billing practices from Comcast. I pay
Xfinity for internet because I have to. Never again will I pay for TV.

~~~
deminature
It's stunning how difficult it is to watch Cable TV after watching streaming
services for a while.

It's hard to believe there was a time that people consumed this many
commercials, and didn't think anything of it.

~~~
milkytron
There might actually be more commercials now than in the past. I remember
hearing that TV shows were being sped up by ~10% or so, and that allows for
additional time for ads.

I also think that ads are one of those things that you accept until having
experienced an ad-free alternative.

~~~
clintonb
Yep, some shows are sped up: [https://lifehacker.com/network-television-
stations-speed-up-...](https://lifehacker.com/network-television-stations-
speed-up-tv-shows-to-fit-in-1797131517)

------
logfromblammo
Anecdotally, our household dropped Dish Network satellite service to go 100%
over-the-network. We got Roku boxes and plugged them in to the home router.

We picked DirecTV Now as the TV channels provider. Yes, they subsequently
raised prices, but we were grandfathered in under the previous plan. It was
acceptable.

The thing that made us drop it was the slideshow-style insert ads promoting
The Last O.G., Teen Titans Go, and one of two other shows on AT&T's own-
content channel, accompanied by obnoxious, loud "music". AT&T basically
_annoyed_ us into dropping their online television service. All my "told you
so" thoughts were of no comfort. I knew AT&T was going to AT&T, and said so,
but nobody listened to me, and so they all got to see firsthand why I hate
AT&T so much.

So we decided to switch to Sling. It took all of ten minutes. AT&T has
operated forever on the "no consumer choice" business model as a telecom. If
it keeps pulling the same anti-consumer nonsense in a low-friction competitive
market, it will die the ultra-slow death of a company that can still barely
succeed just because it's too big to fail.

And to be honest, we are watching less and less of the broadcast channels, in
favor of commercial-free services. The AT&T ad starkly highlighted the sheer
number of advertisements that were entering our home via television, because
they were all replaced with the most annoying reminder ever conceived. Netflix
has no ads. The good tier of Hulu has no ads. Then you can switch over to the
television channels and get the same content, only when the channel pushes it,
with 1/3 ads.

------
goldcd
TV is dead in the same way CD sales were dead.

 _Anecdotally_ (yes, just me) - I've built a "whole piracy stack on my NAS" \-
Sonarr, Radarr, Deluge, NZBGet, Plex, Pushbullet, with paid services for
omgwtfnzbs, usenet and oznzb (I bought plex lifetime) - oh and a homerun-HD
plugged into a new aerial I just had fitted to my house (pirates don't seem to
care about my local UK TV).

I also pay for netflix, amazon prime, semi-premium-cable (that also provides
my internet) and pay my UK TV license.

Maybe 80-90%+ of what I take from "the piracy stack" is available on the
"plethora of stuff I pay for". The problem is (as with the early days of music
downloads) there's no decent way of wrangling that together into a nice UI to
consume from.

This is silly.

When I realized this was _silly_ , was when I found myself deliberately
switching from plex to netflix to watch a show, for the sole reason that "I
wanted netflix to know I was watching it and to bump up the viewer count, so
they didn't cancel it".

Which reminds me.. I'd be fascinated to know if there was a Netflix stat of
"existing subscribers that watch a show from episode 2 onwards"

Which further reminds me that if anybody ever wishes to sell Helm/K8/docker to
the masses, this is the perfect ingress.

~~~
fred_is_fred
> I've built a "whole piracy stack on my NAS" \- Sonarr, Radarr, Deluge,
> NZBGet, Plex, Pushbullet, with paid services for omgwtfnzbs, usenet and
> oznzb (I bought plex lifetime) - oh and a homerun-HD plugged into a new
> aerial I just had fitted to my house (pirates don't seem to care about my
> local UK TV).

99.999% of the people would rather just overpay for cable than deal with that,
so it's a far cry from a killer.

~~~
goldcd
I realize I missed the explanation (piracy stack over the legit options I
have).

I log and just say "I want to watch this". Similar to how you'd have
previously used a Tivo that sat over all your potential TV channels. I turn on
my PC in the morning and get some push-bullet notifications of new episodes, I
load up Plex on my TV and see them all sat there in a single "Here's what's
new" place.

I guess it's similar to what Android/Apple TV are trying to do - but it's
better.

~~~
fred_is_fred
You have to account for some cost of your own time. And none of that is
something that my wife and kids would want to deal with, especially if I am
not home. I am willing to pay Hulu and Netflix for the convenience and so are
most people which is how they stay in business. If everyone did what you did,
I suspect there'd be an actual crack down on it.

------
jobu
DirecTV, Comcast, and Netflix are all losing customers. Are there winners in
this space or are people finding other things to do with their time?

~~~
sdinsn
Netflix is not losing customers. They have never had a quarter where they lost
customers.

~~~
endianswap
They lost US customers in Q2, which is probably what OP is referring to.

~~~
sdinsn
If that's what he was referring to, he should have said US customers.

------
rubyn00bie
Ah, yes, quite interesting result here: monopoly business practices after
reducing competition in favor of existing monopoly. People who predicted this?
Anyone who has ever bought cable or phone service... FTC and FCC should be up
their ass with a fine-tooth comb, scraping out all the shits who are abusing
this scale, and throwing them in jail, but alas... they ain't.

It's so literally insane to me that Ma Bell, AT&T, is allowed to acquire
anything. It's like 2 horcruxes short of a full-blown Voldemort at this point.

------
post_break
I just signed up with AT&T for fiber internet. I'm one of the lucky ones. $73
a month including taxes for 1000 meg up and down. Unfortunately it's like pick
your poison, do you pay Comcast or AT&T. I've got a dish on my house, I'll
never use it. I'd take it down if it wasn't so high up.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
In civilized countries people get 1Gb for $20. Then there's the question of
why do you need that sort of bandwidth when a 4K video stream only needs 10Mb.

~~~
verall
4K video stream at 10Mb (mega-bits) would have nutso artifacts. It would look
worse than 1080p or 1440p at the same bitrate. _Minimum_ I have seen passable-
quality 4K is like 3-4MB/s so around 30Mb. That still looks pretty bad, even
on HEVC.

Maybe you mean 10MB/s (80Mb)?

~~~
kalleboo
4K streams on sites like Netflix, YouTube, iTunes are all under or around 15
Mbit/s (and yeah, they look like crap, but when nobody is offering a higher
bitrate stream, then that's still all the bandwidth you need)

> _It would look worse than 1080p or 1440p at the same bitrate_

Good news then, the 1080p streams are even lower bitrate (4-5 Mbit)

~~~
verall
I went to confirm this, I get around 15-18mbps on youtube 4k, so yea no
kidding. Quality is pretty impressive (for the bitrate..) with vp9, but
blocking is still visible.

Thank you for the info.

------
ddingus
These mergers are always about making more money, lower costs.

Does anyone honestly believe they won't leverage their more consolidated
position every last time?

Of course the prices went up. They thought they had a fairly captive audience.
And that was more true years ago when the impact of a switch was higher.

Today?

Great. They got what they deserved.

------
Keverw
Not surprised with cord-cutting. I don't watch much TV personally, I rather
watch Youtube videos more than the corporate ran tv. For example, the travel
channel seems to just have back to back episodes all day of ghost hunting. If
I wanted to say travel somewhere, just type it into YouTube and tons of videos
and information to help plan.

My family watches a lot more TV than me though. Last year we switched from
Dish to DirecTV. Before Dish, we just had cable.

I noticed going from Cable to Dish their quality of boxes and hardware was so
much superior. The guide seemed laggy and slow on cable, while Dish seems
awesome. I believe it's because Dish makes their hardware and software
themselves, while the local cable company just buys CableLabs compatible
equipment running on slow Motorola boxes running Java slapping their logo on
the menu but otherwise I don't think the cable company really has much control
over the user experience and just relabelling other people's products. I know
the boot screen had a huge Java logo, and from my experience running Java
based apps on the computer is slow too. We've also switched out boxes and had
Scientific Atlanta and Cisco boxes. So haven't been impressed with cable. I'm
thinking maybe the cable is more of a commodity now, while satellite has to be
more custom. Only 2 satellite companies, multiple cable companies. One's
dealing with stuff in space, while the other is dealing with wires buried
underground. So I think there's more innovation in the satellite space because
it's more complicated. I think everyone can agree it's cool to say there
television comes from outer space! Maybe the aliens are watching Honey Boo Boo
and judging us all based on that single television show. Probably thinking
we're all weirdos and they are the superior species.

But to save money we switched to DirecTV, I think they might make their own
stuff too but their software quality seems worse than Dish but better than
Cable. I know lately half the time it doesn't even record what's scheduled.
It's been slightly over a year and my folks are thinking of switching back to
cable though. They merged with another cable company, so hoping maybe new
subscribers get something newer than before. I think if money wasn't a big
deal, I'd rather just pay the extra money and get Dish. So I think i'd rate
cable as worse, DirecTV as next best and Dish as the best top of the line, but
that's just my personal experience. Maybe cable systems are better in other
areas of the country.

I know I heard people do that, switch back and forth every year or so for the
promotions too.

We only have cable for internet and home phone now which works good enough.
Back when we lived an hour away with the same company I'd frequently have
outages, had the guy come out and adjust the strength he said but the new
place seems so much better. He installed an additional jack to separate the TV
and modem and said the jack for the modem has a special high-speed data
signal, not sure if true or not. My stepdad got cable at his place after not
having it for years and was visiting and mentioned about them recommending a
separate jack but he told me there's some ordinance against that in that city,
unsure if true or not as seems odd to regulate how many cable jacks allowed in
a room. I feel like it probably also depends on the community and area too
with what installer you get. The old place was a poorer larger city, where the
new place is more rural wealthier area popularity with retired people so I
doubt they are as busy with calls so maybe can spend more time to set up
things the best.

I'm interested in full time RVing, so I figured I'd get rooftop Dish dome and
get a Verizon hotspot as there are some unlimited plans the RV community
recommends. Verizon is the best nationwide network, because law enforcement
and emergency personal use them, as they got grants to expand their network
I've heard which benefits everyone else too.

So not sure how much that would change my internet quality, but something
feels better about that. If something messes up, just switch out the hardware
as it's wireless. No one has to come out and mess with wiring and other stuff.
So I feel a more consistent experience, as I feel like the cable at the old
place was screwed up. Probably using the same wiring as when the house was
built, while this new area is newer to having cable as many residents had
satellite before cable was here. Also probably newer equipment too used on the
backend here since newer build-out. After getting cable set up here, never had
to see the cable guy again. While at the old house they'd come out monthly
sometimes weekly to adjust things. So aggravated. I called one time in the
middle of the night staying up on the computer and got hung up on, I don't
know if a mistake on their end or maybe the woman thought I was drunk because
I was tired. It's like I already knew the routine. Unplug the router, unplug
the modem, wait 30 seconds, etc. So sure maybe had a bit of a attitude but
felt like no one listened to me or knew what they were doing and didn't have
any control.

One thing interesting about Satellite though, watching on-demand stuff still
uses your internet, connected via the Wi-Fi. I think it'd be cool if storming
bad, they could seamlessly switch over getting the same bits over the internet
instead of from the satellites. I kinda feel like the cable companies hate the
idea of people using their internet for TV instead of actually paying them for
TV. just seems so ironic you are helping your competitor deliver video, which
is why net neutrality is a great thing. I rather ISPs be dumb pipes or more
like highways just to move around the bits.

Only internet choices here is cable, DSL from local phone company.. or I guess
in theory if had a regular landline instead a VOIP based one(which Cable phone
systems are built around, but use their private backbone instead of the public
routes) you could still use dial up. Satellite Internet is a option too, but
the latency is what kills you. Play a game and your movements has to be sent
up to the satellite, down to a ground station hopping around the internet like
normal and then beamed back up to the satellite beamed back down to the ground
to your house. But i know there's some projects and companies working on
improving this space, I'd love if some day great satellite internet comparable
to cable so no longer tied to a local provider, and also be useful for RVers
too.

I know in Florida they actually tax satellite more than cable too, which
there's been court battles over. The theory is they don't have as much local
infrastructure so they pay less taxes, so they should be taxed more to make up
for it than cable. Probably mostly employees at the HQ, installer contractors
across the country and a ground station or two somewhere, while cable has
employees and equipment all over the place so they pay for all the permits to
run the wires, franchised fees, etc.

~~~
downrightmike
Half of this wall of text is just the poster saying they like Dish for the
hardware.

~~~
Keverw
Well I like whatever I find best, I know I probably sound like a shill for
them but I don't work there, own any stocks, etc.

Also when traveling in a RV, Dish has a dedicated site for RVers. I'm in a few
groups on FB and this is a complaint people have about DirecTV because when
you move around people complain about local channels. They are spot beamed, so
you have to call up the 1800 number and change your address. People would
mention they'd give them a address of a random house from the white pages,
while telling them to keep the billing address the same as their mail
forwarder in the state of their domicile but agents would get confused and
schedule a move instead. While with Dish, just go online and change your zip
code. It's a niche market though, many people see RVs are a vacation, while
some people full time so it's a concept that's hard for people to understand
if not familiar with it.

But one of my points was also competition. I feel like satellite industry can
be more competitive since I don't think the local cities have much control
over them, and not much stuff to build out. Like for example Verizon was
rolling out FIOS but stopped. Google Fiber seems to have similar problems of
rolling out, for example look at the case in Louisville. Some cities even
wanted to offer their own fiber networks but the cable companies sued them
saying they wasn't allowed. So legal problems of permitting and stuff, then
you have to actually just digging trenches and running cables. Even cities
that offer Fiber, it's more of a street by street thing if it's available or
not instead of city wide.

I know SpaceX is working on internet. There's another company offering
satellite internet too that's supposed to be comparable to cable but they use
spot beaming too for load balancing. So not useful for RVers or even smart
cars that need internet access on the go. However having Satellite Radio in
the car, going under bridges, parking garages, tunnels, even some area under
the powerlines at a intersection it goes out so that's also a flaw... I'm not
sure what's Tesla plans are for that area, as I think Elon being involved in
both companies is related but haven't been keeping up with the news.

But imagine if you had high quality satellite internet, no towers to build and
you'd just need to send out contractors to install it on peoples houses, RVs,
or whatever. Some people are probably capable enough to just do it themselves
after you mail the kit, I know most people just lease satellite TV hardware
but you can actually buy it straight out like if using it in a RV. Would
expand options with limited areas. Just have to build the satellites and get
approval to launch it, build out some ground stations and ready to roll.
There's even a federal law limiting how much local city governments can
regulate satellites called OTARD. Some cities even still have ordinances that
ban satellite tv, even though it's been overruled already. HOA's do the same.
Cities lose money when people have satellite, HOA's think they are ugly. There
are proposals to expand OTARD to cover 5G too as some cities aren't supporting
the 5G rollout. It's shame the cable industry is a protected monopoly.

I'm a major tech geek, which probably a lot of people are on HN. So things
like satellites, cruise ships that are entire floating cities, rvs fascinate
me. I know some people are obsessed with elevators or trains. So just wanted
to disclose that, as don't want to sound like an advertisement for Dish.

Also feel like when starting a business, doing as much as you can possibly do
yourself can let you have higher control of the quality of your product. Think
Apple, they make the iPhone and MacBook and you can send SMS from your Mac
using the modem in your phone. While say you are a huge hardware maker, you
could sell Laptops with Windows on them and phones with Android but you don't
have much control to integrate them.

------
olliej
“Increase prices”

“More profit”

“A million people end their subscriptions”

Wha??

~~~
ddingus
Then increase prices more! (while offering sweet "come back plz" promos to
suck a few back in the family.

Maybe some of the smarter bears will set calendar notices for the promo end
dates. I did that for years to stay on the lower price tier. Worked, but it
was a 6 month hassle.

Today, I'm Internet only. Stream some things, but mostly don't care. Too many
other interesting things out there.

