Randall Stephenson recently spoke at a Senate antitrust subcommittee yesterday about AT&T's proposal to buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion. The telecom giant's CEO denied the proposed merger's negative effect on consumers and competitors.
According to Ars Technica, senators and witnesses have insisted on effect of the merger. If pushed through, AT&T might restrict valuable programming like HBO to the company's own TV services and might charge rival TV providers with a much higher price.
The basic concerns for the merger comes down to AT&T having control on both distribution and video content. The telecom company's acquisition of DirecTV in 2015 has undoubtedly made AT&T one of America's largest provider for both Internet services and cable or satellite TV.
In his defense, AT&T's CEO told members of the senate that limiting the access to Time Warner would benefit AT&T but would hinder the media and entertainment conglomerates business model. In his prepared speech he stressed on the importance of Time Warner's distribution and intends to use DirecTV to maximize the coverage to different types of media.
AT&T/Time Warner Merger Latest News & Update: DirecTV Is Not On A Smooth Start
According to Gamenguide, AT&T's latest venture is not keeping up the hype. Despite heavy advertising and the promise to bring cable TV in mobile devices without data restriction. DirecTV is not having a good American reception due to buggy apps and a very substandard cross media functionality.
AT&T's official forum page is not filled with different complaints that say DirecTV is just a waste of money. Subscribers have been plagued with bad reception and an almost non-working mobile app that has frustrated many of its users. With other better services around, it won't be long until DirecTV will lose many of its subscribers. Many have already compared Sony's Playstation Vue as a better service compared to AT&T's DirecTV Now.
