Walk out the door and watch TV anywhere.
That’s the pitch AT&T is making for its new nationwide offering, the first of its kind, that combines television and wireless phone service for $200 a month for the first 12 months.
The announcement of this package, available to customers starting Aug. 10, came a little more than a week after AT&T closed its $48.5 billion takeover of satellite company DirecTV, forming the country’s largest television distributor, with about 26 million subscribers.
Executives promoted the merger — which combines one of the country’s largest telephone and Internet providers with the country’s largest satellite provider — as the creation of a next-generation entertainment provider that would serve customers who increasingly demand on-the-go entertainment across a variety of screens.
AT&T is doubling down on the television business at a time when it is facing significant disruption. A wave of so-called cord cutters are abandoning their traditional cable and satellite service in favor of often cheaper streaming alternatives. At the same time, a number of television groups like HBO, Showtime and CBS are introducing new stand-alone video on demand streaming services that do not require a traditional pay-TV subscription.
Read the entire story here.
