AT&T Buys DirecTV

AT&T confirmed via twitter  that they have acquired DirecTV for $48.5 Billion on Sunday. The deal would make AT&T the second largest pay TV provider in the states, behind only Comcast. The irony in this merger is that Comcast just placed a bid to buy Time-Warner last month, and consumers will argue that the diminishing amount of providers can only amount to increased prices and less competition in the future. In the deal,  AT&T will acquire DirecTV for $48.5 billion and after incurring DirecTV’s debt and paying shareholders about $95 a share the total amount will have ballooned to roughly $67 billion.

There’s a possibility that this deal isn’t all gloom and doom for consumers however, as AT&T has agreed to make certain “concessions” as part of the deal closing. For starters, AT&T has agreed to expand it’s residential and commercial broadband internet offerings to an additional 15 million customers. These customers will see a sharp increase in internet offerings thanks in part to the additional spectrum and cash that DirecTV will bring to the table. Using a variety of technologies, AT&T will deliver internet at speeds of “at least 6MBPS” in areas previously unserviced. AT&T has also promised to keep DirecTV as is, as a standalone service, with current prices and current promotions. Although they did specify to keep it that way “for at least three years.”

The trickiest part of this deal is AT&T agreeing to abide by the net neutrality rules that, established in 2010, prevent internet service providers from discriminating against certain content. Sounds awesome, but take into consideration that the FCC threw those rules out the window earlier this year, and you have something that could spell the end of the internet as we know it. An already ugly precedent was set when Netflix was basically bullied into paying Comcast a “streaming fee” to ensure their users didn’t suffer from continuous throttling at the hands of America’s number one ISP. AT&T could basically do the same thing and charge content providers a premium in order to make sure their respective users get full time full speed access to said content.

How do you feel about AT&T buying DirecTV? Good? Bad? Indifferent? Let us know in the comments!

{via AT&T}