AT&T drops Dish for DirecTV

AT&T is switching its satellite TV provider.

The telecommunications giant announced Friday that it will drop Dish Network and replace it with DirecTV, after January 31. AT&T has had a joint marketing deal with Dish since 2003.

Financial details of the new deal were not released.

AT&T had announced in early summer that it would not renew its current deal with Dish. It was not clear at the time, however, whether it would renegotiate its agreement with Dish or switch to DirecTV, the other primary satellite TV provider in the U.S.

Telecoms have been trying hard to compete with cable companies by, likewise, offering bundled services with television, broadband, wireless, and home phone.

[timber2005]

I wish Embarq/Sprint would do the same so I don't have to have DirecTv seperate.

It's noticable when your (embarq's) BUSINESS customers get DirecTv, but your residential customers get Dish that something is awry.

[NuttyBee480]

DirecTV has a better picture than cable or Dish, but the reason I've always kept cable was simple - Internet. The phone companies never offered as good of a deal.

[Spartan_458]

Dish has better receivers, a better DVR interface, better remotes, better picture quality, and nearly the same if not better channel selection. Oh yeah, and real 30 second skip. No fast-forwarding for me. However, I still have Time Warner for phone and Internet access.

[Jay030393]

Spartan,

You do realize that the HD DVRs have had a "real 30 second skip", since January 2008?
You just need to turn it on (and choose between 30 second SKIP or SLIP)

Do a KEYWORD serach for:
30SKIP - to have your "true skip"
30SLIP - to have the FF/SLIP style

[clivesl]

Ah, but they don't have NFL Sunday Ticket, and as an out of market football fan that is a deal breaker

[slakerx]

Thats great... both company's have screwed me over... no surprise they have joined together.

[inyukun]

Why does this irritate me so...

"AT&T drops Dish for DirecTV"

"It was not clear at the time, however, whether it would renegotiate its agreement with Dish or switch to DirecTV,"

Oh yeah, because it's supposed to be journalism -- not misleading idiocy or wild, unfounded speculation. Morons.

[timber2005]

Read it again... it was not clear "in early summer". Now it's clear, they chose DirecTv.

[P_Zed]

Before ATT acquired Bellsouth, DirecTV was Bellsouth's TV affiliate. They had been doing intensive co-branded billing and other shared marketing for years, and that all became very awkward when ATT took over and introduced the Dish stuff. As a former Bellsouth customer, I never got the feeling the co-branded Dish product had ever been terribly successful and I am not sure it was ever even offered to all "new ATT" customers. They never offered it to me.

Meanwhile, the former Bellsouth region still has a LOT of old DirecTV customers under very comfy Bellsouth-DTV plans and a lot of customers were happy with it and didn't want to switch to Dish. Perhaps it could be said that having ATT go with DirecTV made sense for both companies and for the significant number of existing accounts.

For the record, I choose to have my phone and satellite billed separately. I tried the combined way but it became very painful having to send Bellsouth a whopper of a check very month for landline, cellphone, DSL, and DirecTV. I don't save any money breaking it up but I am also not sending Bellsouth a $300 check every blasted month. It hurts less sending some direct to DirecTV.

[pantrax360]

I'm one of those comfy people. I never had to send a check to Bellsouth?I just got a discount on my DirecTV bill. I was about to have to make the very painful decision of switching back to Dish, which I did not wish to do due to a fracus involving Hurricane Katrina knocking the entire dish off my house (corner of the roof and all). I've always gotten better treatment with DirectTV than Dish (they even kept up the discount after Bellsouth merged with AT&T) and for my money, they have a better picture, which has far less interference than that of Dish, which would often cut out when we had high wind. It takes some major weather to make DirecTV flake out (knock on wood, of course).

Now I don't have to change a service I like, or my equipment, which means no worries about having two mini-dishes on the roof, since I'm told it takes an act of congress to get one taken off. Hooray!

[IgnatiusTheKing]

What's going to happen to people who get billed for Dish Network through AT&T?

[Dezertlady01]

After leaving Directv for Dish, after a year I went back to Directv. The Dish had too many problems such as going into sleep mode in the middle of a program, cloudy or bad weather shut it down ALL of the time, and the Customer Service isn't anything to write home about.
I won't be switching my Directv ever again !

[FlimFlam--2008]

Thank God that Spectrum Five is rolling out a competitor to both DISH and DIRECTV. They received a full CONUS+ slot at 114.5WL and have chosen their back office provider. Their satellite is under construction and they will rollout new service in 2010. Please make it quicker! DBS technology has so much more possibility that DISH and DTV are using right now. They have antiquated terrestrial infrastructure that isn't necessary. The waveforms they use are made for a huge TV in your living room. That doesn't reflect the way people want to receive their TV. I want mine in the back of my car/truck and in the garage or out by the pool.