It is still too early to tell how AT&T's new commitment to re-sell Dish Network satellite TV services across all of its markets will affect Dish's business, but as the sales effort gears up, it will come none too soon. Dish Network reported as part of its first quarter financial results this week that it added only 35,000 new subscribers during the quarter, almost 89 percent less than the 310,000 it added for the same quarter last year. The figure also is far less than DirecTV's Q1 subscriber additions of about 275,000, posted last week.
AT&T had been re-selling both Dish Network and DirecTV service, the latter in the former BellSouth region, but recently committed to go forward with Dish alone. Did it bet on the wrong horse, and by the way, how much is AT&T's own IPTV success affecting its satellite TV partner?
For more:
- read this Associated Press story [1] at Yahoo! Finance
Related articles:
- Could AT&T acquire EchoStar? AT&T report [2]
- EchoStar wins slice of spectrum in FCC auction. EchoStar report [3]
Links:
[1] http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080512/earns_dish_network.html?.v=4
[2] http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/could-t-acquire-echostar/2007-09-26
[3] http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/auction-results-verizon-wireless-wins-c-block-t-and-echostar-take-smaller-slices/2008-03-20