This week we reported on a possible AT&T plan to shut down the U-verse website and apps in an effort to slowly unwind the service.
Now, according to Yahoo Finance, AT&T is looking at not just shutting down some of the U-verse features but shutting down the service itself. According to this report AT&T wants to move all 4,253,000 AT&T U-verse customers to DIRECTV or DIRECTV NOW starting in April.
The goal here seems to be, first, to free up bandwidth on its fiber-optic network, and, second, to avoid running two identical, redundant networks. Currently AT&T has to cut deals for both its DIRECTV service and its U-verse service with the same company. Plus it has duplicate customer service teams and has to maintain two different sets of equipment to maintain the services.
So why shut down U-verse instead of shutting down DIRECTV? DIRECTV has over 21 million customers, but U-verse only has 4 million TV customers.
AT&T is likely also hoping that this move will help boost its DIRECTV NOW service, a service that is likely far less expensive to run. There is no hardware to support in the end users’ house and no installations needed. Users just use their own devices to log in.
Although AT&T says this is not a done deal, the fact that it has started to notify customers about the possibility makes it very likely.
(Remember this is about U-verse TV not U-verse Internet. Internet customers will not be affected and will likely see an improvement in their service.)
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