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News tagged: AT&T Wireless Broadband


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As promised, AT&T has taken the wraps off a new $15, skinny streaming bundle, one the company says will be free if you're an AT&T wireless subscriber. According the website for AT&T's new AT&T Watch service, AT&T's new streaming video offering offers access to 30 live TV channels from top cable networks including A&E, AMC, Animal Planet, CNN, Discovery, Food Network, Hallmark, HGTV, History, IFC, Lifetime, Sundance TV, TBS, TLC, TNT, VICELAND, and several others (you can find the full breakdown here).

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Note that the company isn't yet offering the $15 service as a standalone offering, details on which the company says are "coming soon."

AT&T did however unveil two new unlimited data wireless plans that integrate the service for free, as AT&T tries to use the streaming video wars and its new Time Warner acquisition to upsell consumers to the company's wireless data offerings.

Unlimited & More and Unlimited & More Premium both include Watch TV (plus a $15 credit for DirecTV Now, AT&T's IPTV service or DirecTV) at no additional charge.

The new Unlimited & More plan starts at $70 per month for one line, limits users to HD quality video (I've reached out to AT&T to find out what that actually means), and features 15 GB of bandwidth for tethering. In contrast, the Unlimited & More Premium plan starts at $80 per month for one line, has no apparent restrictions on video quality, and no limit to the amount of tethering data, though AT&T notes both plans may be deprioritized and video throttled to SD depending on network congestion.

Synergies, Yo

AT&T's quick to proclaim that its new merger is to thank for the new offerings.

"Our merger brings together the elements to fulfill our vision for the future of media and entertainment," AT&T states. We’ll bring a fresh approach to how media and entertainment works for you. This means new offerings that integrate content and connectivity."

"You’ll see a new level of choice, innovation and value as we deliver a more personalized and immersive entertainment experience--from experimenting with new forms of content to offering new ways to access and view premium content, especially on mobile devices," AT&T states.

AT&T and other ISPs are currently on their best behavior for several reasons.

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AT&T has completed its $86 billion merger with Time Warner, without a single condition affixed to the deal. Consumer groups, analysts, historians and antitrust experts have long warned that AT&T will use its greater size to hamstring video competitors, whether that's by raising licensing costs on must-have content (like HBO) for its competitors, or by using the death of net neutrality to give the company's own content an unfair advantage on its wireless and fixed-line networks.

Regardless, the DOJ bungled its effort to prove those potential harms and was hamstrung by flimsy U.S.

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You'll recall that back when AT&T and Verizon tried to kill unlimited data and shovel users onto metered plans--they "grandfathered" a select number of customers, letting them remain on the company's older, cheaper unlimited data plans. That said, AT&T routinely tried to do everything in its power to drive those users off those plans, including its 2012 gambit to block Apple's Facetime from working unless those users moved to metered plans, to lying when it was caught throttling users without informing them.

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Jefferies downgraded AT&T stock this week on worries that cord cutting and streaming competition will significantly erode the company's bottom line. AT&T's been doing everything in its power to try and remain relevant in the cord cutting era, from offering its DirecTV Now streaming video service, to its $86 billion Time Warner buy--intended to give the company control over essential content (HBO) in the streaming wars to come.

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Despite the Trump FCC being a glorified rubber stamp for giant ISPs, even AT&T thinks regulatory approval of the Sprint T-Mobile merger remains a tough sell. Despite contrary claims from T-Mobile and T-Mobile CEOs, many analysts (supported by, well, history) believe the deal will not only reduce overall price competition in the space, but will result in the loss of between 10,000 and 30,000 jobs as redundant retail, management, and support positions are inevitably eliminated.

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AT&T says it will only launch the company's well-hyped $15 streaming video service if it gains regulatory approval for its $86 billion acquisition of Time Warner. The company unveiled the $15 "AT&T Watch" service back in April, stating that AT&T would be offering the service for free to users who sign up for AT&T wireless service.

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While Verizon is heavily hyping fixed 5G as an alternative residential broadband option, AT&T execs believe that simply deploying more fiber is the smarter, cheaper bet. Speaking this week at the Cowen and Company 46th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Broker Conference, AT&T CFO John Stephens stated the company doesn't see the sense in building a small cell network for urban and suburban fixed wireless service.

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A new crowdsourced study by Tutela has found that Verizon Wireless offers the fastest downstream wireless broadband speeds. According to the report, the study analyzed over 1 million mobile network speed tests during April and found that Verizon users received an average download speed of 21 Mbps followed by AT&T at 14Mbps, T-Mobile at 11.75 and Sprint at 8.51Mbps on average, across the country.

T-Mobile came out on top in terms of average upstream speeds at 9.11 Mbps, followed by Verizon at 8.72 Mbps, AT&T at 6.42 Mbps, and Sprint at 4.07 Mbps.

The findings mirror a similar study recently done by Wirefly that also found that Verizon Wireless had the fastest downstream speeds.

"There is understandably a lot of interest in the industry about network speeds, with operators wanting to be the fastest, however the focus is often on the “peak speed” results taken under optimum test conditions, something very few end-users experience in the real world," the company said of its study.

"Our results are based upon the network performance users experience on a day-to-day basis, when carrying out typical activities," said Tutela VP Tom Luke. "With this in mind, our results show Verizon and AT&T providing the fastest down speed, with T-Mobile leading in terms of upload performance."

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For years wireless cell carriers have sold off consumer location data to everyone from urban planners to marketers without much in the way of oversight. Every so often that lack of oversight becomes painfully clear as we just saw with the Securus and Locationsmart scandal, which exposed the location data of roughly 200 million US and Canadian wireless consumers.

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AT&T has chosen top lobbying and policy executive Bob Quinn as the fall guy in the wake of the Cohen scandal. AT&T's decision to pay $600,000 to Trump's shady NYC fixer's shell LLC for "insight" into the President quickly came back to bite the company, forcing the company to hold somebody accountable.

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Why did AT&T pay a shell company owned by Donald Trump's infamous fixer $600,000? That's the question some lawmakers are asking the DOJ in the wake of a document released by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who is suing the President on the behalf of porn star Stormy Daniels. The document alleges that Cohen (and potentially numerous companies) may have violating banking and lobbying disclosure laws by funneling money to Cohen (and potentially Trump) via the shady LLC.

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