AT&T admits that the growth of the company's DirecTV Now streaming service caught the telecom giant off guard. When AT&T launched its new streaming service DirecTV Now, you'll recall there were more than a few problems, with repeated outages, NFL games being blacked out for no reason, and assorted other issues. And while many of those problems have since been dealt with, the issues left early customers annoyed with the fact they were paying to participate in what they felt was a glorified beta.
Now AT&T execs are admitting that they weren't ready for the interest they received in their own product.
"It ramped up a lot faster than we ever thought it would, which is a great thing but also caught us a bit flat-footed on a couple things," AT&T executive Bill Hogg said at the Jeffries 2017 Technology Conference in Miami last week.
"Our teams have been working through capacity, have been working through authentication issues, streaming issues," added Hogg. "What we’re seeing is the error rates are declining pretty fast and that the platform is stabilizing."
Initially AT&T downplayed the problems as in line with the company's expectations. That position ultimately evolved into the company admitting it had some issues with user volume, to this admission that they weren't quite ready for prime time.
And while most users say things have improved notably with DirecTV Now, there's continued complaints about sports games being
blacked out when they're not supposed to be and random
glitches occurring with the DirecTV Now app.