AT&T to buy DirecTV in $49bn mega-gobble

You can't but you can...

"You can't justify AT&T buying DirecTV by pointing at Comcast's grab for Time Warner, because neither one is a good deal for consumers."

While this is entirely true, AT&T is trying to block Comcast more than anything. They're pissed about the T-Mobile thing. Comcast's top execs are buddies with Obama and AT&T is worried that deal will go through based on corrupt politics.

Now the FCC needs to either look really bad and approve Comcast but not AT&T, or turn down both. AT&T may actually be helping the consumers here.

This would seriously suck

DirecTV is the only competitor to the local Time Warner mafia. Also, they have far better service than AT&T, Time Warner, Cox, Comcast, or anybody else I've dealt with, which isn't saying much.

I had to get rid of my AT&T landline because they called me literally twice a day trying to sell me U-Verse. Unfortunately you can't block companies you have a business relationship with, so I canceled my landline. Only then was I able to get the constant sales calls stopped.

We need an icon for the Darth Vader style "NNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

Cheapskate Comcast

Only paying $45.2 for TWC. Shurely they could have ponied up a full $50.

Time to spread some serious cash

AT&T needs to get someone like Wheeler in their pocket for this. I'm thinking that this is also an end run in that owning DirectTV will let them "feature" (love the buzzwords) their own movie/TV division over the likes of Netflix whether net-neutrality is upheld or sent to the toilet. There's entirely too much BS going on with the lame duck government at this point to keep it sorted but somehow it smells all inter-related.

Very sceptical that this will be good news for Sur America...

DirecTV is already massively overpriced here in Colombia.... But its the only option in many areas where quality cabling isn't available. I'm no fan of Carlos Slim's empire either (better known here as Telmex / Claro), but at least its reasonably cheap.

For 5MB Internet and SD quality TV it works out at about 56k pesos (22 euro)... Whereas DirecTV has no internet but can easily cost 3 to 4 times that alone, and the signal is far from superb, (HD = SD FTA TV in the UK)...

After AT&T the prices will just go up and up to cover the merger and the service will collapse! GREAT!

Investment - we've heard of it...

What happened to making money the old fashioned way, by investing in your product?

With these kinds of bucks AT&T could have gone head to head with Google and put a fat pipe into most of their customers living rooms but instead they are going to buy a TV distribution company. I so love my 1Mbs DSL connection via AT&T - in makes my mother in laws 21kbps dial up service look so fat. If you live in rural America then dial-up is where it's at and 21kbps is good, of course it does drop off some when it rains.

But AT&T would rather try and sell a TV package than actually deliver decent service.