ATT doing away with satellite TV

The author took several soundbites and pieced them together to form a "story". There's too much invested in current satellite technology to abandon it by 2020. And wireless has not advanced to the point of being able to ubiquitously replace satellite. The day will come, yes, but not by 2020. AT&T and Verizon have both announced "5G" plans, but there are a lot of logistic hurdles to be solved. AT&T is not going to abandon the market they purchased through their acquisition of DirecTV until there is a replacement available that is suitable from a technological and price perspective. I don't see that happening by 2020.

Cell service is still not ubiquitous, much less LTE or higher data service. It will not be by 2020 and perhaps not by 2026. So unless they plan to leave current customers in the ditch, sat service will still be available.

look how long it took to Kill VHS tapes .. CD then DVD then tape died.
a few months ago.. the last company stopped making VHS recorders.

Same Difference.

and where will the Band-Width come from?????? maybe when 8 LTE is ready

turbojimmy wrote:
The author took several soundbites and pieced them together to form a "story". There's too much invested in current satellite technology to abandon it by 2020. And wireless has not advanced to the point of being able to ubiquitously replace satellite. The day will come, yes, but not by 2020. AT&T and Verizon have both announced "5G" plans, but there are a lot of logistic hurdles to be solved. AT&T is not going to abandon the market they purchased through their acquisition of DirecTV until there is a replacement available that is suitable from a technological and price perspective. I don't see that happening by 2020.

I switched from AT&T Uverse back to Comcast earlier this year. AT&T price went up a lot. The only deal they had to offer was to switch to DirecTV. Our son had the same experience with them. Why push people off UVerse to DirecTV if you plan on eliminating it?

not gonna happen in my life time

We get a few OTA channels not many. There is no cable on our street and the only cell that works is ATT with one bar sometimes (if you hold your mouth just right). Our house is in the country but not the booneys. If we cant get cell service between Boston and New York a lot of people will stop watching TV

Hank MI wrote:

turbojimmy wrote:
The author took several soundbites and pieced them together to form a "story". There's too much invested in current satellite technology to abandon it by 2020. And wireless has not advanced to the point of being able to ubiquitously replace satellite. The day will come, yes, but not by 2020. AT&T and Verizon have both announced "5G" plans, but there are a lot of logistic hurdles to be solved. AT&T is not going to abandon the market they purchased through their acquisition of DirecTV until there is a replacement available that is suitable from a technological and price perspective. I don't see that happening by 2020.

I switched from AT&T Uverse back to Comcast earlier this year. AT&T price went up a lot. The only deal they had to offer was to switch to DirecTV. Our son had the same experience with them. Why push people off UVerse to DirecTV if you plan on eliminating it?

In our DFW suburban neighborhood AT&T is pushing their TV customers from Uverse to Direct TV because their fiber optic system does not have the bandwidth to support video. Their whole system needs to be updated to significantly increase bandwidth. So far no plans to do that. Also not sure how people that live in remote areas where there is no cell coverage are going to get TV. Guess they are out of luck or maybe it will be down to one satellite provider.

AT&T is planning on using 5G and blanketing the country with it. Here is a short article on where it is already being deployed:

https://www.cnet.com/news/at-t-doubles-down-on-5g-with-second-test-location/

Good news is it looks like they will have to move back to unlimited data again. At those speeds you could eat your entire 12GB plan in less than 3 seconds.

What I saw at ATT corporate center was that 5G will be on a bandwidth that will travel further and penetrate obstacles better than 4G. For driverless cars and other devices to work they need to minimize the gaps in their coverage maps. This means they will be moving into rural markets, that they haven't tried to compete in before because there was no monetary incentive to invest.

The bad news is that it may be many years before it happens in my neighborhood.

That's true. My understanding is first go and nationwide sale of 5G in 2020. Then it will probably take several years to role out the entire network similar to 4G/LTE.

On another note it does look like Verizon is also testing 5G, with Sprint and T-Mobile close behind. No standard has been set yet for what 5G is, so we are probably going to have at least two competing standards like we do now with 4G.