AT&T completed its acquisition of DIRECTV, making it the largest pay TV provider in the United States and the world, providing service to more than 26 million customers in the United States and more than 191 million customers in Latin America, including Mexico and the Caribbean. Additionally, AT&T has more than 132 million wireless subscribers and connections in the U.S. and Mexico; offers 4G LTE mobile coverage to nearly 310 million people in the U.S.; covers 57 million U.S. customer locations with high-speed Internet; and has nearly 16 million subscribers to its high-speed Internet service.
DIRECTV shareholders received 1.892 shares of AT&T common stock, in addition to $28.50 in cash, per share of DIRECTV.
AT&T said the DIRECTV acquisition significantly diversifies itsrevenue mix, products, geographies and customer bases. As a result of this acquisition, as well as AT&T’s acquisition of Iusacell and Nextel Mexico, AT&T expects that, by the end of 2015, its largest revenue streams will be, in descending order: Business Solutions (both wireless and wireline); Entertainment & Internet; Consumer Mobility; and International Mobility and Video.
“Combining DIRECTV with AT&T is all about giving customers more choices for great video entertainment integrated with mobile and high-speed Internet service,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. “We’ll now be able to meet consumers’ future entertainment preferences, whether they want traditional TV service with premier programming, their favorite content on a mobile device, or video streamed over the Internet to any screen.
“This transaction allows us to significantly expand our high-speed Internet service to reach millions more households, which is a perfect complement to our coast-to-coast TV and mobile coverage,” Stephenson said. “We’re now a fundamentally different company with a diversified set of capabilities and businesses that set us apart from the competition.”
In approving the deal, the FCC imposed a number of conditions that will extend for four years, including:
- Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) Deployment. Recognizing that the merger reduces AT&T-DIRECTV’s incentive to deploy FTTP service, the Commission adopts as a condition of this merger the expansion of FTTP service to 12.5 million customer locations. This condition also responds to the harm of the loss of a video competitor in areas where AT&T and DIRECTV had directly competed before the merger by providing a pathway for increased competition from services that rely on broadband Internet to deliver video.
- Gigabit Service to E-rate Eligible Schools and Libraries. In addition, to ensure that schools and libraries also benefit from expanded fiber deployment to consumers and institutions, the Commission is also requiring AT&T-DIRECTV to offer gigabit service to any E-rate eligible school or library where AT&T-DIRECTV deploys FTTP service.
- Non-Discriminatory Usage-Based Practices. Recognizing that AT&T is the only major ISP that applies “data caps” across the board to all of its fixed broadband customers and that this merger increases the incentive of AT&T-DIRECTV to use strategies that limit consumers’ access to online video distribution services in order to favor its own video services, the Commission requires AT&T-DIRECTV, as a condition of this merger, to refrain from imposing discriminatory usage-based allowances or other discriminatory retail terms and conditions on its broadband Internet service.
- Internet Interconnection Disclosure Requirements. Recognizing the importance of interconnection to the operation of online video services, the Commission also requires as a condition of this merger that AT&T-DIRECTV submit its Internet interconnection agreements so that the Commission may monitor the terms of such agreements to determine whether AT&T-DIRECTV is denying or impeding access to its networks in anticompetitive ways through the terms of these agreements.
- Discounted Broadband Services for Low-Income Subscribers. While finding that the availability of better and lower priced bundles of video and broadband service is a potential benefit of the merger, the Commission also concludes that the public interest requires us to ensure that a bundle of video and broadband services is not the only competitive choice for low-income subscribers who may not be able to afford bundled services. The Commission accordingly requires as a condition of the merger that AT&T-DIRECTV make available an affordable, low-price standalone broadband service to low-income consumers in its broadband service area.
- Compliance Program and Reporting. Given the important role that these conditions serve in securing the public interest benefits of the merger, the Commission requiresthat AT&T-DIRECTV retain both an internal company compliance officer and an independent, external compliance officer that will report and monitor, respectively, the combined entity’s compliance with all conditions of the merger.
Some other notes on the transaction:
AT&T announced that John Stankey will be CEO of AT&T Entertainment & Internet Services, responsible for leading its combined DIRECTV and AT&T Home Solutions operations. Stankey will report to Stephenson. DIRECTV President, Chairman and CEO Mike White announced his plans to retire.
AT&T is also developing unique video offerings for consumers through, among other initiatives, its Otter Media joint venture with The Chernin Group. The joint venture was established to invest in, acquire and launch over-the-top (OTT) video services. This includes its purchase of a majority stake in Fullscreen, a global online media company that works with more than 50,000 content creators who engage 450 million subscribers and generate 4 billion monthly views.
http://about.att.com/story/att_completes_acquisition_of_directv.html
- DIRECTV first launched its satellite-based TV service in 1994.
- DIRECTV operates a fleet of twelve geosynchronous satellites, including eleven owned satellites
and one leased satellite. These include six Ku-Band satellites at the following orbital locations: 101 WL (three), 110
WL (one), 119 WL (one), 95 WL (one-leased), and six Ka-Band satellites at 99 WL (three) and
103 WL (three) orbital locations.
The company has contracted for the construction and launch of one new satellite, D15, which is to launch in 2015 and provide additional HD, replacement and backup capacity
Facebook posted a video tour of its Connectivity Lab, showcasing progress it has made in developing an ultralight drone aircraft that will stay aloft for three months at a time at altitudes of 30km. 
GCX owns the world's largest private undersea cable system spanning more than 67,000 route kms which, seamlessly integrated with Reliance Communications' 200,000 route kms of domestic optic fiber backbone, provides a robust Global Service Delivery Platform.
Frontier Communications introduced a wholesale Ethernet Internet Access (EIA) service that enables carriers to offer customers Internet access within Frontier’s footprint. Wholesale EIA will be sold through the Carrier channel but will be equivalent to the retail offering by including a package of the Ethernet access circuit and Internet port and bandwidth tiers ranging from 1Mbps to 1Gbps.
Nokia reported net sales of EUR 3.2 billion for Q2 2015, up 9% year-on-year (down 1% year-on-year on a constant currency basis) compared to EUR 2.9 billion in Q2 2014. Non-IFRS diluted EPS in Q2 2015 vs EUR 0.09 (EUR 0.06 in Q2 2014), an increase of 50% year-on-year.
A10 Networks reported total revenue for the second quarter of $47.5 million, compared with $45.1 million in the second quarter of 2014. On a GAAP basis, A10 Networks reported a net loss for the second quarter 2015 of $10.0 million or $0.16 per share, compared with a net loss of $1.3 million or $0.02 per share in the second quarter of 2014. Non-GAAP net loss for the second quarter of 2015 was $5.3 million or $0.09 per share.
Michel Combes will step down as CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, effective September 1, as the company prepares for its merger with Nokia Networks.
Facebook users are spending an average 46 minutes per day on the site (not including WhatsApp). More than 700 million users are using Messenger.
President Obama issued an Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI), which aims to bolster the development and deployment of high-performance computing (HPS) systems.
Intel and Micron Technology have developed a non-volatile memory that is up to 1,000 times faster and has up to 1,000 times greater endurance than NAND, and is 10 times denser than conventional memory.
The new 3D NAND technology, which was jointly developed by Intel and Micron, stacks layers of data storage cells vertically to create storage devices with three times higher capacity than competing NAND technologies. The companies have been able to package up to 48GB of NAND per die — enabling three-fourths of a terabyte to fit in a single fingertip-sized package. A 256Gb MLC version of 3D NAND currently is sampling with select partners, and a 384Gb TLC design will be sampling later this spring.
NTT Communications will acquire PT. Cyber CSF (Cyber CSF), a data center service provider headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Pluribus Networks has formed a technology and marketing agreement with Appcito, makers of scalable Private Cloud based application services, such as load balancing, application traffic visibility and analytics and comprehensive application security including Web Application Firewall and DDoS detection.
Mark Templeton has decided to step down as president and CEO of Citrix Systems. He has served in that position since 1998. The Citrix Board has initiated a CEO search process and has retained Heidrick & Struggles to assist with the process of identifying and evaluating candidates.
Elliot Management Corp. published an open letter to the Board of Directors of Citrix, saying it believes the company can achieve a notable increase in shareholder value by implementing a new management plan and undertaking structural reforms.
Broadcom has begun sampling its new NetXtreme C-Series 10G/25G/40G/50G Ethernet controller product family designed for supporting greater virtual machine density in cloud data centers.
The BCM57300 NetXtreme C-Series Ethernet controllers offer bidirectional 50G throughput with 30 Mpps performance and integrated flow processing capabilities from the server to the top-of-rack switch They complete Broadcom's end-to-end 25/50G data center solution, which also includes the newly introduced StrataXGS Tomahawk Ethernet switch
The 28 nanometer (nm) Trident-II+ Series, which provides a drop-in power and efficiency improvement over the previous version, brings a number of features for network virtualization, including single-pass VXLAN routing that doubles gateway performance in all network topologies, as well as support for pre-standard GENEVE overlays.
Chuck Robbins has officially taken over as CEO of Cisco, replacing John Chambers who held the position since January 1995. July 26th marked the end of Cisco's fiscal year.
The Research Foundation for the State University of New York (RF SUNY) has been chosen to lead a new Manufacturing Innovation Institute to advance U.S. leadership in the manufacturing integrated photonics.
Ericsson and SK Telecom have signed agreed to collaborate on the development of a 5G core network that deploys network slicing technology. The idea behind slicing is to use logical instead of physical resources to provide networks on an as-a-service basis. The instantiation of the network slicing will use the Ericsson Virtual Evolved Packet Core solution.
The installation uses 200G per 50GHz DWDM channels, covering diverse paths between Slough, to the West of London, through to London Docklands in the East. The companies said a cloud customer is now using the network to put into production 1.2 Tbps of 100GE services, bringing the cloud customer's total lit capacity across the euNetworks footprint to in excess of 6 Tbps and available capacity to around 40 Tbps.
Huawei and NTT DOCOMO performed a live demonstration of the co-channel coexistence between Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA) and Wi-Fi systems.
AT&T completed its acquisition of DIRECTV, making it the largest pay TV provider in the United States and the world, providing service to more than 26 million customers in the United States and more than 191 million customers in Latin America, including Mexico and the Caribbean. Additionally, AT&T has more than 132 million wireless subscribers and connections in the U.S. and Mexico; offers 4G LTE mobile coverage to nearly 310 million people in the U.S.; covers 57 million U.S. customer locations with high-speed Internet; and has nearly 16 million subscribers to its high-speed Internet service.
The European Commission gave its stamp of approval to the proposed acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent by Nokia, saying the merger does not raise competition concerns "because the parties are not close competitors and since a number of strong global competitors will remain active after the transaction."
The point-to-point Microwave Transmission market is forecast to have near term growth, but will likely decline in the outer years, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. During this five-year forecast period, through 2019, Packet Microwave equipment demand is expected to maintain a positive rate of expansion.
