By “Reuters Staff”; Reuters ~ Feb 25, 2021
Feb 25 (Reuters) – Private equity firm TPG Capital and AT&T Inc said on Thursday they will form a new company, DIRECTV, to operate U.S. video business unit. (Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
By Jeff Baumgartner; Light Reading ~ Feb 23, 2021
AT&T is close to striking a deal to sell a “large minority” stake in its pay-TV business – including DirecTV, U-verse TV and AT&T TV – to private equity firm TPG, CNBC reports.
CNBC says a deal, which would value AT&T’s video business at roughly $15 billion, could be announced as early as this week.
TPG has already been rumored to be in exclusive talks to acquire a minority stake in DirecTV, AT&T’s struggling satellite TV business.
Via News Wire Feed; Light Reading ~ Feb 16, 2021
DALLAS – What are we doing? We’re giving businesses large and small the chance to try the nation’s largest 4G LTE network1, risk free. Qualifying businesses can get a Moxee TM Mobile Hotspot and up to 50GB of data for a trial period of up to 30 days, to help them decide to subscribe to AT&T mobility services.2
With the hotspot, you can connect your Wi-Fi enabled devices to keep your business running – whether you’re on-site or on the go.
At the end of the 30 days, or once you use the 50GB (whichever comes first), we’ll check in to either sign you up, or say “thanks for trying it out.” You can keep the hotspot or return it to an AT&T store.
With so many choices and decisions to make, AT&T Business is with you every step of the way in uncovering the right technologies to keep you connected, and help your business thrive.
From American Indian College Fund; Char-Koosta News ~ Feb 04, 2021
Tribal colleges and universities on Indian Reservations receive supplies
DENVER, CO — The American Indian College Fund and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium are receiving $1.5M in pandemic-related supplies including hand sanitizer, disinfectant and gloves. Both organizations are working with AT&T to distribute the supplies to more than 20 tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) across the country. This comes as Native communities face soaring COVID-19 infection rates, rolling lockdowns are enacted on Indian reservations, and tribal community members are having difficulties accessing supplies. Native American communities suffer COVID-19 infection rates greater than 3.5 times that of the white population, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The American Indian College Fund is the largest provider of scholarships to Native American students in the nation, and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium is the national advocacy organization supporting tribal college and universities. The two organizations worked with AT&T to ship the supplies to the following TCUs, including:
Via “News Wire Feed”; Light Reading ~ Feb 02, 2021
OAKTON, Va. – What’s the news? AT&T* has delivered AT&T 5G capabilities across the entirety of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle in a public-private partnership with the VA. VA expects to pilot a variety of healthcare use cases with our 5G and multi-access edge computing (MEC ) technologies to explore how they can improve healthcare delivery to the approximately 9 million Veterans who use VA healthcare services each year.
Why is this important? This is an industry-first deployment of 5G and MEC capabilities across the entirety of a VA health care and training facility. Multi-access edge computing is essentially a computer and cellular network architecture that brings real-time, high-bandwidth, low-latency access to latency dependent mobile applications. 5G and MEC “holds the potential to be transformational by enabling new healthcare delivery and business models” according to Gartner1. Among the healthcare-focused use cases that could be piloted are:
Mobile-to-mobile connectivity across/between medical devices, allowing the tracking of people and assets within the facility.
Improved medical procedures and training through the use of emerging technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
Remote and virtual pain management using AR and VR.
Remote and/or near real-time surgical assistance via the ability to layer multiple surgical techniques using AR.
By Jason Aycock; Seeking Alpha ~ Jan 31, 2021s
By Mike Dano; Light Reading ~ Jan 29, 2021
For almost four years, AT&T and Nokia worked diligently to sell private wireless LTE services to utility operators around the country.
And for a while, the effort looked like it would be a smashing success. In 2019, AT&T reported it counted contracts with 15 different utility companies across 18 states in the US, with another 14 utilities on the hook. The utilities planned to lease spectrum in AT&T’s WCS C and D Block holdings to build private wireless networks using Nokia’s LTE equipment for a range of services like meter monitoring and disaster recovery.
By Iain Morris; Light Reading ~ Jan 28, 2021
Last year’s jobs statistics have started to roll in, and they are predictably grim.
After AT&T slashed headcount by more than 13,000 in the first nine months of 2020, the final tally was always going to be ugly. Results published this week show another 3,870 jobs disappeared in the fourth quarter. More than 50,000 have gone in just five years – about 18% of AT&T’s headcount at the end of 2015.
Verizon has pruned with similar zeal. Only 1,000 jobs were cut from the total in the final three months of 2020, and just 2,800 over the entire year. But 45,500 have vanished since 2015, an alarming 26% of that year’s count. The combined losses are roughly equal to the entire workforce at Vodafone, a UK-based operator with international operations.
It’s unclear whether AT&T will maintain operational control of DirecTV.
By Jon Brodkin; Ars Technica ~ Jan 25, 2021
AT&T is reportedly closing in on a deal to sell a stake in DirecTV to TPG, a private-equity firm.
Unfortunately for customers hoping that AT&T will relinquish control of DirecTV, a Reuters report on Friday said the pending deal would give TPG a “minority stake” in AT&T’s satellite-TV subsidiary. On the other hand, a private-equity firm looking to wring value out of a declining business wouldn’t necessarily be better for DirecTV customers than AT&T is.
It’s also possible that AT&T could cede operational control of DirecTV even if it remains the majority owner. CNBC in November reported on one proposed deal in which “AT&T would retain majority economic ownership of the [DirecTV and U-verse TV] businesses, and would maintain ownership of U-verse infrastructure, including plants and fiber,” while the buyer of a DirecTV stake “would control the pay-TV distribution operations and consolidate the business on its books.”
By Mike Dano; Light Reading ~ Jan 22, 2021
AT&T and Verizon are looking to extricate themselves from the messy business of building a bridge across the digital divide. Instead of collecting money themselves for the government’s aging Lifeline program – designed to subsidize telecom services for poor Americas – they want Congress to do it instead.
The move is well timed. A pandemic forcing almost everyone to work and school online has helped to elevate Internet connections from nice-to-have to must-have. And the incoming Biden administration has pledged support for universal broadband.