Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

Management down at AT&T Mexico is really a freaking joke, leadership positions are given by nepotism and more often only to people from Venezuela who evidently know sh– about being a leader; also the C-suite people are another joke, they are for themselves kissing each others' arse and if you don't go with this, you're an enemy. When are the top layoffs coming?

Only time will tell, but now that T-Mobile has surpassed AT&T as the #2 wireless company behind Verizon, the writing is on the wall. Adios T.

I would really like to know how many billions of dollars that T actually made when all Dtv techs across the country took the pay cut from piece rate to hourly? An average of about 10000 to 15000 a year!

good job randy and stank - give yourselves a bigger bonus oh wait randy is retired he will get the folowing: This massive sum of money, according to MarketWatch, would provide 60-year-old Stephenson with “a guaranteed income of $274,000 a month for the rest of his days.” This is on top of his total last three years of an average $30 million compensation.

What a fricken joke.

@pro+16kDgwj9, not trying to argue here, but here's another POV from someone outside the media business.

"Finally, T spent money into HBO Max, to compete with not only Netflix and Disney +, but also with HBO Go and HBO Now. Customers were confused, and the price of $15 per month is just too high, so the take is very low."

T is caught in a price trap. Comcast, Charter, etc. subs all pay ~$15/mo for HBO. Drop the price for HBO Max any lower and they risk violating contracts with cable providers and undercutting yet another revenue stream. Keep the price at $15/mo and it's far too expensive for the non-cable consumer. Brilliant strategy, should have thought about this a long time ago. Unfortunately for Stevenson and Stankey, the results speak loudly.

So T's "cook the books" answer is to include it for "free" to those customers and add it to other products like gigabit Internet and "unlimited" wireless plans. Brilliant. Let's cover up the fact there is little to no organic growth for HBO Max and hope the financial people don't see the real story.

Finally, DTV by itself could have come up with a YouTube TV like package to compete with the various streamers and most likely been very successful, but the fact remains that linear tv is a dying business and T's oversight has only accelerated it's demise.

What we're looking at is another corporate collapse along the lines of GE post Jack Welch. T should survive, but it will be a drastically different company when this mess is finally cleaned up.

Nobody should be arguing that DTV would/is/will lose subscribers. Every pay service does. And DTV was starting to shed subscribers before the acquisition.

The question is whether T has helped stem that loss, or has exacerbated it. Numbers indicate that pre-acquisition DTV was losing subs at a rate lower than the overall industry compared to Dish, Comcast, Spectrum, etc. However, after the acquisition when T got to take full control DTV began to lose customers at a rate higher than the industry.

Secondly, after T bought DTV they had two video services, DTV and Uverse. T then rushed out DTV Now to try and keep cord cutters with a streaming service, but it was horrible, losing even more subs.

The next thing T did was basically ignore DTV problems completely. There were no efforts to try and keep customers at all. There was no DTV marketing, no attempt to try and make the packages more competitive, and no effort at all to try and merge DTV with Uverse to offer a single video source.

Then T poured millions into creating ATTTV, which was a third video service directly competing with DTV and Uverse, but one that depended entirely on fiber internet speeds to work. Fiber is very spotty and most markets do not have access to it, meaning ATTTV is a novelty service only available to a very few.

T's next step was to stop selling Uverse all together, and push DTV as an option only to rural customers, even though ATTTV is unavailable to folks in places like NY and LA.

Finally, T spent money into HBO Max, to compete with not only Netflix and Disney +, but also with HBO Go and HBO Now. Customers were confused, and the price of $15 per month is just too high, so the take is very low.

Now today, five years after T took over DTV they have lost almost 6 million subs since 2015, but they still have over 17 million DTV subs, meaning DTV is over 85% of T's total video service, with Uverse, ATTTV, and HBO Max single subs making up the remainder. Somewhere a lightbulb went off and T execs realize that DTV is still important, and is now returning to focus on it. Especially because the revenue T continues to get from DTV subs (measured by ARPU) is higher per customer than that from Uverse, ATTTV and HBO Max combined.

Of course, with this history, T execs refocusing on DTV probably means an even sharper decline in subs and a bigger loss of revenue.

Nobody is claiming DTV is perfect, or that if it was still independent it wouldn't be losing subs. But T's mismanagement has made that loss happen faster, and their Quixotic efforts at streaming and other video services boggle the mind by their pointless nature and ham handed execution.

If people here can't see that T ownership has made things worse for DTV, they must be blind T cult members

Five years ago T had the chance to do something really revolutionary with video. They had a subscriber base of nearly 25 million (combining DTV and Uverse), and if done right they could have launched a streaming service that might have been a Netflix k–ler. But it ended up being the punchline to the joke 'What happens when you put a phone company in charge of TV?'

"There’s always someone ready to defend dtv on here".

Here's a hint. It's the same disgruntled DTV guy every time. It's clear from his language pattern; and he's clearly a smart guy. Just angry...and who can blame him really?

The problem is crystal clear to anyone with even a scintilla of business sense.

The employees are all racist.

There’s always someone ready to defend dtv on here. Not sure if it’s so they can blame t management more or cause they just stan for dtv.

First, DTV was not in decline, which was why it was at a premium price. That is an AT&T fallacy. DIRECTV outpaced Uverse TV in the market because of quality of service, offering, and customer service. When AT&T acquires DTV, that’s when the decline started. The cost structures became too high, no flexibility in dealing with the retention of loyal customers, and simply terrible treatment of DTV employees which led to morale problems that were not an issue prior. The blunders of AT&T have just compounded in how they have handled marketing (we are going to basically only focus on customers who spend a lot because the rest of you don’t count), the disastrous conversion of customer accounts that they didn’t need to notify DTV customers about and only confused them so they canceled, the constant shift to try to save money by creating agents equipped to handle any type of call, but didn’t want to spend the time or money on training these poor people in the gazillion systems they are expected to use, and then no accountability for L1-L2 in frontline production which meant no accountability to frontline non-management. Ar&T customer service has long been subpar in the industry. Now the company is basically trying to enact what their acquired businesses were doing and saying long before (and with greater success) they fell under the AT&T portfolio umbrella. What did the company do back then? Told these people they were wrong, backward, and the AT&T way was the success model. Laughable. So, these folks continuing to make it about DTV or TW acquisitions are not experts looking at the big picture. They are looking at the bottom line. This is MISMANAGEMENT OF ASSETS.

Between the payment to TMobile & subsequent customers lost to them as a result, buying DTV at a premium (when they knew the business was in decline!) and overpaying for TW, I think it's fair to say that this 'leadership' team has probably cost AT&T shareholders more than $75,000,000,000 in lost revenue and wasted equity.

Good job guys.

Why stop at MCI Worldcom, if we go back 20-30 years we may as well be talking about how great Sears was.
The point of the article is T is going down the same historical path.

You guys are awfully harsh about AT&T. I worked at MCI back in the 90s. When what arguably is a true "disaster" took place, being acquired by British WorldCom. In light of that fiasco, AT&T actually isn't that big of a disaster from either a 20 year or 30 year telco period.

AT&T leadership is among the worst I have ever seen in my 20 telco career. Incompetent liars, excuse-makers and employee abusers.

Hide behind your equality and diversity programs all you like; it won’t make a difference...the brand is so tainted that you’re going to need to Xfinity this thing to hell and back to even stand a chance.

Nailed it. The management incompetence is finally getting the notice it deserves.

I want my lump Doewant to divest myself from Randy's train wreck in progress. I wish the rest of you that do actual work the best.