AT & T raises the price of DirecTV Now – again – after promising to reduce post-merger bills



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An AT & T logo on the side of a building.

AT & T would increase the price of DirecTV Now by $ 10 a month and inform current subscribers that they would pay the new, higher price starting in April.

DirecTV Now packages now cost between $ 40 and $ 75 per month before additions such as HBO, and current customers would pay an additional $ 10 a month, regardless of which plan they subscribe to, for a price between 50 and 85 USD. According to news reports, AT & T will also reconfigure its channel plans for new subscribers, adding HBO to base packages while eliminating dozens of channels that are not part of Time Warner Inc., owned by AT & T. costing 50 $ or $ 70 a month.

Rising prices and channel cuts are occurring although AT & T has promised that its acquisition of Time Warner would drive down prices for customers. When the Department of Justice attempted to terminate the merger, AT & T told a judge in May 2018 that the merger "would allow the merged company to reduce its prices."

However, AT & T raised the base price of its DirecTV Now streaming service by $ 5 per month in July 2018, just weeks after the merger. Now, AT & T is imposing an even bigger price increase.

DirecTV Now is the online version of DirecTV, delivered without a satellite connection. AT & T had 1.6 million subscribers to DirecTV Now as of December 31, 2018 after losing 267,000 subscribers during the quarter, reported a report on AT & T's operating results. AT & T said that many subscribers with very low rates did not maintain service when they had to pay a high price.

Current DirecTV Now subscribers will be notified of the $ 10 increase in e-mail notifications and will pay the new price as of April 12, reported Cord Cutters News. AT & T employees provided documents containing this information to Cord Cutters News, the article said.

The new prices for existing customers will be as follows, according to Variety: "DirecTV's current customers now see their monthly rates increase by $ 10, while continuing to receive the same range of channels: Live a Little (over 65 channels), up to $ 50 / month; Right (over 85 channels), going up to $ 65 per month, Go Big (over 105 channels), which goes up to $ 75 a month, Gotta Have It (over 125 channels) to $ 85 / month and Todo y Más Spanish language package (over 90 channels), increasing to $ 55 / month. "For current customers, HBO is a $ 5 supplement per month.

The new information on the package was briefly posted on the DirecTV Now website, but was later disconnected, Variety wrote.

A reduced range of channels in the new plans

While current subscribers would continue to receive the same packages with 65+ to 125 channels, packages for new subscribers or those switching to new plans will only have 40 to 50 channels.

"The new packages are DirecTV Now Plus ($ 50 per month for more than 40 channels) and DirecTV Now Max ($ 70 per month for more than 50 channels, including regional sports channels and other sports channels), which will both include HBO " Variety wrote. These new bundles "will not include any network from A & E Networks, AMC Networks, Discovery or Viacom", though "both include Turner and HBO channels, owned by AT & T".

Cord Cutters News has published a list of all the channels that will appear in the Plus and Max packages. The loss of networks will remove channels such as Comedy Central and BBC America.

Channels that are not part of the new DirecTV Now packages may become available in a new streaming version of DirecTV, but at prices higher than those customers pay for DirecTV Now. Why would AT & T unveil another DirecTV streaming version separate from DirecTV Now? But here's what Cord Cutters News is saying about the upcoming option:

You will now be able to get DirecTV packages as streaming, but the price will apparently be the same as the satellite version.

According to our information, AT & T will sell a streaming version of DIRECTV for more than 65 channels at $ 93 per month, an 85+ version of DIRECTV for $ 110 per month, a version for 105 DirecTV channels at a price of $ 124 and a version for DirecTV's 125+ channels for $ 135 per month streaming online.

DirecTV 's satellite service lost 1.24 million subscribers in 2018, ending the year with 19.2 million subscribers.

We asked AT & T for details on the various price and channel changes and will update this story if we get new information.

AT & T and other pay-TV providers have generally blamed higher television prices for higher programming costs. According to a Bloomberg report released this week, in online streaming, large companies such as AT & T have discovered that it was expensive to compete with Netflix.

DirecTV has already raised prices for satellite customers in January. AT & T has also made it more costly to cancel DirecTV with a new policy of charging customers all month after the cancellation of the service, instead of providing a pro-rated credit for the last month.

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