The price of AT & T increases the result of the $ 1 billion merger debt

Over the last few years, AT & T has made two mbadive acquisitions: DirecTV in 2015 and Time Warner in 2018. With these mergers – which were clearly anti-consumer – AT & T thought it would become a giant cable television company, with a near-monopoly on the US media industry. But instead of just buying an undeniable advantage, the company gave customers more reasons to leave while trying to cover its huge debt of price increases.

A detailed report of Motherboard shows that AT & T's acquisitions of DirecTV and Time Warner have generated $ 160 billion in debt over the last three years, with several Wall Street badysts pointing out that the company's plans to recover this debt – with increases price and less promotional discounts – were unsustainable, the end will just drive more customers.

DirecTV's satellite service, which currently has more than 19 million customers, has lost more than 1.4 million customers in the last two years. The release of AT & T's fourth quarter results this week reveals that 403,000 customers have terminated their subscriptions in just one quarter. DirecTV Now, the streaming video service offered by AT & T, a cheaper alternative to cable TV and cable cutters, was also hit hard, losing 267,000 subscribers in the last quarter, or 14 percent total.

Analysts estimate that last summer's $ 5 hike resulted in most of DirecTV Now's customer losses. And it seems like this is the kind of change that customers can expect in the future. Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT & T, said during the quarterly earnings call that "our top priority in 2019 is to reduce debt resulting from our acquisition of Time Warner."

Adding the other AT & T actions, such as its campaign against internet neutrality and other FCC protections, anti-competitive practices such as null and sponsored data packages and the reputation for appalling customer service makes it easy to see why more and more subscribers are leaving. The increase in prices can help reduce debt in the short term, but as the current trend shows, this only increases the rate of customer defaults.