One of the new options when it comes to pay television service is a product called U-verse offered by AT&T. While it is not available nationally, it is reaching millions of homes regionally. So why is AT&T intent on getting into the highly competitive cable TV market?
It all comes down to money of course, and telecom providers have suffered over the past ten years as people disconnect their home phone lines. Why has this been happening? People today are used to using their wireless phone instead of a home phone line, and that has meant a loss of business for AT&T and Verizon as they are losing the revenue that people used to spend on home phone service. On the other hand, they have gained a lot of that revenue back by offering wireless plans to consumers. But they still have the network that they want to put to use so that is why U-verse was deployed about five years ago.
With AT&T U-verse, you can get your cable TV service, high speed internet access, and your home phone line all for around $100 a month. That of course is for the lower level tiers which don’t have as many cable channels, but it still is very competitive with what cable companies like Xfinity have been offering. Most AT&T TV deals also offer you cash back in the form of Visa rebate cards.
It is hard to say how long they will continue to offer incentives like this, as it generally means $200 to the customer just to try out the service without any real guarantee that they will stay with it for any length of time. But from the perspective of AT&T, if they do land a new customer is can mean $1,000 in revenue each year for the customers that do stay with the service.