Just days after AT&T, the second largest wireless carrier in the United States, finally completed its acquisition of DirecTV to also become the country's largest pay TV provider, the reinforced company has released its very first bundle which combines mobile and television services.
For a monthly fee of $200, subscribers will be able to access high-definition video and digital video recording for up to a total of four TV receivers, along with unlimited text messages and calls for a total of four wireless lines with shareable wireless data of up to 10GB.
The bundle, which will be launching on August 10, presents annual savings of $600 or more over the first 12 months of the promotional price of the bundle.
This is the first time that any company has been able to release a bundle that includes television and wireless services that cover the whole United States, as made possible by AT&T's purchase of DirecTV. The merger combined the wireless infrastructure of AT&T and the nationwide satellite TV assets of DirecTV.
"Today is the first of many planned moves to enable our customers to enjoy a premium entertainment experience almost anywhere," said AT&T Entertainment and Internet Services Executive VP and chief marketing officer Brad Bentley.
AT&T has already started to sell the services of DirecTV in over 2,000 of its company's retail stores, with some of these stores already offering the U-Verse TV service.
AT&T also released its television packages for both DirecTV and U-Verse, with the prices of these bundles ranging from $50 to $12 per month.
Customers that sign up for both the television and wireless service will be able to acquire the monthly discount of $10, which will take the total monthly bill to $200. This does not include any installment fees that users could pay for smartphones that they also acquire, but AT&T said that it will be offering $300 worth of bill credit for customers that purchase an AT&T smartphone.
Also, for locations where the landline service of AT&T is available, there is also an offer to bundle landline services with Internet services though packages ranging from $30 to $50 per month.
Given all these, the changes are not that significant, especially since AT&T and DirecTV already had cross-marketing deals in place before the business combination.
Bentley, however, said that the released promotions is just the first step in what is to come, so customers could look forward to more bundles that would be released by AT&T in the future.
