Nationally deployed in the latter month of the first quarter, AT&T’s new premium IP-based pay TV service, AT&T TV, failed to reverse the steep subscriber losses the telecom company has been experiencing of late across its pay TV platforms.
AT&T, which reported the loss of nearly 900,000 subscribers in Q1 across a “premium” pay TV portfolio that lumps in AT&T TV along with DirecTV and U-verse TV, didn’t break out subscriber metrics for the former.
Also read: AT&T Loses Another 1M Pay TV Subscribers in Q1
However, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson seemed to imply that uptake for AT&T TV hasn’t been incendiary since the product expanded nationally from limited beta release at the beginning of March.
“Our expectations on AT&T TV have been very consistent with what we have seen even with the suppression of the pandemic in the latter part of March where we were restricted on the certain number of dispatches and some of our capacity there,” Stephenson said, speaking during AT&T’s first-quarter earnings call Wednesday.
Stephenson cited a climate of “suppressed new add activity” in regard to consumers adding new entertainment services, despite the current uptick in video usage.
“So we feel pretty good about that launch and where we went,” he added. “As you know, we have to ramp that throughout the year, so one month does not a year make. But we are right on the plan of what we expected in terms of volume and the customer feedback on the customers. We have put on the product has been probably stronger than what we expected.”
AT&T is seeking to transition users of its DirecTV and U-verse linear platforms to AT&T TV, an Android TV-based service that's self-install and doesn't require satellite launches.
