AT&T may be thinking to itself right now, to paraphrase from “The Sound of Music,” “how do you solve a problem like DirecTV?” According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, AT&T is currently “exploring” ways to divest DirecTV, which could include selling the satellite company, spinning it off or keeping it.
AT&T bought DirecTV in 2015 for a price tag of $48.5 billion when it was the no. 1 pay-TV distributor in the country and had more than 20 million subscribers. Since then, with streaming and OTT options on the rise, DirecTV now sits behind Comcast in the second position for pay-TV distributors and has lost more than 2 million customers in the past two years.
The Wall Street Journal received no comment from AT&T.
If selling DirecTV was the choice, many speculate that Dish could be a suitor. The companies had previously attempted to merge in 2001, but federal regulators rejected the deal.
This isn’t the only issue AT&T has had regarding DirecTV recently. Last week, a class action lawsuit was levied against the telecom provider claiming it inflated subscriber numbers for the DirecTV Now vMVPD service.
UPDATE: CNBC is reporting that AT&T is not looking to sell DirecTV.
