The Expected Meaning of AT&T Acquisition of Time Warner for Customers

AT&T, TimeWarner

 

AT&T, one of the premiere phone service providers in the United States, has agreed to acquire media powerhouse Time Warner for almost $85 billion. This is certainly one of the largest acquisitions of all time.

What is expected from this merger?

This deal is expected to help AT&T ensure a quality user experience because they access content through multiple devices like cellphones and tablets. They will be able to connect the dots as content flows across multiple devices. This deal will mainly help AT&T, one of the premiere phone service providers in US, data mine vital information about users such as location, devices as well as behaviour to deliver accurate content at the right time in the best possible manner. More importantly, it will make for a complete holistic user experience that could possibly ensure consumer friendly innovations, said Gartner Analyst, Mr. Akshay Sharma.

What This Deal Could Mean?

Increased targeted advertising plays the most important role in funding all the content consumed by users. In simple words, this deal between the two companies will make ad targeting more granular. This means that the customers accessing the same content from different devices and locations will get to see different commercials.

AT&T’s CEO Mr. Randall Stephenson Says…

This deal will be a great medium/platform for the two companies to move faster and operate better in a world where customers increasingly access all sorts of content using prepaid phone services on their mobiles. The world of distribution and content is converging. Keeping this in mind, we must move faster toward doing something totally unique, says he. He mainly stressed the concept and requirement of curating and formatting content in a totally different way for mobiles.

Benefit to AT&T

This deal will certainly add a lot of value to AT&T’s portfolio of mobile, broadband and satellite TV services through the addition of Time Warner’s content brands like HBO, CNN, and Warner Bros as the company has a huge network of almost 130 million mobile customers. In addition to that, this deal is all about AT&T attempting to get smarter instead of becoming a totally dump pipe provider. Now, all this clearly depends on content and the kind of user experience. In one way or another, it will be a kind of benefit for AT&T.

There is a Twist:

According to the critics, the deal between AT&T, a phone service provider, and Time Warner can result in less consumer choice, increase in prices and a threat to media plurality. Mr. Donald Trump, the Republican Presidential nominee, also supported critics with his opinion in this regard. As per his opinion, the deal would offer “Excessive concentration of power” to the combined company. If he wins the election next month then he will block the deal, says Mr. Donald Trump.

At Last:

AT&T will gain a lot of benefit from this deal to provide a quality user experience across multiple devices. However, considering the twists, it will not be easy for AT&T to close the deal easily. Moreover, it will be very interesting to see whether AT&T actually benefits from this deal or, if the opinion of critics proves to be right.

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