The integration of key DirecTV operations including installation and call-center support will be fully completed by the time AT&T begins integration of Time Warner Inc., AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said.
“I think the timing of the Time Warner deal as its relates to the integration of DirecTV is very good,” Stephenson told investors during AT&T’s third-quarter earnings call on Monday, just 36 hours after his company announced its intention to purchase Time Warner Inc. for $85.4 billion.
“By the end of 2017, we’re going to be at a place where all of our installation crews for DirecTV are integrated and we’re doing one truck roll to the house. Our call center operations will be integrated at that time,” Stephenson added. “So a lot of what I call the key logistical difficult things to do in terms of the integration will be done by the end of 2017. We’ll still have some IT development to integrate. But those aren’t big rocks that will get in the way of Time Warner."
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AT&T closed on its $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV in August 2015 and has since been working to integrate the satellite operator’s core operations into its own fold.
For the third quarter, AT&T said it added 323,000 DirecTV subscribers, 70 percent of which transitioned over from the company’s legacy U-verse TV service. U-verse, meanwhile, lost 326,000 subscribers.