Parents who count on TV shows, movies, and cartoon to keep the peace between their children in the backseat during road trips could soon be getting a helping hand from AT&T. With the company’s recent acquisition of DirecTV, it plans to include the television service to connected vehicles using its cellular network.
While there is no timeline for the integration of DirecTV with connected cars, The Washington Post reports that AT&T is certainly exploring its options with the newly acquired service.
“We think that DirecTV is a great entertainment asset in our portfolio, and we’re actively working with them to identify ways to bring DTV content into the car,” Chris Penrose, senior vice president of AT&T’s Internet of Things department, said in a statement.
The integration would help boost AT&T’s already robust connected-car service. The company says there are currently eight million cars on its network and more than half of all new connected cars get linked to its network.
“If you start turning the car into a WiFi hotspot and using Internet radio, doing real-time live traffic, and you start doing things with video capture or video consumption in the back seat of the vehicle, those become much-higher-bandwidth solutions that drive much higher [revenues],” said Penrose.
Still, some analysts tell the Post that Internet connectivity in cars is a low-margin business, with the average revenue per user in the single digits.
Putting DirecTV into vehicles is just AT&T’s latest attempt to showcase its new service. The company already allows users to add DirecTV on their smartphones and tablets, as well as tying the service to its unlimited data plans. Later this year, DirecTV will launch a separate online-only version of its pay-TV service to compete with Dish’s Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue.
AT&T wants to pipe DirecTV straight into your car [The Washington Post]
by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist
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