ATT and Time Warner Merger

So in case you haven't heard AT&T is acquiring Time Warner Cable (TWC) for $85.4 billion. TWC has three divisions which are as follows:

• HBO, which consists of domestic premium pay television and streaming services (HBO Now, HBO Go), as well as international premium & basic pay television and streaming services.

• Warner Bros. Entertainment, which consists of television, feature film, home video and video game production and distribution. Warner Bros. Film franchises include Harry Potter & DC Comics, and its produced TV series include Big Bang Theory and Gotham.

• Turner consists of U.S. and international basic cable networks, including TNT, TBS, CNN and Cartoon Network/Adult Swim. Also, Turner has the rights to the NBA, March Madness and MLB. Time Warner also has invested in OTT and digital media properties such as Hulu, Bleacher Report, CNN.com and Fandango.

One can quickly see this is not a bad investment for AT&T on the heels of their acquisition of DirecTV last year. 

Period	11-Dec	12-Dec	13-Dec	14-Dec	15-Dec
Gross Margin	53.56%	53.51%	53.25%	76.79%	75.46%

So where is telecoms heading? As I have been telling colleagues in the industry the game is down to two things 1) Bandwidth and 2) Content. So ATT has both Wired(Fiber to the Home) and Wireless (Mobile) offerings and with 5G around the corner, it means that they don't only have pipes but also have significant content which they intend to push to customers. 

So bringing this home it begs the question who is really positioning themselves to not only be the dominant player in the broadband game, but also have the content that not only appeals to a local market but regional and international markets as well. As make no mistake there is value in Caribbean content the issue here who is going to corner the market and become the leader in the converging media and communications industry. Flow (Now Liberty Global) and Digicel have made inroads into the media space and One Caribbean Media (OCM) has made inroads into the telecoms space, so let's see how the local market plays out as vendors seek to make Over the Top (OTT) and TV Everywhere products smarter and more personalized.