If you’re a DirecTV Now subscriber, get ready to pay a fair bit more for your entertainment. AT&T, which owns the streaming service, is planning to increase fees for existing subscriptions by $10 per month as part of a line-wide shake-up that’ll revamp DirecTV Now’s various subscription tiers, Cord Cutter Now reports.
The change shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to current DirecTV Now users. The company already raised all price plans by $5 per month in late 2018 and, as TechCrunch notes, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson announced upcoming price hikes back in December. DirecTV Now Customers can expect to receive official notification about the cost increases starting tomorrow, March 12. The new prices will take effect 25 days after the emails arrive.
Current DirecTV Now subscribers will be able to keep their current subscription, which range from the 65-channel Live a Little package to the 125-channel Gotta Have It tier, provided that they’re willing to pay the extra $10 a month. New users, however, will have to select one of DirecTV Now’s two new plans.
The new DirecTV Now Plus package will give users “more than 40” channels, including some local networks and cable mainstays like ESPN, CNN, Fox News, and TNT, for $50. For $70, DirecTV Now Max will offer everything in the Plus tier, plus more local sports networks and Cinemax. In a move that sounds a whole lot like what you’d expect from traditional cable and satellite plans, both of the new tiers will also include HBO (which AT&T acquired in its purchase of Time Warner Inc. properties) as a bonus to entice new subscribers to sign up.
AT&T will also launch a number of online-only versions of its standard DirecTV packages, which include the 65-channel Entertainment plan ($93 a month) at the lower end, and tops out at the 125-channel Ultimate tier ($135 a month). The streaming DirecTV packages may not include everything that a traditional satellite TV user will receive, however, so cord-cutters should make sure to check the channel line-ups and other features before signing up.
DirecTV Now, like YouTube TV, Sling TV, and PlayStation Vue, is an internet-driven live TV service designed to take the place of a traditional cable or satellite service. The service launched in late 2016 and has garnered over 1.6 million subscribers, although it’s not all good news for AT&T: in late 2018, DirecTV Now lost a quarter of a million subscribers thanks to rising fees and increased competition.
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