AT&T’s Streaming Service DirecTV Now Peaking At 35,000 Simultaneous Users

In speaking with third-party suppliers responsible for delivering the video for AT&T’s DirecTV Now live streaming service, I can confirm that to date, AT&T has peaked at around 35,000 simultaneous viewers. That doesn’t say how many subscribers AT&T has in total, but if we use the industry average that at any given time about 25% of users are streaming from the service, AT&T would have about 140,000 total subscribers. [Updated 1/20/17: AT&T says they have 200,000 subscribers] But that number would also include those that are testing the service for free for the first 30 days. While I don’t know what percentage of total users are paid versus non-paid, I would estimate AT&T has less than 100,000 paying subs for their new service since it launched.

I would also expect that due to all the technical problems AT&T has had with the service and the volume of negative press the company continues to get, that the rate of sign ups is slowing since it launched in the market more than 30 days ago. When a service like AT&T’s struggles with reliability, video quality and functionality, and has non-existent support for consumers, it’s not going to fare well. Add in the fact that it is not available on Roku, Xbox and PlayStation devices and you can’t expect the offering to do very well. Even though some want to suggest otherwise, AT&T’s DirecTV Now service won’t have any material impact on cable TV subscriber numbers and isn’t a catalyst for cord cutting.