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Note: This merger would make sense since AT&T relies on Echostar to complete its "triple play" for most consumers in outlying suburban and rural areas. With U-Verse, AT&T only pulls fiber to the home in wealthier new residential communities, the rest get fiber to the node in their neighborhoods and more limited bandwidth capacities. Those outside of AT&T fiber backbones get the hybrid HomeZone, old DSL, telephony and a dish for TV services.

But this takes us back, all the way to 2000, when AT&T was the largest cable operator in the country having bought out TCI and Media One only to sell it all to Comcast in 2001 while taking a 53 billion dollar loss. And one wonders why Wall Street hasn't trashed this monster yet - oh nevermind . . .

from: Broadband Reports

AT&T Plans To Buy Echostar
Hires Goldman Sachs to explore deal

We've seen rumors floated for years that AT&T would someday buy satellite operator Echostar. Those rumors have heated up again of late thanks to TheStreet.com, who recently reported AT&T was offering a buyout at $55 a share, though EchoStar wanted $65 a share. Today The Street is reporting that AT&T has hired Goldman Sachs to manage the deal, which could be completed in as little as three to six weeks

Echostar's Dish Network is already AT&T's partner on a DSL/DBS hybrid DVR service dubbed Homezone. Homezone is aimed at customers outside the planned deployment range of their U-Verse VDSL IPTV service (of which there will be quite a few).

The Street reports that the push to get the deal done now stems from concerns that currently "pro-deal Republican led regulatory agencies" could be replaced with a Democratic Presidential win next year. As you might expect, AT&T and Echostar aren't commenting on the deal.