Feb 10, 2009 3:45 PM,

DirecTV to woo mobile industry this year

By Ed Gubbins

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DirecTV will work to court mobile operators as a key priority for this year, the satellite video provider said during its fourth-quarter earnings call today.

Just weeks after the company launched a quadruple-play service bundle with AT&T in 22 states, DirecTV’s Chief Executive Officer Chase Carey said a “key objective” for the company in 2009 will be building that relationship “to its full potential,” adding, “We also think there are real opportunities for us to put cable on its heels by developing relationships with the cellular industry as mobility becomes an increasingly central theme in people’s lives.”

“Clearly the wireless business has operated independent of the other aspects of what’s become [the broadband bundle],” Casey said. “I think there will be more interest on both sides for wireless to become a more inter-related part of the other aspects of this business…It can evolve a lot of ways. We’ve obviously developed functionalities that deal with wireless phones in the DVR scheduler. Content’s going to get richer. There are customer bases one can create things around…We don’t have a cellular business ourselves, but we have relationships with big wireless players, Verizon and AT&T. There are opportunities for us to expand our relationships in a win-win way. Mobility is going to become, in multiple ways, a more valued attribute and a more important one…What’s the shape and form of that as we go forward? We’ll have to discuss those things.”

Chase made the comments following a quarter in which DirecTV demonstrated its effectiveness in – among other things -- growing subscribers, reporting its best quarterly gross subscriber numbers in nearly four years. As the company pointed out, it added 150,000 video subscribers in the fourth quarter while AT&T and Verizon combined added only about 100,000.

The company is taking share from cable operators and from its satellite rival, Dish, in relatively equal proportion, Chase said.

Other priorities targeted for 2009 include a rollout of its “Whole Home” service in the second half, adding more high-definition content and improving its video-on-demand offering with faster access and greater integration.