AT&T is responding to its deepening losses of satellite television customers by slashing prices for those threatening to leave by as much as $90 a month and throwing in Visa debit cards worth up to $300 if customers agree to stay.

AT&T lost at least 346,000 subscribers during the last quarter and is on track to break an all-time record of subscriber losses, primarily attributed to cord-cutting.

When Stop the Cap! readers called to cancel, they shared stories of outrageous discounts available to anyone willing to spend a few minutes on the phone to ask, including slashed pricing, discounted or free channel upgrades, and equipment improvements. Some customers are now paying as little as $5 a month after the discounts were combined.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Stop the Cap! reader Dylan Marshall. “My old promotion recently expired and I called to threaten them with cancellation and they cut my bill by $90 a month for a year, which means my video package is costing me $15 a month. Then they offered me a free year of NFL Sunday Ticket, a $200 Visa debit card, and every premium movie channel available for three months at no charge!”

“I got $70 off my package after my credits expired last summer,” said Sandra Bizek. “It is always such a hassle to call in every year to argue with them, but they were very receptive this year. I almost thought I was being greedy when I also asked them about a gift card, which they usually won’t offer. They put you on hold and then come back and offer one. I got $100, but I know others were offered $200-300, depending on how long they have been a customer.”

It is easiest to score a good promotion if you do not already have one on your account, but it is possible for everyone — even customers still under contract — to get a better deal. One customer negotiated $25 off a month in early 2018. He had to surrender that credit, but in return his new bill will be $85 less.

Are you overpaying for AT&T’s DirecTV?

“They don’t even argue with you anymore,” said Narash, another Stop the Cap! reader. “Within two minutes he gave me $70 off my video package and then he found another $20 credit a month he could add, making my multi-hundred TV channel package about $5 a month. I couldn’t understand the guy very well and I think he thought I was hesitating to accept his offer so he also came up with a $300 Visa gift card out of the blue. I said ‘yes.’ Oh wow.”

Here is how to get your discount:

1. Start by calling (978) 890-3027. This is DirecTV’s customer retention center in Massachusetts. If your account is combined with your AT&T wireless phone and you are billed by AT&T, they may have to transfer your call to a different call center. You can also try DirecTV’s general customer assistance number – 1-800-531-5000 and say “cancel service” when the auto-attendant answers. Answer “no” to the question about moving.
2. When the representative answers, let them know you are planning to cancel DirecTV because you have a better offer from another provider (try to research an offer from a competitor that would generally interest you and be ready to discuss it). Add that you wanted to give them the opportunity to save your business by lowering your bill and enhancing the services you now get.
3. You will be placed on hold as a representative reviews your account and any retention offers you are qualified to receive. Pay careful attention to the length of the discounts and any terms that might lock you into a contract. If you do not like what you hear, thank them for their time and call back. The next deal may be much more lucrative.

Our readers offered some important tips to maximize your savings:

1. Print out your current bill so you understand exactly what you are paying for services now. If a representative tries to get you to remove services to lower your bill, let them know you can keep the same services and lower your bill with one of their competitors.
2. Explain to the representative that you wish to cancel service because it costs too much and you are considering switching to a provider like YouTube TV or Hulu. Avoid mentioning DirecTV Now, which is also owned by AT&T.
3. Do NOT simply accept the first offer made to you. When they try to lock you in, prevaricate. Ask, “is this really the best you can do?” and remind the representative you can create your own package of just the channels you want from one of their online streaming competitors like YouTube TV. You really want the lowest possible price, so could they please check one more time.
4. When you are satisfied you have gotten the best possible deal, ask them about the availability of a gift card that you have heard about others getting, to compensate for the months you paid for channels you are not really watching. You may be able to get that as well, typically in amounts ranging from $100-300. But do not make it a dealbreaker and be sure it does not lock you into a long term contract.
5. If a representative offers you nothing or seems uninterested in assisting, thank them and hang up and call right back. During high call volumes, regular representatives may be taking cancellation calls instead of customer retention specialists who are trained to offer the best deals to keep your business.

If you called for a better deal, let us know in the comment section what you were offered.

Verizon and Samsung on Monday confirmed long-held industry expectations they would seek to steal a march on Apple by launching U.S. 5G smartphones in the first half of 2019.

The two companies said in a statement they would unveil a prototype, using Qualcomm modem chips, at the chipmaker’s annual Snapdragon Technology Summit in Maui, Hawaii this week.

While Verizon is leading the charge to trial 5G in some cities next year, industry analysts say the higher-speed networks are unlikely to be widely available until the middle of the next decade.

Apple is engaged in a legal battle with Qualcomm that has led it to stop using its modem chips, and the Cupertino, California company is widely expected instead to use Intel modems, which will not be ready for production until late 2019.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported on Monday that Apple would wait until at least 2020 to release its first 5G iPhones.

The delay could make it easier for Samsung and Verizon to win customers who are eager to connect to 5G networks, which will provide a leap forward in mobile data speeds, up to 50 or 100 times faster than current 4G networks.

Qualcomm has also partnered with other smartphone makers who have committed to 5G phones for next year.

U.S. wireless carrier Sprint is also working with LG Electronics USA to launch a 5G smartphone in the U.S. in the first half of 2019.

Verizon launched its first commercial 5G service in October when its 5G Home offering went live in Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Sacramento.

Verizon Chief Financial Officer Matthew Ellis said last month that the company plans to target a broader audience for its 5G home broadband product following the adoption of global standards for the technology.

(Reuters) Reporting by Sayanti Chakraborty in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta

Canadian Netflix subscribers will pay up to $3 more a month in the coming weeks for streaming video as the company raises prices to produce more original Canadian content.

The latest rate increase is the largest ever for the service in Canada.

New Rates for Netflix Canada

• Netflix Basic increases $1 to $9.99 a month. No 4K video and one-stream only
• Netflix Standard increases $3 to $13.99 a month. No 4K video and up to two streams at a time viewing
• Netflix Premium increases $3 to $16.99 a month. Includes 4K ultra HD video and up to four streams at a time viewing

The new rates take effect today for new customers. Existing customers will be notified by e-mail about the rate increase and when exactly it will be applied to their account.

Netflix Canada has taken over distribution of the long running mockumentary filmed in Nova Scotia.

The last rate increase in 2016 raised the price of Netflix by $1.

Netflix Canada spent $3.3 billion on original content in 2017. That is more than any of Canada’s English language commercial networks or broadcasters spent on scripted productions. Netflix also films many of its original productions in Canada, which is less expensive than many American filming locations.

Netflix Canada appears to have found a formula that works for the streaming service: participating in co-productions with entities like the CBC (at least for English productions) and asking subscribers to pay more to cover the company’s costs. This has spared Netflix from having its service subject to the federal GST, which would come out of subscribers’ pockets.

The company has had a much more difficult time dealing with the provincial government in Quebec, which protested loudly that Netflix Canada failed to make specific French language content commitments. As a result, Quebec has slapped its 9.975% sales tax on Netflix and all other streaming services.

Canada is gradually catching up to the United States in cord-cutting options. Netflix Canada’s offering is just a few hundred titles behind Netflix’s catalogs in the United States and Japan.

Other services have entered Canada in the last year or so, including CBS’ All Access, Acorn TV, and BritBox.

In response, Canadian broadcasters and telecom companies are beefing up their own services, which include CTV Movies/CTV Vault and Citytv Now/FX Now (which are only for authenticated cable/satellite subscribers) and Bell’s Crave TV (which just launched CraveTV+, offering more movies and original HBO shows).

Forty companies, including hedge funds, phone companies, and wireless carriers have collectively bid $336,265,480 so far for about 2,500 28 GHz licenses (out of 3,072 available) that will be a part of the buildout of 5G millimeter wave wireless service.

The FCC is currently auctioning off spectrum in the 27.5–28.35 GHz (28 GHz) band — a very large chunk of frequencies which can offer bidders the opportunity to launch a wide bandwidth cellular data service capable of very fast internet speed. But because the frequencies involved are line-of-sight, the winning bidders will have to invest in large networks of small cell antennas that will be required to reach customers.

Citigroup analysts reviewing the auction results so far told clients they suspect there are “two outsized bidders” winning many of the available licenses, including Verizon. This is not a surprise, considering Verizon already has significant spectrum holdings in the 28 GHz band. Verizon’s current 5G service relies on this millimeter wave spectrum, but is available so far only in a handful of markets. The identity of the second major bidder remains a mystery. The spectrum licenses getting no bids are mostly in rural areas with low population density.

All the other major wireless operators — AT&T, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular — are also bidders. Only Sprint, currently in a merger deal with T-Mobile, is missing. AT&T has not shown much interest in offering its customers millimeter wave 5G service, and T-Mobile is planning to use 5G’s technology upgrade to bolster its existing network with more capacity and speed. Dish Network, which already controls a substantial portfolio of unused spectrum, is also a bidder and could be seeking to stockpile 5G spectrum for a future venture or sales deal with one of the other wireless companies.

The qualified bidders:

Bidding starts at $200 per available county, and many rural licenses could be won for precisely that amount, with only one interested bidder offering the minimum bid.

The highest bids are just over $10,000,000 each for two licenses in the Honolulu, Hawaii market. Bids in excess of $2 million are currently on the table in these counties:

California: Kern
Colorado: El Paso
Florida: Volusia
Illinois: Winnebago
Iowa: Linn
Louisiana: East Baton Rouge
Maine: Cumberland
Missouri: Greene
Nebraska: Lancaster
Nevada: Washoe
Oregon: Jackson
Pennsylvania: Lancaster, Berks, York, Lehigh, Luzerne, Northampton, Dauphin
Texas: Cameron, Hidalgo
Wisconsin: Dane

Population growth in South Carolina has opened up new opportunities for Charter Communications to extend cable service into areas that were formerly too unprofitable to serve. On Tuesday, the company announced a $1 million construction project to bring Spectrum cable broadband service to the town of Lamar in Darlington County.

Urban sprawl around the city of Florence, to the east of Lamar, and Columbia to the west, has made connecting the town of around 1,000 more economical.

The cable company plans to break growing in late spring of 2019 to launch residential and commercial internet access. At present, Frontier Communications is the only internet option for the community.

“Internet is obviously a necessity, it’s not a luxury anymore,” said Ben Breazeale, senior director of government affairs for Charter Communications. “Rural communities all over our country are struggling to try to retain young people and internet is a must. Access to our communications systems is a must for our youth.”

As part of the announcement, the cable company donated three Apple iPads to the Lamar Library and presented a $5,000 check to the Lamar Rescue Squad.

Lamar is a community located a short distance away from both I-95 and I-20.

Charter promises to make additional announcements about future expansion in early 2019.