Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV: AT&T customers get to choose free gadget

AT&T is trying to lure in potential subscribers to sign up for its new DirecTV Now streaming service by offering free Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV devices. The reported free device will depend on the number of months a subscriber is willing to signs up for.

The American telecom titan’s plan to give away the streaming devices to subscribers of its new TV streaming service was made public as AT&T’s customer-support documents were inadvertently leaked by the company itself, this according to Variety.

The leaked documents state that subscribers who had sign up for at least three months would get a free Apple TV device, while those who commit for just one month would get a free Amazon Fire TV stick.

The latest Apple TV model has a US$149 (AU$195) starting price, while the Amazon Fire TV Stick amounts to US$40 (AU$52). The Fire TV stick alone costs more than the service fees that subscribers will have to pay for signing up. DirecTV Now will be launched before the year ends. According to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, the company’s new offering will cost US$35 (AU$46) per month and will include over a hundred channels.

The leaked AT&T documents did not provide a complete list of the channels, but some of them may be from networks like Disney, HBO, NBCUniversal, Starz, Discovery, Viacom, Galavision, Univision, Fox and CBS. The current list of channels may change before DirecTV is ultimately launched and certain channels may not be available to some subscribers.

The report also described an anomaly regarding DirecTV Now’s scope of service. Certain channels in some markets can only be viewed using PCs and mobile devices. The channels won’t allow access using smart TVs and streaming devices, which is odd since the freebies that AT&T is offering to potential subscribers are exactly those kinds of gadgets.