AT&T hopes you forget it's a phone company

With T-Mobile tearing up the wireless industry, what's a carrier to do? If you're AT&T, start looking outside the wireless business. AT&T doesn't want to be known as just a telecommunication company anymore. It's using its DirecTV Now streaming service to take control of what you watch and of how you watch it. AT&T owns one of the key services delivering you video through its acquisition last year of DirecTV, and with its pending deal to buy Time Warner, it wants to be the company behind "Game of Thrones" and Superman. But even the Man of Steel can't rescue AT&T as it continues to fall victim to stiff competition that's eroding its core wireless business. Smaller rivals Sprint and T-Mobile have been scooping up its subscribers. It's the same trend that has forced Verizon to make its own acquisitions, although Verizon's bets, like those in AOL and Yahoo, have been relatively smaller ones.