Sources close to telecommunications giant SBC Communications report that SBC is in 'credible' negotiations with General Motors Corporation to acquire GM's Hughes Electronics Division, with the plum of the acquisition being satellite television operation, DirecTV.

The deal is reported to be worth more than $10 billion. This negotiation pits SBC against Rupert Murdoch's The News Corporation Ltd., Great Britain's leading satellite television service provider. Murdoch has been actively attempting to acquire DirecTV for several years, as this acquisition would provide News Corporation a method of breaking into the U.S. satellite television pay television network. Murdoch lost out on the last opportunity when GM agreed to sell Hughes Electronics Division (including DirecTV) to EchoStar Communications, another satellite television provider. The EchoStar deal fell through in 2002.

DirecTV has 11 million subscribers and is the second largest pay television service in the U.S. SBC, a former "Baby Bell" company, and other previous Baby Bell telephone companies have been searching for ways to increase their revenue as cable television providers are threatening the Baby Bells' revenue growth by expanding into the telecommunications business, as well as Internet broadband access. The Baby Bells have also seen their monopoly over local and long distance services dwindle, and have lost out on much of the wireless industry business. If SBC were able to acquire DirecTV, SBC could offer its customers the advantage of one bill for all of its services: local and long-distance telephone services, satellite-TV, broadband, high-speed Internet service, and wireless telephone service.