DIRECTV Announces Record October Customer Growth; Year-to-Date Growth Up 42 Percent.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 9, 1999--

DIRECTV Inc., a unit of Hughes Electronics Corp., today announced that its high-power DIRECTV(R) digital satellite television service acquired 140,000 net new customers in October.

DIRECTV's October additions represent a record for that month and a 31 percent increase in net customer acquisitions over October 1998. An additional 75,000 customers were transitioned to DIRECTV from medium-power PRIMESTAR By DIRECTV last month.

Through the first 10 months of 1999, DIRECTV acquired 1,231,000 net new high-power customers, a 42 percent increase over the same year-ago period. DIRECTV now has approximately 7.8 million customers, including customers subscribing to the medium-power PRIMESTAR By DIRECTV service.

DIRECTV continued to transition PRIMESTAR By DIRECTV customers to high-power service in October. The 75,000 customers transitioned to high-power service in October -- who are not included in the 140,000 net new customers acquired by DIRECTV last month -- bring the total number of conversions to more than 304,000. At the end of October, PRIMESTAR By DIRECTV had more than 1.6 million customers subscribing to its medium-power service.

DIRECTV is a registered trademark of DIRECTV Inc., a unit of Hughes Electronics. The earnings of Hughes are used to calculate the earnings per share attributable to GMH (NYSE symbol) common stock. Visit DIRECTV on the World Wide Web at www.directv.com.