AT&T T 0.16% veered into a new direction in 2015 as some of its mainstay businesses ran into trouble. A continued assault from revitalized wireless carrier T-Mobile helped strip away almost two million of AT&T’s monthly mobile subscribers. And the old legacy landline phone business accelerated its decline, losing almost 10% of its revenue from the year before. So CEO Randall Stephenson made two bold gambles that may — or may not — pay off in coming years. First, he spent almost $50 billion to acquire satellite television provider DirecTV. Along with its existing cable television offering Uverse, the move immediately made AT&T one of the largest TV subscription services in the world with 26 million U.S. customers and 19 million overseas. AT&T also acquired Nextel Mexico and Iusacell for less than $5 billion. Combining the two and upgrading its Mexican infrastructure could pay off if Latin America continues to grow faster than many other parts of the world.