One of the more interesting conflicts in the telecom industry right now is EchoStar’s fight with tower owners. The fight comes from EchoStar walking away from billions of dollars of long-term leases of cell towers to support its facility-based cellular business.

This story requires some background. This started when Dish purchased a significant amount of cellular spectrum and also the customers of Sprint’s prepaid brands, which included Boost Mobile. The sale to Dish was a requirement of the FCC agreeing to allow T-Mobile to buy the Sprint cellular business. The FCC wanted Dish to become the next facility-based cell carrier as a replacement for Sprint.

Dish borrowed billions of dollars to add to its existing debt to build a nationwide cellular network. As Dish’s satellite television business faded, the company agreed to merge with EchoStar. However, as the roll-out of the new cellular business bogged down, Dish was faced with looming problems over its $26 billion in debt and was in peril of default. In 2025, the FCC also put a lot of pressure on EchoStar and accused it of spectrum squatting, since much of its spectrum was sitting unused. EchoStar decided to walk away from the cellular business, and that involved defaulting on the many leases for cell tower space and backhaul. EchoStar realized a cash windfall when it was able to sell spectrum to AT&T and SpaceX for more than $42 billion.

A coalition of more than forty tower owners, led by the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA) and NATE: The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association, has asked the FCC to force EchoStar to pay for the abandoned cell tower leases. These losses are estimated to be worth as much as $9 billion. The biggest companies in this group include American Tower, Crown Castle, SBA Communications, and Vertical Bridge.

WIA and the tower owners are asking the FCC to withhold the transfer of EchoStar spectrum to AT&T and SpaceX until the tower obligations have been satisfied.

EchoStar counters that the leases are a contractual dispute and that private contracts are outside of the FCC’s jurisdiction. It further argues that its cancellation of the leases was out of its control, making it a force majeure event, since the company was pressured by the FCC to abandon the cellular business.

This is an interesting dilemma for the FCC. There have regularly been defaults on leases of fiber, towers, and other infrastructure, and the FCC has never gotten involved in these kinds of disputes before. I have to think that if it wasn’t for the associated transfer of the spectrum, the FCC would never consider this issue.

It’s an interesting chess game. If the FCC sides with the tower owners, then the payments to EchoStar for the spectrum will be held up. Even though EchoStar would certainly take a negative FCC decision to court, the big delays in getting paid for the spectrum would likely drive the company to reach a compromise with the tower owners. If the FCC doesn’t rule for the tower owners, they will almost certainly take this to court, and may get an eventual settlement.

There was an interesting report written by the Brattle Group for WIA related to the case. The report says that the damages to the tower industry would be severe and would likely result in an increase of 5.7% to 10.7% to others who lease towers. It also warns that this would ripple through the cellular industry and would put a crimp on future capital spending for towers and related infrastructure. The tower leases are not the only dispute related to EchoStar’s decision to abandon the cellular business, and other vendors are also seeking relief by going straight to court.