Tag Archives: Dish Network

Death of the Fourth Cellular Carrier

The press has been full of recent headlines saying that EchoStar is finished as the fourth facility-based cellular network. EchoStar announced that it is selling 50 MHz of low and midspan spectrum to AT&T for $23 billion, to close in mid-year 2026. The spectrum being sold includes a 20 MHz swath of 600 MHz and a 30 MHz chunk of 3.45 GHz.

Over the weekend, it was announced that EchoStar sold 50 MHz of its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum to Space X for $17 billion to use for Starlink’s direct-to-cell service that will launch with the next generation of satellites. Exchostar’s Boost cellular customers will get access to that new service when it’s launched.

As a reminder, the EchoStar merged with DISH Networks and started using the brand name EchoStar for the cellular business. DISH Networks was promoted by the FCC to become a new nationwide cell carrier when the FCC approved the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. DISH raised billions of dollars and started down the path of building a nationwide cell network. In doing so, DISH chose the interesting path of using open RAN electronics, which it believed would be more flexible and cost less than the electronics used by the other big cell companies.

DISH has been fighting for years to keep control of large swaths of spectrum. In addition to the spectrum being sold, the company holds 200 MHz, 700 MHz, and 1.7 GHz spectrum. The company had a hard time justifying all of the spectrum since as of May of this year, the company only had 1.25 million customers riding its own cellular network. The company was under investigation from the FCC for holding unneeded spectrum, but these sales should quiet that issues. EchoStar recently announced that it plans to launch a satellite constellation to compete for cellular service some of its AWS spectrum.

Echostar has been struggling financially, and recently averted a Chapter 11 filing when it was late in making a scheduled debt payment on July 1, but was able to do so before the 30-day grace period.  For those not familiar with the history of DISH Network, the largest stockholder is Charlie Ergen. He’s been adept over the years at finding ways to get out of threatening financial binds.

Echostar will continue to operate its other subsidiaries which include Dish TV, online platform Sling, and Hushes high-orbit satellite.

The timing of the spectrum sales is interesting because the company was finally making some headway in the cellular industry. When EchoStar announced its 2Q 2025 financial results, the big surprise was the continued growth of new cellular customers for the Boost Mobile brand. Echostar saw net growth of 212,000 customers for the quarter, up from 150,000 in the first quarter. This back-to-back growth is surprising since the company was losing customers a year earlier. Boost Mobile had 9 million customers when the company was first purchased, and had slipped to a low of 7.4 million customers.

As the headline says, this sale means the death of the EchoStar cellular network. The company discussed how it will try to sell off or scrap the assets.

The second quarter net growth for all of the major cellular carriers is as follows:Readers who haven’t seen a chart of cellular customer growth might be surprised to see how well Comcast and Charter are doing. It seems like both companies are putting a lot of emphasis on cellular growth to help offset the continued losses of broadband customers. The Verizon numbers might look dismal, but both Charter and Comcast largely ride the Verizon cellular networks with resold MVNO arrangements.

The sale of spectrum to AT&T is not good news for cable companies since AT&T said it would use the spectrum, in part, to expand its FWA home cellular business. AT&T was late to the game in launching FWA, and had 1 million customers at the end of the second quarter, compared to 5.1 million for Verizon and 7.3 million for T-Mobile.

Dish – The New Broadband Player

Dish Network has been quietly building out its new cellular networks and plans to launch in 25 major markets and over one hundred smaller markets before June of this year. This company is shooting to stay on track for its commitment to the FCC to cover 20% of the U.S. population by this summer and 70% by June of next year. The company is running about six months behind its hoped-for schedule but says it is catching up.

The twenty-five markets include Albuquerque, Charlotte, Cleveland,  Columbus, Dallas, El Paso, Ft Worth, Houston, Hartford, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Nashville, Norfolk, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Richmond, Raleigh-Durham, Reno, Rochester, Salt Lake City, Spokane, Springfield, MA, St. Louis, Stockton, Syracuse, and Virginia Beach. Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen says the company is still on track to spend about $10 billion to meet its roll-out commitments.

The company says that it will have the most advanced network in the country, which makes sense since everything will be new. For example, Dish intends to hit the market with Voice over New Radio (VoNR) – a technology that ensures that voice calls using an IP connection don’t drop when customers roam between cell sites.

Dish still says that it intends to be ‘disruptive’ in its cellular pricing – and I guess we’ll soon find out what that means. We already have a hint about pricing from Dish’s prices through Boost Mobile. The company’s plans all include unlimited voice and text and vary by the amount of broadband purchased. The company sells 1 GB of data for $10 per month and 10 GB for $35 per month. The most expensive product is 35 GB of cellular data plus 30 GB of hotspot tethering for $60 per month.

Dish has a beta test of its new network operating in Las Vegas that is being used only by friends and family. The company’s engineers say they have been working out a few bugs, but that network performance looks to be what they were expecting. Dish still faces a few hurdles. One is to make sure that there are plenty of phones available that use its frequency bands – something that is always a challenge any time a new cellular frequency is introduced in the market. The company will outsource its 911 functions, which it admits doesn’t give it as much control as it would like – but that sort of detail is to be expected with a company that is going from nothing to a nationwide launch in a short time.

There is an expectation that Dish will join the other big cellular carriers and offer fixed cellular broadband products. I think this is going to be a disruptive product in urban areas since it can deliver 100 Mbps broadband for the same prices being charged today for DSL. In addition to the Dish launch, T-Mobile has been pushing fixed mobile broadband and sold over 500,000 customers last year. T-Mobile is pushing for millions of new customers this year. Verizon will be pushing fixed mobile broadband everywhere by the end of the summer. And the big cable companies, including Comcast, Charter, and Altice, are selling inexpensive cellular connections in metropolitan markets. Fixed cellular broadband isn’t going to only disrupt cities. This is becoming the fastest broadband available to a lot of rural customers who happen to live near a rural cell site. I recently talked to a farmer who is getting almost 200 Mbps on T-Mobile fixed cellular – he’s lucky enough to sit next to a new tower, which is still undersubscribed. But I’m hearing good things about the T-Mobile product from all around the country.

This is all good news for consumers. But don’t expect to see anything other than cellular ads when you watch a sporting event or popular show this fall. We’re likely to see a cellular advertising war like nothing we’ve seen before. It’s fairly obvious that in a market with 95% cellphone penetration not all of these companies are going to be winners. The companies with the most to lose are Verizon and AT&T – so they’ll advertise non-stop as well.