Dish Gives Up On Becoming the Fourth Major Wireless Carrier (theverge.com) 23
Dish's parent company EchoStar is selling $23 billion worth of 5G spectrum licenses to AT&T and shifting Boost Mobile onto AT&T and T-Mobile networks, effectively abandoning its bid to become the fourth major U.S. wireless carrier. The Verge reports: As part of T-Mobile's deal to acquire Sprint in 2019, the Department of Justice stipulated that another company must replace it as the fourth major wireless carrier. Dish came forward to acquire Boost Mobile from Sprint, paying $1.4 billion to purchase the budget carrier and other prepaid assets. Since then, Dish has spent billions acquiring spectrum to build out its own 5G network, which the company said was close to reaching 80 percent of the US population as of last year, in line with the Federal Communications Commission's deadline to meet certain coverage requirements.
But Dish struggled to repay mounting debt, leading it to rejoin EchoStar, the company it originally spun off from in 2008. And at the same time, it came under renewed pressure from the FCC to make use of its spectrum. In April, the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX wrote a letter to the FCC saying EchoStar "barely uses" the AWS-4 (2GHz) spectrum band for satellite connectivity. Weeks later, FCC chair Brendan Carr opened an investigation into EchoStar's 5G expansion, criticizing the company's slow buildout and claiming that it had lost Boost Mobile customers since its acquisition of the carrier. Carr also questioned EchoStar's use of the AWS-4 spectrum, which isn't included in its deal with AT&T.
In July, Carr said that he's not concerned with having a fourth mobile provider, saying during an open meeting that there isn't a "magic number" of carriers needed in the US to maintain competition. "We're always looking at a confluence of different factors to make sure that there's sufficient competition," he said, as reported by Fierce Network. Now, EchoStar will become a hybrid mobile network operator, which is a carrier that operates on its own network, in addition to using other companies' infrastructure. As noted in the press release, Boost Mobile will provide connectivity through AT&T towers and the T-Mobile network. "This ensures the survival of Boost Mobile," [said Roger Entner, founder and lead analyst at Recon Analytics]. "It gives them money, but at the end, they don't have much of a network left."
But Dish struggled to repay mounting debt, leading it to rejoin EchoStar, the company it originally spun off from in 2008. And at the same time, it came under renewed pressure from the FCC to make use of its spectrum. In April, the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX wrote a letter to the FCC saying EchoStar "barely uses" the AWS-4 (2GHz) spectrum band for satellite connectivity. Weeks later, FCC chair Brendan Carr opened an investigation into EchoStar's 5G expansion, criticizing the company's slow buildout and claiming that it had lost Boost Mobile customers since its acquisition of the carrier. Carr also questioned EchoStar's use of the AWS-4 spectrum, which isn't included in its deal with AT&T.
In July, Carr said that he's not concerned with having a fourth mobile provider, saying during an open meeting that there isn't a "magic number" of carriers needed in the US to maintain competition. "We're always looking at a confluence of different factors to make sure that there's sufficient competition," he said, as reported by Fierce Network. Now, EchoStar will become a hybrid mobile network operator, which is a carrier that operates on its own network, in addition to using other companies' infrastructure. As noted in the press release, Boost Mobile will provide connectivity through AT&T towers and the T-Mobile network. "This ensures the survival of Boost Mobile," [said Roger Entner, founder and lead analyst at Recon Analytics]. "It gives them money, but at the end, they don't have much of a network left."
What competition? (Score:2)
Other than a brief period when T-Mobile was really shaking things up, we haven't had much competition in the cellular phone market. Service now on T-Mobile is worse than it was on Sprint before the merger. AT&T is and has always been a disaster. This leaves Verizon as the de facto major carrier outside of major cities, and even in many parts of major cities.
Calling this competition is a joke. There's Verizon, and then there's everybody else eating the scraps that fall off the table.
But the neat thi
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I think my CPAP has a cellular modem.
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Ok, Darth... stop with the late night calls and the heavy breathing.
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There doesn't need to be "4" there needs to be 5. You need evidence for 4 not being enough? See Canada.
Basically you need 2 carriers that cover 100% of every square inch of the continent, and 3 carriers that cover the greater metro areas where there would be a shortage of capacity. Those can in fact be one that covers the Pacific, one that covers the Atlantic and one that covers the Gulf and the space between the rockies and the Mississippi. Right now the only "not AT&T or Verizon" carrier is T-mobile,
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There doesn't need to be "4" there needs to be 5. You need evidence for 4 not being enough? See Canada.
I'm not convinced five is enough unless all five have solid nationwide coverage, or unless the carriers are forbidden from owning towers. In any situation where you have only a couple of nationwide carriers, the weaker carriers quickly degrade and consolidate, and then you're back to one or two usable carriers.
The problem is that building a good nationwide network is expensive, and the carriers are too busy competing with each other in the densest areas for anybody to bother providing good service everywhe
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Man oh man, people will wade deep to find Apple at fault for shit.
1). Why blame Apple for having customers "willing to pay a premium" instead of Google/Android for having customers that are cheap fucks?
Android tries to attract high-end customers, and they do attract some, but the fact remains that Apple is a prestige brand, and tends to own the lion's share of the high-end market. Blaming a company for being unable to hold enough of the high end is a much weaker argument than blaming a company for using (or, arguably, abusing) its market position to limit competition in a related market.
2). iPhones work fine with carrier switching on US Mobile, which lets you connect via any one of the Big 3 carriers as you see fit (they call this feature "Teleport").
If by "fine", you mean manually switching between networks, then yes, it is "fine". You could kind of do that with Goo
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Yeah, I dunno about your statement that I'm too lazy to quote.
I left Verizon for US Mobile and cut my bill to less than half of what I was paying Verizon.
I'd say US Mobile is competing against Verizon just fine.
I think the real issue, and I'm just guessing here, is that most people have never heard of small companies like US Mobile. I don't think I have ever seen a big ad campaign from them. I could not even tell you how I found out about them. But I sure am glad I did! I love having a 2-line phone bill f
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There is another way to solve it - require that you can't be a network provider *and* a retailer. All retailers become MVNOs buying capacity off the underlying wholesalers. Then, where necessary, you regulate the wholesalers as they are a monopoly (modern cell tech limits the number of carriers because there are only a small number of frequencies available.) Much like many countries are doing with fibre and landlines. Given current trends, eventually the tower tech will be so expansive and RF bandwidth
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The acquisition of US Cellular by T-Mobile was possibly a bigger blow to meaningful coverage competition than acquiring Sprint. US Cellular was very good at operating outside the major cities. It was the best coverage in the boonies in areas that it serviced.
One could be hopeful that with the US Cellular areas it acquired, T-Mobile might have better anywhere coverage than Verizon.
One anecdote about coverage in congested areas. This summer I've witnessed and experienced the inability to get data connection
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But the neat thing is that there are apparently so many business phones and car entertainment systems out there that there are about one third more subscribers than there are people over age 10 in the United States
There are literally billions of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices in the USA. Are all of them on them on public mobile data networks? No. But millions and millions of them are - Everything from street lights to parking meters to vehicle telemetry. Geotab alone tracks millions of vehicles and the
Why? (Score:2)
Why does the contract permit these frequency bands to be sold? If they aren't used under the contract that they signed upon purchase, they should be surrendered to the FCC.
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Surrendered to the FCC for nothing or sold to some company that wants them? Easy decision. Dish sold the lease since it turned out they could not put the frequencies to a beneficial use.
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Surrendered to the FCC for nothing or sold to some company that wants them? Easy decision. Dish sold the lease since it turned out they could not put the frequencies to a beneficial use.
They could put them to use, and they were.
The pretense that Dish could not use them was only that. Not a very good one, either, since they had already built out the majority of a very comprehensive network.
This was not a "beneficial use" thing, this was a "billionaires cozy with this administration" thing.
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Why does the contract permit these frequency bands to be sold? If they aren't used under the contract that they signed upon purchase, they should be surrendered to the FCC.
Because that's now how property works.
What was Dish thinking? (Score:2)
I always assumed it was just a forced divestiture of the Boost MVNO brand as a condition of the merger, and that's all Dish had actually acquired/committed to. If running a 4th major carrier was a doomed proposition for Sprint, what made Dish think they'd have any better luck with it?
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It was a shakedown. Straight up mafia stuff.
AT&T has the ear of the current administration, AT&T wanted the frequencies, and the FCC head wanted to wet his beak. That's pretty well it.
The stuff about not using the frequencies was a shameful pretense - over 20,000 towers had already been built out, and coverage and quality and every other metric was in compliance with the FCC demands. Everything needed for Dish to be a player in the mobile space was in place. Which was why the FCC had to put pressure
What becomes of the AWS-4 band? (Score:2)
So, now, what becomes of the AWS-4 band since it's not going to AT&T?
Does this mean....Boost is the winner? (Score:2)
It reads to me that Boost Mobile will have the best coverage of all, combining T-Mobile, AT&T and some of their own towers? And they are a "budget" carrier so should be less expensive then any of the others alone?
And here (MN) Verizon coverage seems no better the any others, esp in slightly fringe areas, imho.
-m