Dish Network, who most of us consider to be a budget satellite television provider in the United States, sits on 40 MHz worth of spectrum in the 2 GHz band. Said spectrum comes with a restriction however, it has to be used for a satellite based network. Dish sent a letter to the FCC in August last year asking them for permission to use their spectrum to build a terrestrial network using LTE-Advanced technology. It took the FCC 6 freaking months to respond to Dish’s request, and their answer is an astonishing “no, not right now, we need more time to think about it” (paraphrasing). Such bullshit prompted Charlie Ergen, the CEO of Dish, to hold a conference call on Friday where he said unless the FCC changes their mind they might just have to look at alternative uses of their spectrum, including putting it up for sale.
We’re stunned by this decision. Look, it’s one thing for the FCC to tell LightSquared to piss off because their spectrum sits far too close to that of GPS, but it’s another thing all together to tell Dish Network that they can’t start building the most advanced wireless network America has ever seen. The FCC doesn’t even give Dish Network a reason as to why, and Reuters thinks we’re not going to see this argument resolved until the end of the year. By that time Verizon’s 4G LTE network will turn two years old, AT&T’s LTE network will be a year and a half old, and if we’re lucky we’ll have the 4G LTE enabled iPhone 5 out on the market.
Expect to hear more about this story over the coming weeks. Something tells us that there’s a lot that isn’t being said. For instance, last month Dish Network had to tell the FCC that AT&T needs to stop meddling with the government.
This smells fishy.