Dish Network, having failed in its bid to acquire either Sprint or Clearwire, has been left with inadequate spectrum to mount a serious challenge to the US’s big LTE players. It wanted to supplement its mobile satellite frequencies, having always said these were insufficient on their own to support its ambitions, and it has now said its 2015 target for deploying LTE is a ‘bit optimistic’.
The satellite TV firm’s general counsel Stanton Dodge, speaking at the Technology Policy Institute’s annual conference, said Dish was rethinking its timelines, but was still ‘dead serious’ about rolling out LTE and taking on the big two with their quad plays ‘ ‘eating their lunch’ was how he put it.
However, it needs more spectrum to complement its AWS-4 holdings (formerly mobile satellite frequencies, now able to be repurposed for LTE). It could still form some kind of partnership with Sprint, in return for access to the content the third cellco lacks, or it could buy LightSquared out of bankruptcy, as Dish chairman Charlie Ergen has been moving to do. That would add the start-up’s own mobile satellite licences to Dish’s, but it would be a complicated option because of the GPS interference issues in parts of the LightSquared band. LightSquared’s chief backer, Philip Falcone, is suing Ergen, claiming the latter has been secretly buying up debt from LightSquared in order to seize control of its spectrum assets at a knockdown price.
Dish has ruled out the option of acquiring more spectrum at auction in the near future, and said it did not plan to “meaningfully participate” in the FCC’s upcoming sale of 1.9GHz PCS H Block licence, even though these frequencies adjoin its own. In an FCC filing, Dish said ‘it supports taking a holistic approach to the upcoming spectrum auctions – including the auction of the H Block, 600MHz spectrum, and AWS-3 bands – and hopes to work with the Commission to determine the best ways to optimize this spectrum, as well as AWS-4 … However, given the current regulatory requirements for H Block and AWS-4, we conveyed that it is unlikely Dish will choose to meaningfully participate in the upcoming auction of the H Block’, which could take place as early as January.
The H Block is a 10MHz chunk of paired airwaves that runs from 1915-1920MHz (for the uplink) and from 1995-2000MHz (for the downlink). It is part of 65MHz of spectrum Congress mandated the FCC to auction by February 2015. Sprint is the most likely contender as it owns nearby spectrum and could use the H Block to expand LTE capacity. This band was the subject of many FCC quarrels with Dish over the past years, which resulted in Dish’s AWS-4 frequencies being moved up slightly to avoid interference.