Posts Tagged ‘spectrum’

T-Dish: The Timing is Perfect

Friday, August 15th, 2014

Earlier this month, Charlie talked about how he liked Sprint’s potential to be successful in wireless.

Not really: I think he wants Son to pay more for it!

The real value in wireless communications is in its spectrum licenses. Without that, you don’t have much to grow with. Add ready-to-go infrastructure to your spectrum and you can make some dough. Dish’s video business has probably reached its limit and they’ve been accumulating spectrum for an eventual “wireless play.” Competing against the cable and telco “triple-play” (voice, video, data) — or quad-play of Verizon and AT&T (landline voice, video, data, wireless/mobile) — left Dish an an inherent disadvantage. Without any landline business, using satcom for Internet is inefficient. If, however, Dish could make a “modern triple-play” (video, wireless data, wireless voice) then it could retain a substantial portion of its subscriber base. In general, triple-plays help reduce churn rates.

T-Mobile is on a tear; five quarters of 1.5 million net-adds. They just need some more spectrum and Dish has it — and cash flow to help pay down debt. LightReading has the best analysis:

The appeal of the Dish position is that the satellite provider holds 50MHz of spectrum in the US — 40MHz in the AWS-4 band and 10MHz in the H-Band — that is very close to the AWS spectrum that T-Mobile has been deploying its 4G LTE network in.

“We could certainly very rapidly deploy on his spectrum,” Carter noted.

This would give the pair the opportunity to offer really large LTE channels for faster over-the-air services, possibly doubling up on the 2x20MHz LTE channels that T-Mobile can offer today. Although Carter noted that the operator will move beyond that by itself anyway, without offering much further detail.

Of course, that would mean striking a deal between the two and — as Carter noted — Ergen is a “tough negotiator.” Still, he opined, it would be very difficult and expensive for Dish to deploy a wireless network on its own, and the provider is running out of time to strike a 4G deal with a partner.

Everybody seems to agree.

The timing is perfect for Dish to buy T-Mobile and turn their wireless service into a very strong #3 quickly — and grow it to some day become #2.


“Get Charlie on the phone!”

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

The barriers to entry into the satellite business are legendary, but I suppose you could pull it off if you have a really good business plan — and the right people to execute it. Sure, it would take a few years to get off the ground (pun intended).

However, it assumes you have what the whole business depends on: spectrum. That’s right, we’re talking about radio spectrum. Without that, you don’t have a business. Trouble is, spectrum is a scarce resource — there only so much to go around. Unlike time, which is the scarcest resource because you can’t make more of it, additional spectrum becomes available once the FCC (U.S.) or ITU (Globally) determines available spectrum is fully utilized. Or someone makes a business case, with supporting technology, for using new spectrum. Case in point: modern DBS services using the Ku-band. DirecTV and DISH Network are generating significant cash flow, they employ lots of people and serve millions with excellent TV services.

So what do you do will all that money besides reinvesting in your own business? You buy — or lease — more spectrum. Does it have to be satellite? No. Evidence abounds that the folks at DISH Network get it. Charlie’s been acquiring spectrum at a discount and now people are justifiably speculating that AT&T wants it — especially after the T-Mobile acquisition went kaput.

This isn’t a poker game — more like chess. Charlie’s a few moves ahead of us here, so you’ll likely see a few key moves in the coming days, weeks or months. AT&T may buy DISH Network. A partnership between DISH Network and T-Mobile is a real possibility.

AT&T still has tons of bandwidth around the country, but what good is that if you can’t get more wireless spectrum?

Remember the old adage “content is king?” Well, in the wireless business, “spectrum is king.”