- Dish’s dispute with tower vendors could hit U.S. tower companies with a $9 billion impact, according to a study by the Brattle Group
- Infrastructure vendors want the FCC to require an escrow tied to EchoStar’s spectrum sales to ensure vendors get paid
- If Dish’s nonpayment stands, tower rents could rise 5.7%–10.7%, potentially raising wireless costs for carriers and consumers
The pressure campaign to force EchoStar/Dish to pay its infrastructure vendors is growing by the day, with a new economic analysis pinning the potential blow to U.S. tower companies at $9 billion.
The Brattle Group study, commissioned by the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA), also found that if Dish’s default is allowed to stand, tower companies would need to increase rents on remaining tenants by about 5.7% to 10.7%. Those additional costs to wireless carriers would likely have a spillover effect, where eventually consumers end up paying more.
WIA: It's a shell game
To hear WIA tell it, EchoStar’s tactics amount to a shell game that threatens to upend the entire way the wireless infrastructure industry does business. All told, they figure infrastructure providers are owed somewhere in the ballpark of $7 billion to $10 billion for services rendered.
“While this is an issue of unjust enrichment that directly harms individual companies, the bigger issue is the harm done to the entire wireless infrastructure ecosystem, a system that thrives on the predictability of stable, long-term contracts,” WIA President and CEO Patrick Halley told Fierce. “The result of what Dish is doing here is to harm that ecosystem.”
Halley and his colleagues at WIA have been meeting with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) representatives urging the FCC to attach conditions to EchoStar’s spectrum transactions that are currently before the agency.
Those spectrum deals include a plan to sell EchoStar’s 3.45 GHz and 600 MHz licenses to AT&T for $23 billion and the sale of AWS-4, AWS-3 and H-block licenses to SpaceX in two separate transactions worth nearly $20 billion.
Around the same time those deals were being finalized last year, Dish started informing tower companies and other vendors that it believed its long-term master lease agreements were “excused” from its payment obligations due to an FCC investigation into its spectrum holdings and the decommissioning of its 5G network. Dish parent EchoStar went so far as to declare a “force majeure” event, i.e., an extraordinary event beyond its control that prevents it from fulfilling contract obligations.
WIA and its allies say that’s false. But if EchoStar/Dish continues with this charade, they argue, the FCC has the authority to condition its approval of the spectrum sales on EchoStar’s establishment of an escrow. The escrow would be funded by sale proceeds in an amount sufficient to meet its contractual obligations.
Thus, the FCC avoids getting into the business of deciding the underlying contract dispute between EchoStar and its vendors.
“There has to be a guarantee that EchoStar will actually set aside funds to pay the obligations that it ultimately owes,” Halley said. “That’s what this is about. It’s not a force majeure. That’s a bogus legal argument. It’s not a force majeure. Period.”
In sum, “we’d like to make sure that Dish is not able to use the FCC spectrum assignment process to enrich itself while leaving the entire industry that built its network holding the bag,” Halley said.
EchoStar: We don’t owe any money
Public tower companies including American Tower, Crown Castle and SBA Communications have already filed suit over Dish’s defaults, with Crown Castle putting a specific dollar amount of $3.5 billion on what it’s owed.
During EchoStar’s Q4 conference call on March 2, EchoStar Chairman and CEO Charlie Ergen reiterated that he doesn’t like the fact the tower companies – and other entities that say it owes money to, like Comcast – are taking the matter to court rather than negotiating settlements with Dish.
When protracted litigation takes place, lawyers talk to lawyers and they’re typically not in a hurry to get things done. “It’s just different than when business people talk to business people,” he said.
“Just to be clear, we don't believe we owe any money,” Ergen said. “And I think it shows our good faith that we've settled with a lot of people and attempted to engage in negotiations when people don't pick litigation.”
Complicating matters is much of EchoStar’s fortunes are tied to SpaceX since a new division called “EchoStar Capital” was created in November 2025. EchoStar Capital expects to receive about $8.5 billion in cash from SpaceX along with an equity interest in the company, whose value is undetermined at this time, but certainly worth billions.
Tower companies key to FCC’s Build America
According to WIA, the human impact of Dish’s behavior is already visible, with more than 40 businesses forming a coalition and contacting their members of Congress about the consequences for jobs and infrastructure projects in their districts.
In January, Halley and a bunch of tower company executives met with Carr and his senior counsel to discuss how the FCC can and should condition approval of the spectrum transfers (which they approve of) on an escrow to satisfy infrastructure-related obligations tied to the spectrum licenses.
The tower companies would seem to have leverage because Carr has been a strong proponent for the tower industry – climbing towers to prove it – and his Build America agenda revolves around expanding broadband access and strengthening America’s tower and telecom workforce.
Carr mostly mum
Carr hasn’t publicly said where he stands on the EchoStar issue that we’re aware. He was asked during a press conference after the FCC’s January open meeting about the tower companies in relation to the EchoStar deal, and his answer was short: “That's an issue that right now the industry stakeholders are working out amongst themselves.”
Asked this week about what kind of response WIA is getting from Carr, Halley was optimistic. “I think Chairman Carr has been the strongest proponent for wireless infrastructure that we’ve ever had and I know that Chairman Carr and the FCC understand what’s at stake here,” he said.
No official deadline has been given for the FCC to make a decision on EchoStar’s spectrum sales to AT&T and SpaceX, so everything is a bit up in the air.
“We will continue to advocate on this issue,” Halley said. “One way to think about it is EchoStar is at the FCC seeking permission to sell spectrum for nearly $50 billion. If it had not been for the partnerships with WIA’s members who built that network out for them, they would not be in a position to receive a penny.”