Dish Network (And Its New 5G Network) Is Probably Doomed (original) (raw)

from the this-was-all-painfully-obvious dept

Satellite TV provider Dish Network isn’t having much fun. Despite oodles of direct government assistance during the Trump era, the company’s attempt to pivot from mediocre satellite TV provider to modern streaming TV and 5G wireless giant has been a consistent dumpster fire.

Both the company’s dying satellite TV service and its streaming TV platform (SlingTV) have been bleeding customers, and Dish’s supposed 5G network, the byproduct of a doomed Trump era effort to “fix” the competitive problems caused by the Sprint/T-Mobile merger, looks to be a hot mess. And that was before the company was recently hacked, knocking systems offline for weeks.

We predicted this would go poorly back in 2019. Dish had no experience in wireless, CEO Charlie Ergen is notoriously difficult to get along with, and the remaining three wireless carriers would likely work hard behind the scenes to ensure Dish never became a viable competitor. And as expected, Dish’s early 5G launch was laughable in terms of network reach and phone availability.

And while the telecom trade press has been happy to play along with the idea that Dish has the competency and funds to build a nationwide 5G network, the better part of five years later the industry and the press are finally starting to realize that Dish is probably doomed:

Dish Network appears increasingly desperate to sell assets and raise money — and continues to battle speculation from insiders that it could face bankruptcy, On The Money has learned…The struggling satellite-TV giant is expected to meet its commitment to cover 70% of the US with a 5G wireless network by the end of the month, but sources are growing increasingly skeptical that Dish will have money to finish its buildout.

By a network that “covers” 70% of the US, they mean a network that can technically reach 70 percent of the U.S. population, which is (as you probably know) mostly huddled around cities. There’s no requirement that this network actually work well, be affordable, or provide modern handsets. And it certainly won’t work if Dish goes bankrupt.

Dish’s next hurdle involves a 2025 deadline to push that number up to 75 percent. But that additional five percent involves starting to extend the wireless network into the kind of rural markets wireless carriers historically don’t find worth it due to high cost. I’d wager that Dish fails completely before 2025. At which point the FCC (especially if under Republican leadership) will dole out a wrist slap, if they punish Dish at all.

It always seemed to me that Dish’s pivot to wireless was a desperate retirement ploy for Charlie Ergen.

While I do think Ergen was hopeful a long shot pivot to wireless would work, the more likely plan B involved letting the company’s massive and hugely valuable spectrum assets appreciate, half assing a 5G network, stringing historically feckless FCC regulators along for a few years, then selling the whole thing to somebody like Verizon on their way out the door. That latter outcome always seemed more likely.

Trump-era “antitrust enforcers” desperately needed something to justify consolidation in wireless, and Dish Network’s plan arrived just at the right time in 2019. So FCC officials didn’t even bother reading about the Sprint T-Mobile merger impact before approving it. And Trump DOJ “antitrust enforcer” Makan Delrahim worked in his personal time to make sure Dish got what it wanted.

The end result will be more consolidation and less competition, precisely what most of these folks envisioned all along. As usual, the losers will be consumers and the thousands of employees who lost their jobs along the way, and the regulators who greenlit this doomed turd of a plan will move on to some other bad idea, perfectly content to pretend none of this ever happened.

Filed Under: 5g, bankruptcy, competition, consolidation, fcc, mergers, spectrum, telecom, wireless
Companies: dish