- FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said this week that the agency’s two probes into EchoStar are ongoing
- The FCC chair reiterated his view that there’s no ‘magic number’ of wireless competitors that needs to be adhered to in order to ensure competition
- Carr's statements once again signal a rift between the FCC and DoJ
The dark cloud of uncertainty hanging over EchoStar doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said his agency continues to take a close look at whether EchoStar, via its Dish business, complied with the FCC’s 5G network buildout obligations.
“Dish obviously says that they did,” he said during a press conference after the commission’s open meeting Thursday. “Concerns have been raised. We’ve been working through the data on that. That work continues.”
Separately, the FCC opened a proceeding looking at whether EchoStar is using the 2 GHz band for mobile satellite services consistent with the terms for which it was authorized years ago by the FCC. That’s also ongoing.
Carr said he’s open minded about paths forward, but he reiterated that “the status quo is just not acceptable. We’re pushing hard to free up spectrum, and you have Dish effectively over the years sitting on a tremendous amount of spectrum that simply isn’t loaded.”
EchoStar’s Boost Mobile-branded wireless service added 150,000 customers in Q1 2025, a positive sign after many years of losses. But Carr didn’t mention that, saying that in total, Boost Mobile lost 2 million customers since Dish took over the business in 2020.
“Obviously, there's been concerns raised again. We're running our review still on the enforcement side and we're continuing to look at whether there's more opportunities to promote higher, better, more intensive use of spectrum,” he said.
He was also asked about the concerns conveyed by U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) antitrust chief Gail Slater in her statement about the UScellular merger with T-Mobile. While the DoJ isn’t going to try to block the merger, Slater expressed fears about the state of competition in wireless and how continued spectrum aggregation by the Big 3 wireless operators threatens to impede the path for a fourth national player.
According to Carr, there’s no particular “magic number” for how many mobile service providers the U.S. needs to remain competitive. “We’re always looking at a confluence of different factors to make sure that there's sufficient competition,” he said.
He made the case that cable operators, under MVNO agreements, are providing sufficient competition – more so than a fourth facilities-based operator like Boost.
“The companies that are taking the largest amount of market share on mobile wireless are cable companies right now that are entering that space,” he said. “I do think there's a lot of competition right now.”
In a recent note for investors, New Street Research analyst Blair Levin, a former FCC chief of staff, noted that the DoJ generally has viewed resale providers/MVNOs as captive of the facilities-based operators. “The DoJ staff likely believes four facilities-based providers are more likely to create a sustainable and robust MVNO market than three,” he said.
Next FCC auction: AWS-3 licenses
While the EchoStar saga continues, the FCC made moves to free up spectrum elsewhere, inching closer to an auction of the AWS-3 spectrum licenses that once belonged to Dish Network designated entities Northstar Wireless and SNR Wireless. The companies relinquished the licenses after a lengthy court process.
Specifically, the commission voted on bidding rules that will make it more attractive for small businesses and rural service providers to participate in the auction. No date for the auction was announced; the commission said it will announce auction application deadlines and bidding procedures in the weeks and months ahead.
Late last year, Congress granted a one-time auction authority to the FCC to conduct an auction of the AWS-3 licenses; the proceeds will be used to make up for a shortfall in the funds allocated to smaller carriers as part of the Rip and Replace program, which requires carriers to remove Huawei and ZTE equipment from their networks.