The Scoop
Elon Musk’s Starlink and T-Mobile have separately expressed interest in acquiring some or all of the spectrum controlled by struggling DISH Network-parent EchoStar, according to people familiar with the matter.
At stake is one of the largest pots of underused airwaves, which are owned by the public but licensed to telecom companies. EchoStar’s chairman, Charlie Ergen, has hoarded his spectrum holdings with the unfulfilled ambition to build a national network, but has come under pressure from Federal Communications Commission chief Brendan Carr, among others, to find a buyer to put that bandwidth to work.
T-Mobile initially expressed interest in nearly all of EchoStar’s licenses to use the taxpayer-owned frequencies and is still in talks about some of the pieces AT&T didn’t buy, according to the people.
T-Mobile at one point was in talks for a three-way deal that would have seen it and AT&T split most of EchoStar’s spectrum, the people said. Under that deal, the two wireless giants, which are building out their networks on different wavelengths, would have swapped some of their own spectrum holdings.
Musk’s bid is for a part of EchoStar’s spectrum that AT&T has been valued at roughly $30 billion by some analysts. It wasn’t clear whether those negotiations are ongoing.
Starlink has become a global household name by building out a network of low-earth orbit satellites, launched by its parent company, SpaceX, that provide internet service. But it also wants its own network to provide cell coverage, something that would disrupt the stranglehold that AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have on the US market. Those efforts were opposed by both Ergen’s Dish Network and Globalstar, another satellite phone network.
Carr, whose agency manages spectrum licenses, has pushed Ergen to sell airwaves that have sat unused. Spokespeople for AT&T and T-Mobile spokesperson declined to comment. Representatives for Starlink and EchoStar didn’t return requests for comment.
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The battle for spectrum has heated up, as Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration seek to unlock more nationally owned assets for sale. Pentagon leadership has expressed concerns about losing access to military bandwidth, while telecom industry analysts have grown concerned that companies are overextending themselves in the gold rush.
“There’s no evidence that the telecom industry can generate returns above the cost of capital after factoring in spectrum purchases,” MoffettNathanson analysts wrote in a July 23 note. “The industry certainly hasn’t over the past two decades.”
The View From Brendan Carr
“The status quo is just not acceptable,” he said in late July of EchoStar’s spectrum squatting. “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.”
Ergen won his spectrum through a program designed to bring broadband service to rural communities, something which Carr said in 2024 was “the worst abuse of agency process I have seen in my twelve years of working at the FCC.”