FCC Chairman Carr has two bones to pick with EchoStar
The FCC issued a series of goals that the Dish 5G network would have to meet at certain deadlines. Dish has two more tests to pass, both of which were pushed back one in 2026 and the other in 2028. In the aforementioned letter written by Carr, he threatened to reschedule the last two tests back to their original dates, which have since passed. If Carr does that, Dish would have to make a “voluntary contribution” to the U.S. Treasury in the amount of $2.2 billion. This is money that EchoStar does not have right now. The FCC ended up holding formal inquiries into the 5G build-out of EchoStar/Dish/Boost Mobile.
The other issue that Carr is focusing on is the use of 2GHz spectrum by EchoStar and its units. Last week, following an open meeting held by the FCC, Carr said that on one hand the FCC is trying to open up spectrum and at the same time, “you have Dish effectively over the years sitting on a tremendous amount of spectrum that simply isn’t loaded.”
During an appearance on CNBC last week, Carr said that the FCC is “Doing a lot of discussions with Dish and Charlie Ergen as well. He’s got a lot of spectrum there that frankly has not been put to its highest and best use in terms of loading the spectrum. We’ve been in conversations with him … Those conversations are ongoing.” The speculation is that Elon Musk’s SpaceX wants the 2GHz airwaves because it is superior to the airwaves that SpaceX has for satellite to cellphone connectivity.
Is Boost Mobile making a big turnaround? We will know more on Friday
EchoStar’s upcoming Q2 report is important because Boost Mobile reported net additions of 150,000 cellular customer during the first quarter this year. During the same quarter last year, the company had lost 81,000 net wireless subscribers. This could be the start of a turnaround. Since Boost Mobile was bought by Dish, it has seen its subscribers decline from 9.4 million to 7.2 million. That is a decline of 23.4%. But as we said, there are some signs that better days are coming.
Besides the 150K net gain in cellular customer during Q1 2025, during Q4 2024 Boost Mobile added 90,000 net subscribers. So as we said, the second quarter numbers due out this Friday are very important to Boost Mobile.
Investors have been worried about a possible bankruptcy filing by EchoStar so when the contents of the company’s 8-K filing to the SEC revealed that the company made the July 1st interest payment, buyers starting jumping into Echostar’s shares with both feet. On Wednesday EchoStar’s shares soared $3.31 or 11.2%, closing st $32.82. Earlier in the day, the shares hit a 52-week high at $34.20.
