Dish Is Ready To Bid On T-Mobile

Dish Network Chairman Charles Ergen wants Dish to become a wireless carrier. Ergen was shot down twice when Dish was outbid by SoftBank for Sprint, and outbid by Sprint for Clearwire. Ergen also put in a bid for bankrupt third party network provider LightSquared only to see another party interfere yet again.

Earlier this year Dish finally won an auction for H-Block spectrum for $1.56 billion. Which made Dish the fifth largest holder of spectrum. Ergen has said he would let Sprint bid on T-Mobile. If Sprint's attempt to buy T-Mobile fails Dish will step in to buy the fourth largest U.S. carrier. Ergen says that Dish doesn't have cash flow to outbid Sprint for T-Mobile, Ergen would rather sit on the sidelines to see how a Sprint T-Mobile deal pans out. 

Earlier visits to the FCC and FTC by Sprint chairman Masayoshi Son, and Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, went poorly for the nation's third largest carrier, which doesn't look good for a Sprint T-Mobile deal. However, regulators like the possibility of Dish becoming the fifth largest wireless carrier in the U.S. 

The FCC has already approved Dish's request to use some of its recently purchased H-Block spectrum for satellite transmissions, as a conduit for cellular calls and data.

Source: Bloomberg