Dish Affiliates to Surrender Some Airwaves Licenses Won at Auction
October 01 2015 - 6:00PM
Dow Jones News
Affiliates of Dish Network Corp. Thursday surrendered some
spectrum licenses back to the government, according to people
familiar with the matter, after failing to secure a $3.3 billion
small-business discount earlier this year.
Dish's entities will keep about $9.8 billion of the licenses
they won in an auction by the Federal Communications Commission
earlier this year, and they will pay a penalty on the licenses that
they won't acquire, the people said. The Dish entities will default
on about 200 licenses, one of the people said.
The FCC concluded this summer that the $13.3 billion in winning
bids by two Dish-backed companies—Northstar Wireless and SNR
Wireless—didn't qualify for the small-business discounts because
Dish effectively controlled the entities.
At the auction, which ended in January, Dish's affiliates came
away with nearly half of the wireless licenses sold. Their winning
bid total was second only to AT&T Inc. and ahead of Verizon
Communications Inc. Dish doesn't offer wireless service but has
said previously it would like to.
Write to Ryan Knutson at ryan.knutson@wsj.com, Shalini
Ramachandran at shalini.ramachandran@wsj.com and Thomas Gryta at
thomas.gryta@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 01, 2015 17:45 ET (21:45 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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