What Will Dish Network Do if FCC Approves LTE Plan?

The Federal Communications Commission is close to approving the request by Dish Network to use its mobile satellite spectrum to build a terrestrial Long Term Evolution network. That would seem to be welcome news for Dish, but there is a catch, Wall Street Journal reports. 

To prevent interference, the agency is likely to bar Dish from using some portion of its bandwidth, a move that Dish CEO Charlie Ergen has said  "would be a game changer for us," making his bet to enter the wireless industry "increasingly risky." 

Basically, the limits on use of some spectrum at the high end of the frequency range would reduce uplink bandwidth about 25 percent. Dish also argues other relatively typical sources of link degradation would reduce bandwidth another 25 percent. 

So, if approved, the issue is whether the stated objections really would cause Dish to abandon its plans, modify those plans or proceed after making the strongest argument it could to use all the spectrum. 

Given the FCC's handling of interference issues posed by Lightsquared, Dish Network has to have known all along that some sort of guard band would be required. On the other hand, many carriers operate asymmetrical networks with more bandwidth provided downstream than upstream. How big a marketing issue Dish might have, with less upstream capacity, is unclear. 

Also, to the extent that the key innovation would be a mobile video service, which would be highly biased to downstream bandwidth, asymmetry might not be a killer issue.