Dish Challenges Softbank Purchase of Sprint

As expected, Dish Network is raising public policy questions about the wisdom of the Federal Communications Commission approving the SoftBank investment in Sprint. 

The raising of such objections is not unusual whenever a material event occurs that one or more contestants believes will be, or could be, harmful to its own financial interests, irrespective of any larger public policy interests. 

In the case of Dish, which plans to launch its own Long Term Evolution fourth generation (4G) network, the SoftBank purchase of Sprint allows Sprint to create its own LTE network faster, and to use much more of Clearwire's spectrum assets. 

A stronger Sprint means a stronger competitor to Dish, which will need to get traction in the highly-competitive LTE and mobile markets rather quickly, and will likely face Sprint as a major competitor in the "value" segment of the market.  

Dish wonders in a formal filing to the FCC whether a foreign company should "control more spectrum below 3 GHz than any one other company in the United States?"

Dish asks whether Sprint staggered its acquisition of Clearwire "in two steps in an effort to avoid  meaningful Commission review?" 

Dish also raises the question of whether the FCC needs to look at the competitive implications of the changed spectrum ownership. 

Some of the potential objections are procedural, some relate to evaluating the impact of the merger on market competition and some raise "foreign ownership" or broader "fair trade" issues.

The filing of such comments is a normal and expected part of the review process. A similar flurry of comments and questions were raised by competitors who objected to AT&T's bid to buy T-Mobile USA. But virtually every proposed FCC action will have consequences for contestants in some section of the communications business, and that always leads to filing of comments.


Even apparently "operational" issues, such as the accuracy of maps, can be the subject of serious filings with the Commission. The reason is that those maps play a role in helping the FCC determine where to allocate support for rural broadband. 

Contestants who want to stave off funding for competitors will try to point out that a particular area is in fact not "under-served," and therefore the local telephone company does not need more support. Telcos, on the other hand, have a vested interest in proving an area is under-served, and furthermore that the telco is the best recipient of the funding.