Fcc takes back dish licenses

[jmac32here]

They didn't add 1 million subs, they bought tings customer base of 271,000. Boost mobile under dish has been a crap show. If their target customer base is old people who use less than 5gb of data a month, they are doing their best to reach that base with their plans, unfortunately this also means they will continue to bleed subs. Maybe they figure since that's their tv base, it should be their wireless base also? Problem is, their tv base is bleeding also. Is there a market for low volume data use plans? Sure, if you are a mvnos with no brick and mortar stores to support, and have a small number of employees to support, you can be profitable topping out at around 3-5 million subs, with an arpu of around $20-$25 a month, if you are expected to be the nation's 4th wireless carrier, with stores and a large employee base to support, you cannot.

They currently do not offer any type of postpaid product, as ting and boost are both prepaid providers. Their unlimited offerings on both ting and boost are outdated and a joke to be honest. Why would anyone pay ting or boost $50-60 a month for 35gb of hard capped data, when they could pay mint $35 for the same amount on the same network? Their pricing doesn't make sense. Again if the goal is to have around 4-5 million users all paying $10-15 a month for service, they may do fine, unfortunately this isn't the goal, nor will this accomplish much for them.

As far as their crown castle deal, it's meaningless until something actually happens. Dish has already backed away from their claims of a single market launch by 2020, now it's sometime in the first quarter of 2021. They may get that single market launch sometime in 2021, you figure they have to get at least one market up and running, right?

Their "reason" for not getting that market, if reports are to be believed, is that they are still waiting on the radios to arrive from the vendor(s). They also claim the actual act of "climbing towers" is pretty quick, and well that is and is not true both at the same time.

T-Mobile has proven in their network integration that it can be done pretty quickly, but it requires having a good team already on the ground to climb said towers.

[Theghostlad82]

Their "reason" for not getting that market, if reports are to be believed, is that they are still waiting on the radios to arrive from the vendor(s). They also claim the actual act of "climbing towers" is pretty quick, and well that is and is not true both at the same time.

T-Mobile has proven in their network integration that it can be done pretty quickly, but it requires having a good team already on the ground to climb said towers.

You think he would of known this before claiming dish could replace sprint as the 4th carrier on day 1, or before claiming he would have at least one market up and running by the end of this year. Its the same dog and pony show from dish. They squatted on spectrum for years with no real intentions of ever using it. The FCC should of stripped them of their spectrum years ago, Auction off that spectrum to carriers who will actually put it to use for customers.

[jmac32here]

You think he would of known this before claiming dish could replace sprint as the 4th carrier on day 1, or before claiming he would have at least one market up and running by the end of this year. Its the same dog and pony show from dish. They squatted on spectrum for years with no real intentions of ever using it. The FCC should of stripped them of their spectrum years ago, Auction off that spectrum to carriers who will actually put it to use for customers.

You would, but of course he's never dealt in wireless.

[dennism3]

They didn't add 1 million subs, they bought tings customer base of 271,000. Boost mobile under dish has been a crap show. If their target customer base is old people who use less than 5gb of data a month, they are doing their best to reach that base with their plans, unfortunately this also means they will continue to bleed subs. Maybe they figure since that's their tv base, it should be their wireless base also? Problem is, their tv base is bleeding also. Is there a market for low volume data use plans? Sure, if you are a mvnos with no brick and mortar stores to support, and have a small number of employees to support, you can be profitable topping out at around 3-5 million subs, with an arpu of around $20-$25 a month, if you are expected to be the nation's 4th wireless carrier, with stores and a large employee base to support, you cannot.

They currently do not offer any type of postpaid product, as ting and boost are both prepaid providers. Their unlimited offerings on both ting and boost are outdated and a joke to be honest. Why would anyone pay ting or boost $50-60 a month for 35gb of hard capped data, when they could pay mint $35 for the same amount on the same network? Their pricing doesn't make sense. Again if the goal is to have around 4-5 million users all paying $10-15 a month for service, they may do fine, unfortunately this isn't the goal, nor will this accomplish much for them.

As far as their crown castle deal, it's meaningless until something actually happens. Dish has already backed away from their claims of a single market launch by 2020, now it's sometime in the first quarter of 2021. They may get that single market launch sometime in 2021, you figure they have to get at least one market up and running, right?


Approving the sprint/T-Mobile deal was 100% the right call for the doj and fcc. Sprint had valuable assets that could be used to benefit millions of users and no resources to deploy those assets. T-Mobile had the resources and needed the assets to compete head on with at&t and verizon. But, involving dish as a 4th carrier option was a huge mistake. What would of been best for those 9+ million boost users would of been for tmobile to keep boost, and allow them to migrate those customers to their own prepaid brand. Dish is a circus, led by a clown.

See the . ? .1

[DRNewcomb]

...... If their target customer base is old people who use less than 5gb of data a month, they are doing their best to reach that base with their plans, .......

Works for Consumer Cellular.

[Theghostlad82]

Works for Consumer Cellular.

Consumer doesn't have brick and mortar stores and can be profitable maxing out at 3-5 million subs, nor are they trying to build and maintain their own network and become a standalone operation. It also works for mint as well, as they mainly target low volume data users, but like consumer this can work for them, as they don't have the overhead of a standalone carrier with stores and a fleet of employees. This cannot work for dish if they want to become a true 4th carrier.

[Theghostlad82]

You would, but of course he's never dealt in wireless.

He's owned cellular licenses for years. This is arguing that he bought them, and never had any real aspirations to deploy them, and didnt even look into what it would take to become a wireless carrier before purchasing them. Which......I'll buy. I'll still buy, I don't personally feel he had any real plans for dish to be a carrier, I think his end game is to eventually sell the wireless side to the highest bidder. Bidders aren't dumb though either, and they likely will wait for him to crash and burn on his own, and swoop in with a dirt cheap offer to bail him out.

[vegasdave]

The sub numbers with Boost and Sprint on prepaid is mostly magic thinking. Per Plan Rules Boost terminates accounts only after 4 months of non-payment (versus 30 for Metro). But, when needed due to sub losses, they extend this deactivation window to 6 months, 8 months etc when needed. Sometimes only on specific plans as to make it seem like a glitch.
So the sub losses/gains are kinda misleading to say the least. The Revenue number on prepaid is the only one that means anything.

[Theghostlad82]

The sub numbers with Boost and Sprint on prepaid is mostly magic thinking. Per Plan Rules Boost terminates accounts only after 4 months of non-payment (versus 30 for Metro). But, when needed due to sub losses, they extend this deactivation window to 6 months, 8 months etc when needed. Sometimes only on specific plans as to make it seem like a glitch.
So the sub losses/gains are kinda misleading to say the least. The Revenue number on prepaid is the only one that means anything.

There is truth to this, but this compounds their losses more. They reported over 200,000 losses, the number is probably actually quite higher. The issue is they aren't growing. This was an issue with boost when sprint owned them, and dish has done nothing to turn this tide.

[hwertz]

He's owned cellular licenses for years. This is arguing that he bought them, and never had any real aspirations to deploy them, and didnt even look into what it would take to become a wireless carrier before purchasing them. Which......I'll buy. I'll still buy, I don't personally feel he had any real plans for dish to be a carrier

A lot of what he bought previously were mostly odd, 1-way-only licenses, that were 100% useless for any 2G or 3G cellular systems since they dealt with using paired spectrum. I think he bought them simply because the bidding was low and most of them were a real bargain in terms of $/(mhz*pop) (I think these slices were envisioned by the FCC for pager type services in older auctions, and 1-way broadcast data like stocks, weather, traffic, etc. in later auctions...) But, now that 4G had some and 5G has support for using disparate upstream and downstream bands, etc., this spectrum can actually be used. I don't think he *planned* to use it, but I think he does plan to use it now; that said, I'm not sure, he may pull it off, or he may be underestimating what's needed to be a successful 4th carrier.