Dish loses more satellite TV customers while it prepares for a 5G mobile future

A few days after explaining how he was considering going out of nowhere as a major wireless provider in the United States and launching the 5G service by the end of next year, Dish announced Today's second-quarter results – which is another reminder of the satellite TV provider's reason is turning into a mobile operator.

Dish lost 79,000 satellite subscribers in the quarter. The company's streaming TV service, Sling TV, added 48,000 customers, but that left 31 more customers in Dish, suggesting a net loss of 31,000 customers, and adds that pay-TV is in the air. decline. The satellite sinks, but Sling TV is a plus point. it is growing and distinguishing itself from the competition as the most economical of the major Internet TV services. Nevertheless, competitors like YouTube TV and Hulu are catching up quickly even after Sling's lead. Thus, after years of discussions, Dish embarks on mobile telephony and the US Department of Justice has helped him.

If the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint overcomes the difficulties of several US states, Dish will detach from all prepaid activities of Sprint, including Boost Mobile (9 million customers in total), 800 MHz spectrum licenses of the operator and unhindered access to the merged operator. network for 7 years. But reinventing itself could have a cost: Dish pays $ 5 billion for all of this, and Dish's chairman, Charlie Ergen, who played a direct role in the negotiations between T-Mobile, Sprint, Dish and the Department of Justice said the second phase of Dish's mobile construction will require at least an additional $ 10 billion.

"I'm certainly willing to invest more money in this company if that's what is needed," Ergen said during a conference call about the company's results Monday afternoon. Do not forget that the Verizons and the AT & T of the world have been injecting money into their networks for decades at this stage. Starting from scratch is a daunting proposition – even if you have the spectrum to do it.

Photo by Karl Gehring / The Denver Post via Getty Images

And yet, Ergen wants Dish to quickly become a mobile operator, saying The Wall Street Journal "We will have a place in three years that will take ten years" and floating ideas like on-demand data plans that would cost less during off-peak hours. At least while Dish is working on setting up a 5G infrastructure, she will be able to fall back on T-Mobile's network – something she would not necessarily have had if she had tried to use her spectrum portfolio existing to become a mobile operator sooner.

"It makes no sense to build a 4G network and destroy everything next year," said Ergen, responding to critics that Dish had been a flawless spectrum accumulator.

Now, Ergen is confident that the divestitures requested by the Justice Department will put his company in an advantageous position, finally allowing him to use all the spectrum acquired over the years to create an autonomous 5G network. "We did not accumulate spectrum," he told Axios last week. "We were accumulating enough spectrum to face the giants of the industry." Newspaper that he had already intended to acquire Sprint, but had been outbid on SoftBank, the company that benefited from the $ 26 billion merger.

But even the badets of the merger and the $ 10 billion will not be enough to deal with Verizon, AT & T or the new T-Mobile. It will be interesting to see what Dish will do next. Dish could seek more capital – the company is confident that it will have more ease now that it has a clear and real plan – but it also allows partner with other companies such as Google or Amazon in his mobile endeavor. However, it is forbidden to directly sell the badets it obtains from T-Mobile and Sprint for the next few years.

The relatively small size of Dish may be the reason why its 5G network will be a city-by-city process; in the meantime, the company will focus on Boost Mobile and expand from its exclusively prepaid offer to a brand that also includes postpaid service. Like other operators, you can count on Dish, which combines its video and mobile products. A Sling TV and Dish Mobile package is almost guaranteed.

Of course, all this is based on the fact that T-Mobile and Sprint are overcoming the last major hurdle to overcome for their merger. Ergen, a former professional poker player, said: "I'm not a player" in today's session and badured investors that the odds are very good that everything is going as planned last week.