After a fairly arduous plea for approval, Dish’s request for wireless spectrum use has finally been approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This has opened a whole world of opportunities and growing potential for Dish and could possibly even introduce more dynamic competition in the wireless industry, according to FCC’s chairman, Julius Genachowski, who positively received Dish’s plans on becoming a wireless provider.
Earlier this year, Dish had approached the FCC requesting a waiver that would allow it to use 40 MHz of spectrum in the 2 GHz band so that it could build its own 4G LTE wireless network. However in March, the commission opted to focus on investing more time and resources into modifying, creating and reforming some of the rules that regulated wireless spectrum and bandwidth usage and decidedly chose to return to Dish’s request on a later date.
The FCC, after reviewing a major portion of their older rules, determined that there were several outdated regulations restricting most of the AWS-4 band and decided that a greater degree of terrestrial flexibility needed to be granted. According to Jeff Blum, senior vice president and deputy general counsel of Dish, the FCC is heading the right direction with its decisions, enriching the wireless industry by facilitating and encouraging an air of competition and innovation.
However, the FCC has added some restrictions to accompany their approval, including defined limits on the company’s network so as to prevent any interference caused by adjacent airwaves. A few weeks ago, the FCC was comfortable with approving Dish’s request, provided that Dish limits its power usage to prevent interference but Dish did not agree with this condition. According to R. Stanton Dodge, Dish’s general counsel, a clamp down on their power and emissions levels would negatively affect their growth in the business by stunting it and preventing it from rising to where it aims to be. However he asserted that the proposed order is not a finalized one and there is still enough wiggle room left for Genachowski and the commissioners to revise these conditions once they’ve recognized the public interest and brimming potential in Dish’s plans.
Following Dish’s request being approved, many large, well-recognized corporate leader companies have taken an interest in Dish’s newly acquired spectrum and have approached it to cut deals for possible partnerships. Sprint proposed letting Dish offer its wireless service to its customers in exchange for a partnership while companies like Google and AT&T approaching Dish for talks of partnership in the pipelines. At this point, however, it’s unclear whether Dish will ultimately choose to sell the spectrum to the highest bidder or partner up with a wireless provider. Blum affirmed that keeping the customers’ benefit and their own strategic progress in mind, Dish will accordingly decide after careful contemplation.
