Report: Dish to Buy $5 Billion in Wireless Assets From T-Mobile, Sprint
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Dish Network has reportedly agreed to acquire wireless assets from T-Mobile and Sprint for $5 billion dollars, according to reports published in Bloomberg News from anonymous sources. This breaks down to about $3.5 billion for spectrum, and $1.5 billion for prepaid mobile businesses.
This deal helps appease anti-trust concerns that the Justice Department has had about the proposed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint. Justice Department Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim previously advocated for an agreement to compensate for the potential merger reducing the number of major wireless companies from four to three. With this agreement, Dish could satisfy the government’s request for four national wireless companies.
According to the report, this acquisition could allow the Justice Department to approve T-Mobile and Sprint’s proposed merger as early as Thursday. Dish, T-Mobile, Sprint, and the Justice Department representatives declined to comment to Bloomberg.
Dish recently acquired EchoStar’s Broadcast Satellite Service (BSS) business, including nine Direct Broadcast Satellites (DBS) and certain key employees responsible for satellite operations, licensing for the 61.5-degree orbital slot, and select real estate properties to Dish in exchange for approximately 22.9 million shares of Dish Network stock that will be distributed to EchoStar shareholders.
DBS spacecraft involved in the transaction included EchoStar VII, EchoStar X, EchoStar XI, EchoStar XII, EchoStar XIV, EchoStar XVI, EchoStar XXIII, Nimiq 5 and QuetzSat-1.
Dish also recently appointed three new C-suite executives earlier this month. Kannan Alagappan was named Senior Vice President and CTO, reporting to Dish President and CEO Erik Carlson. He held technology leadership roles with major telecom and cloud services providers, including Reliance Jio, Telstra, and Rackspace. Additionally, Alagappan has worked as a technology consultant for various Fortune 500 companies, including Comcast, T-Mobile, and Dish. He has primarily helped companies implement digital transformations and build technology platforms at scale.
Dish also promoted Paul W. Orban to Executive Vice President and CFO. Orban, a 23-year veteran of Dish, had previously served as the company’s Senior Vice President, chief accounting officer, principal financial officer and controller.
In 2018, Dish appointed Atilla Tinic to the role of Senior Vice President and CIO. Tinic joined Dish from CenturyLink where he had served as Senior Vice President of Information Technology. Tinic also held the role of CIO at Level 3 Communications prior to its 2017 acquisition by CenturyLink.