T-Mobile has gone after Dish in a new FCC filing.
In a letter to the FCC, T-Mobile has explained to the FCC that the agency should push Dish to put the spectrum to productive use or strip Dish of its spectrum holdings because the company has not utilized them like it said it would. T-Mobile accuses Dish of hoarding spectrum licenses and argues that Dish “intends to continue to warehouse spectrum with no benefit to consumers.”
T-Mobile says that Dish’s plan to build a Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) network by 2020 would only use around 2 percent of its 95MHz of spectrum holdings. “Dish’s build out plan is nothing more than a scheme for the company to further warehouse valuable spectrum assets, and the Commission should not condone it,” T-Mo writes.
Later in the letter, T-Mobile goes after Dish’s plans for using its spectrum to build a mobile broadband network. As noted by FierceWireless, Dish has said that it plans to spend up to $10 billion to deploy a 5G network after it rolls out its nationwide NB-IoT network. “The fact that Dish may later use the spectrum for wireless broadband in Phase 2 does not excuse its failure to meet the required performance requirements now,” writes T-Mobile. “The Commission has been clear that licensees cannot be permitted to perpetually wait for the next big thing.”
T-Mobile then argued that while Dish’s plan is “no more than a cynical effort to hoard valuable spectrum assets,” T-Mo has been putting its spectrum to use to meet the growing demand for mobile broadband service. T-Mobile points to its rollout of 600MHz LTE coverage, which is now available in more than 1,250 markets following T-Mo’s acquisitions from an FCC spectrum auction in April 2017.
It remains to be seen how the FCC will respond to T-Mobile’s request, but it’s not too surprising to learn that T-Mo is going after Dish for what it feels is spectrum hoarding. T-Mobile wants more spectrum to help beef up its network — that’s also one of the main reasons it wants to acquire Sprint — and getting the FCC to strip Dish of its spectrum licenses would give T-Mo a chance to grow its spectrum holdings. It also probably doesn’t help that Dish has come out against T-Mobile’s proposed merger of Sprint.
To read T-Mobile’s full letter to the FCC regarding Dish and its spectrum, hit the link below.
Source: FierceWireless