Federal Communications Commission officials this week asked Dish Network to provide more details about deploying some of its spectrum assets after the satellite TV operator missed interim deadlines.
In a letter to Dish attorney Jeffrey Blum, Donald Stockdale, chief of the commission’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, requested updates about 53 MHz of low- and mid-band spectrum that is “apparently lying fallow” under the company’s AWS-4, 700 MHz E Block and H Block licenses.
Stockdale noted that the missed deadlines would compel Dish to “meet several accelerated final coverage and service construction deadlines” — and that failure to hit those benchmarks would lead to termination of the licenses or returning the spectrum to the FCC.
“Please describe the timing of critical milestones leading up to your previously-stated goal of completing deployment by March 2020, including technology selection, vendor(s) selection, equipment selection/acquisition, system engineering, site acquisition, equipment testing, and advertisement of service and deployment to customers,” Stockdale wrote.
Dish faces an initial deadline in 2020 to deploy some of the billions in licenses it acquired in recent years. Co-founder Charlie Ergen, in May remarks to a Wireless Infrastructure Association convention, outlined a two-stage deployment for the company’s spectrum holdings — starting with a nationwide Internet of Things network built at an estimated cost of $1 billion.
Ergen said the company had already ordered radios for the IoT network, would implement cores this summer and expects to begin testing in the fall. He said a second phase — building a nationwide network for 5G applications — could cost about $10 billion but would need to wait until other spectrum assets are cleared in 2020.
Blum responded this week that the company would keep the agency up to date about the narrowband IoT build-out “as requested.”
“We appreciated the opportunity to discuss with the FCC our progress to meet the build-out milestones,” Blum said in a statement, according to Bloomberg.