AT&T → EchoStar spectrum licences
An all-cash, $23bn purchase that turned the would-be fourth US mobile network into a customer of AT&T: under pressure from the FCC, EchoStar sold its 3.45GHz and 600MHz licences and moved Boost Mobile onto AT&T's cell sites.
AT&T bought about 30MHz of 3.45GHz and 20MHz of 600MHz licences as EchoStar retreated from building its own network.
- Value
- $23B
- Announced
- August 2025
- Completed
- July 2026
- Sector
- Telecom
- Deal type
- asset purchase
- Acquirer
- AT&T (United States)
- Target
- EchoStar spectrum licences (United States)
Why it mattered
Dish Network, now part of EchoStar, had been cast by the Justice Department in 2019 as the replacement fourth national carrier when T-Mobile bought Sprint, and it went on to build what EchoStar's chairman, Charlie Ergen, called the world's first Open RAN network, sold under the Boost Mobile brand. In May 2025 the Federal Communications Commission opened a review of whether EchoStar was meeting its 5G build-out obligations and using its 2GHz satellite spectrum; EchoStar missed interest payments and was reported to be preparing for bankruptcy.
The sale to AT&T, signed on 25 August 2025, was its way out: about $23bn in cash for roughly 30MHz of 3.45GHz mid-band and 20MHz of 600MHz low-band spectrum across more than 400 markets. An amended wholesale agreement made Boost a "hybrid" operator, running its own 5G core over AT&T's towers while parts of its radio network were decommissioned. Two weeks later EchoStar agreed to sell its AWS-4 and H-block licences to SpaceX for $17bn, later raised to about $20bn with AWS-3 spectrum, and the FCC's chairman told staff to bring the investigation to a close. AT&T, which already ran the largest US wireless network, said the spectrum would strengthen its 5G and home-internet service.
What it left behind
The Justice Department and the FCC both approved, but the FCC required a $2.4bn trust, funded from the price, to pay claims from suppliers and site owners left over from the abandoned network. EchoStar recorded impairments as it began decommissioning, and in June 2026 it delayed interest payments on DISH DBS bonds while it waited for the AT&T cash. The sale completed on 28 July 2026: EchoStar received $20.25bn and at once repaid $2bn of DISH DBS notes and redeemed about $3.7bn of DISH Network secured notes. By then DISH DBS was already in bankruptcy restructuring in Texas, and in August the Hughes satellite unit filed for bankruptcy protection too. For AT&T the result was about 50MHz of nationwide spectrum and a wholesale customer in place of a network rival.
Licences held under build-out obligations are worth most to whoever can use them; once the regulator questioned EchoStar's use, a strategic asset became a forced sale, and creditors and a regulator-mandated trust had first call on the proceeds.