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AT & T Pressures FCC on Dish Buildout
Tue, 02/21/2012 - 7:21am
Maisie Ramsay

AT&T continues to pressure the FCC to force Dish into rapid buildout requirements for its planned mobile broadband network, requirements that the satellite provider has resisted.

The wireless operator filed a document on Friday pushing the agency to require "prompt network construction, along the lines of the LightSquared build out requirements." 

"There is no reason for the Commission to grant Dish a waiver, while simultaneously allowing Dish to sit on the spectrum for three years before even beginning to deploy facilities," AT&T said.

The ex parte filing is the second AT&T has filed on the subject since late January.

AT&T is rumored to be interested in buying Dish Network's satellite spectrum after it was forced to abandon its $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA, a deal that would have given it a much-desired chunk of spectrum.

Dish Network has asked the FCC for a waiver that will let it use satellite spectrum from TerreStar Networks and DBSD North America for an LTE Advanced network, but it says it needs a lenient deployment schedule to procure the necessary equipment for the next-generation LTE technology.

Construction of the network could be delayed until about 2015 under Dish's timeline.

Dish Network could not be immediately reached for comment on AT&T's latest missive, but said earlier this month that AT&T's proposed buildout conditions were "unrealistic" and would set it up for failure.

"A new, next-generation LTE Advanced retail network simply cannot be viably built in the S-Band at the pace AT&T suggests," Dish Network General Counsel Jeffery Blum said in a Feb. 3 letter to the FCC.

Before the FCC decided to revoke key portions of LightSquared's license, the agency required the mobile broadband startup to cover 100 million people by the end of this year and 260 million people by the end of 2015.

LightSquared-like buildout requirements could force Dish to piggy-back on the existing network of an incumbent wireless operator, similar to LightSquared's spectrum hosting deal with Sprint, Blum said.

AT&T claims the "suggestion that infrastructure sharing is somehow problematic is specious."

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