Earlier in May the FCC launched a review into EchoStar’s compliance with certain 5G wireless coverage obligations (as part of their efforts to build the fourth national wireless network in the US) and raising questions about the buildout extensions granted in September 2024 and EchoStar’s utilisation of 2GHz mobile-satellite service (MSS) spectrum.

EchoStar has filed a response to the FCC, in which they detail how their terrestrial and satellite deployments are in the public interest and America’s Global wireless leadership. As part of this filing EchoStar disclosed that they had added 88,000 wireless subscribers in April, and they now had 1.3 million subscribers “on-net”.

The report prompted investment bank BNP-Paribas and analyst Sam McHugh to issue their own advice to shareholders. The bank says: “The fate of EchoStar is closely intertwined with the broader themes of the short-term health of the wireless industry, as well as longer term considerations around spectrum use, wireless industry market structure and competition from Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) in broadband.”

McHugh adds: “In terms of the news we note that the 88,000 net adds in April, puts EchoStar well on course to beat consensus expectations of c.110,000 for net-adds in 2Q25, and thus may be taken as a small negative for the wireless carriers (where there is already worry over KPIs and incremental competition and a market slowdown).”

“In our view, the initial FCC filings could be interpreted as a ‘shot across the bows’ of EchoStar who have struggled to build a sustainable wireless business, even with the better April KPIs they are a very long way from being profitable. We do believe there is a growing case (and arguably the FCC review could be a catalyst for this) to sell their wireless spectrum (c. 130Mhz) and possibly wireless subscribers to the existing 3 wireless carriers (something the ex-FCC chair Tom Wheeler recently suggested may be possible in an event we hosted). This may come with a big spectrum spend cost but could remove a significant long-term overhang (a deep pocketed investor buying the SATS wireless operations) for the wireless industry.”

But the bank’s report suggests that adding more spectrum for wireless, which is the FCC’s aim, could be bad news for cable operators. “With a significant amount of spectrum potentially coming to market in the next 3-5 years (current holdings are c.1000MHz for the big-3 and 300-600MHz may come available), we remain confident that in the long term the FWA targets of the wireless carriers will increase (crudely each 100MHz of spectrum could support 3m extra broadband subscribers), and the performance of the networks will improve.”

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Categories: Blogs, Business, Inside Satellite, Satellite

Tags: bank, Echostar, FCC