Charlie Ergen’s EchoStar is reportedly looking to swap around $4.9 billion (€4.4bn) of debt for new bonds that will be backed by the company’s extensive portfolio of 5G wireless spectrum. The plan was announced after the market closed on January 12th and in essence said that holders of existing convertible debt – already significantly downgraded […]

Charlie Ergen has been busy mapping out his chess-type strategy for his combined Dish Network and EchoStar businesses. Now trading under the ‘Dish’ banner, Ergen has spun off a batch of his terrestrial spectrum licences into a new subsidiary and this move helped rocket Dish’s share price by an impressive 41 per cent on January […]

Nasdaq has received a Delisting Notice saying that US pay-TV operator Dish Network is no longer trading in terms of its shares, effective December 29th 2023. Dish, along with its ‘sister’ company EchoStar, both majority controlled by founder Charlie Ergen, are in the process of merging and the actual merger was expected to happen on […]

The FCC has approved the transfer of control of Dish Network and its subsidiaries to EchoStar Corp. The FCC, and the bureaux under its supervision (the Office of Engineering & Technology, the Space Bureau, the Wireless Telecommunications) allowed the transfer of its broadcast and transmission licences. The FCC order includes those terrestrial licences for Dish’s […]

Maxar Space Systems says it has successfully handed over operations of the largest commercial communications satellite ever manufactured in their Palo Alto, California facility, the Jupiter 3 broadband satellite, for EchoStar’s HughesConnects subsidiary. The satellite, already in orbit, includes 14 solar panels on board that when fully deployed could span a 10-storey building. Maxar Space […]

Denver-based DISH Network, reeling from a shrinking subscriber base and a collapsing share price, has announced that more than 500 staff are being laid off. “Like most businesses, we continually evaluate and make adjustments to ensure we’re set up for long-term success,” DISH said in a statement. “We made the difficult decision to part ways […]

Following on from DISH Network’s miserable results on November 6th (and a 38 per cent crash in its already depressed share price to $3.44, a 25-year low) co-founder Charlie Ergen told analysts that the pay-TV broadcaster was failing fast. “Investors are starting to give up,” Ergen admitted. One immediate consequence is that DISH Network’s President […]

A filing to the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) by EchoStar, the sister business to Dish Network, has given a detailed forecast of what Dish Network expects its future to look like. The SEC filing comes about because of the plan to – in effect – merge EchoStar with Dish and confirms the financial […]

Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network has been fined by the FCC for not placing its EchoStar-7 craft in a correct ‘graveyard’ orbit. This is the first time that the FCC has penalised an operator under its space debris enforcement rules. The FCC says that Dish/EchoStar had “violated” its Communications Act. EchoStar 7 was launched in 2002 […]