AT&T to DOJ: EchoStar Spectrum Deal Won’t Harm Competition

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26, 2025 – AT&T is telling the Justice Department that its pending $23 billion purchase of spectrum licenses from EchoStar isn’t worsening competition in the wireless market.

The agency said earlier this year it was concerned about the three dominant national carriers consolidating spectrum resources.

AT&T said in a white paper submitted to the DOJ's antitrust division that the extra spectrum would allow it to improve and expand its fixed wireless service. The carrier also argued EchoStar would be better able to compete on price after decommissioning its own radios and operating on AT&T’s infrastructure, a component of the deal.

The Federal Communications Commission, which will also have to clear the deal, had asked for a copy of the document, according to a letter from AT&T and EchoStar attorneys posted Tuesday along with the white paper.

In the document, AT&T said that its mid-band spectrum holdings lagged behind T-Mobile and Verizon, and this deficit had “limited its ability to deploy fixed wireless at scale as an in-home alternative to cable.” The carriers offer fixed wireless broadband service using fallow capacity on their mobile networks.

AT&T does have the fewest fixed wireless subscribers of the big three, 1.2 million compared to Verizon’s 5.4 million and T-Mobile’s nearly 8 million. Upping that number would allow AT&T to offer converged packages bundling fixed and mobile broadband, which reduce churn, in more areas.

“Though AT&T’s long-term intention is to focus on fiber to serve fixed wireless broadband, fiber is a resource-intensive, long-term play. Further, there are many areas of the country where it simply does not make economic sense for AT&T to deploy fiber,” the company wrote. “Today, one of AT&T’s paths to challenging its rivals in converged offerings, in addition to continuing to build its fiber footprint, is to commit additional spectrum to fixed wireless, which it cannot do without more spectrum.”

AT&T would grab about 50 megahertz

As part of the deal, AT&T would grab about 30 megahertz of nationwide 3.45 GigaHertz (GHz) spectrum, which it’s already deploying through a lease agreement, and about 20 megahertz of nationwide 600 MHz spectrum. EchoStar would transition to operating its Boost Mobile service largely on AT&T infrastructure while maintaining a separate core.

Despite not operating on its own infrastructure, AT&T argued EchoStar will “not cease to be a facilities-based competitor.” The carrier said that by having a separate core, unlike the cable giants on Verizon’s infrastructure, EchoStar would be more free to offer new services to customers.

AT&T cast this as a positive for EchoStar, which it said could serve customers cheaper under the new arrangement – the exact cost difference was redacted – and thus become a competitor in a way it has struggled to do since the T-mobile/Sprint merger in 2020.

“EchoStar barely registers in AT&T’s business documents and AT&T data indicate that EchoStar is not competitively meaningful today,” the company wrote.

When it cleared T-Mobile’s purchase of UScellular, then the fifth largest carrier, DOJ said it was concerned about spectrum consolidation in the industry and would intervene if necessary in future deals.

Blair Levin, New Street Research’s policy advisor and former FCC chief of staff, said in a September investor note that despite the DOJ worries the EchoStar deals likely wouldn’t be blocked.

He wrote the agency would probably be forced to conclude that the only buyers for the Spectrum AT&T bought would be one of the other dominant carriers. SpaceX apparently already satisfied much of its appetite for spectrum in separate deals with EchoStar, and Levin said the cable giants probably weren’t interested.

Opposition

In a filing with the FCC, T-Mobile said the agency should impose certain conditions in the deal or else deny it altogether. The company said the FCC should require AT&T to build out the 600 MHz spectrum in rural areas and revoke EchoStar’s 600 MHz licenses that hadn’t been built out yet.

T-Mobile said AT&T’s deployment plans for the spectrum would effectively mirror EchoStar’s, “a footprint that neglects rural areas.”

“To prevent that, the Commission should condition any grant of the Applications on AT&T covering, within five years of the transaction’s close, a substantial percentage of the geographic area of each 600 MHz license and its overall license holdings to ensure that the spectrum is deployed in rural areas,” the company wrote.

AT&T’s current commitment under the deal would reach 40 percent of the nationwide population, not area, covered by the 600 MHz licenses within three years of closing and 75 percent of the nationwide population covered by the licenses within five years. The company said it would hit 40 percent of the population covered by each individual license by the same five-year mark. 

Consumer advocacy groups Public Knowledge and New America’s Open Technology Institute said they actually agreed it would be slightly better for AT&T to grab the spectrum given its relatively smaller mid-band holdings T-Mobile and Verizon.

“But parity among oligopolists is not competition, and a hybrid MVNO is not a facilities based competitor,” the groups wrote. “Put another way, the least worst outcome is not a ‘good’ outcome that serves the public interest.” 

They said the FCC should impose a range of conditions if it does approve the deal, from phone unlocking requirements to net neutrality commitments.

The Rural Wireless Association, for its part, said the FCC should require AT&T to hand over to rural carriers 600 MHz licenses in areas it has no real intention of serving in the near-term.