Dish Continuing to Fight Tower Lawsuits
The company is looking to combine the seven federal cases it’s facing.
WASHINGTON, March 19, 2026 – Dish is continuing to fight back against lawsuits over its position that it doesn’t owe tower lease payments after its parent company sold much of its spectrum.
Those sales from EchoStar “make it impossible for DISH Wireless to continue to build, operate, or pay for a wireless network,” the company wrote in a Monday filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, where it’s being sued by Crown Castle. “The purpose of DISH Wireless’s contracts with the Towers Providers was completely frustrated, and DISH Wireless’s performance under the contracts themselves was rendered commercially impractical, indeed impossible.”
Dish is facing more than a dozen lawsuits, seven of which are in federal court, after it stopped paying tower leases and other fees under the rationale that those sales were forced by Federal Communications Commission pressure. Dish won’t receive any of the $42.6 billion purchase price and thus can’t make payments through no fault of its own, the company has argued.
Dish is trying to consolidate the federal cases in Colorado, and is seeking to put each of the cases on pause until that effort is resolved.
The cases, including ones brought by each of the three largest tower companies in the U.S., generally argue EchoStar was not technically forced to sell many of its spectrum licenses to AT&T and SpaceX, and is now improperly avoiding paying its subsidiary’s bills despite a big payday.
EchoStar founder and CEO Charlie Ergen said on the company’s earnings call this month that the company had privately settled “hundreds of contracts” with other companies, including with a “large tower company,” though he didn’t specify which.
“Just to be clear, we don’t believe we owe any money,” Ergen said. “I think it shows our good faith that we’ve settled with a lot of people and attempted to engage in negotiations when people don’t pick litigation.”
New York real estate outlet The Real Deal reported this month that landlords in the city had difficulty contacting Dish after it stopped paying. Some wireless facilities in cities are placed on buildings, with rent paid to the owners.
Dish also told the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, where it’s being sued by SBA Communications, that it denied SBA’s claims.
“The FCC’s actions and the resulting forced sale and loss of the relevant spectrum licenses made it impossible and/or commercially impracticable for [Dish] to perform its obligations under” its contract with SBA, wrote Dish attorneys including White & Case Partner Glenn Kurtz.
Dish filed a motion to dismiss the Crown Castle case on March 6, but a public version of the document hasn’t been posted.
The Wireless Infrastructure Association put out a study last week that found Dish likely accounted for up to 7 percent of all tower rental revenue. Crown Castle has said it’s owed $3.5 billion, and American Tower has suggested about $2 billion.
“We don't necessarily expect this to get resolved this year,” Steve Vondran, CEO of American Tower, said of its lawsuit against Dish last month. “We hope it does, but we don't necessarily expect it to."
FCC conditions
Outside of court, tower and infrastructure companies have been pushing hard for the FCC to tack conditions on its likely approval of EchoStar’s spectrum sales, including in a direct meeting with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
They want the agency to require EchoStar to set aside enough of its proceeds to pay settlements – court-mandated or otherwise – to former Dish business partners. Some conservative groups that typically ally themselves with Carr have also weighed in in support of the tower companies
EchoStar opposes this, arguing that it’s divesting rather than gaining an FCC-regulated license, and the conflict at issue is unrelated to the individual transactions the FCC is reviewing.
“The law and the contracts are on the towercos’ side, but the concerted push presumably shows that the key players think that, in practice, they don’t have good alternatives to collect on what they’re owed by EchoStar,” MoffettNathanson founder Craig Moffett wrote in a February investor note.
He noted Carr has supported tower climbers and has been skeptical of EchoStar’s claims in the past, but said there was “no reliable way to assign a probability of success to this effort. Time will tell.”
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