Dish Default Causing Crown Castle to Accelerate Layoffs
Crown Castle said there are now at least six lawsuits against Dish Wireless.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5, 2026 – Crown Castle CEO Chris Hillabrant said on the company’s earnings call Wednesday evening that the Dish default was causing the company to accelerate planned layoffs – amounting to about 20 percent of its workforce – related to the sale of its fiber and small cell businesses.
After the $8.5 billion deal closes, which is expected to come in June, the company will transition to operating its portfolio of roughly 40,000 towers. Zayo is acquiring the fiber assets and investment firm EQT is acquiring the small cells.
“Due to Dish's contractual default, we have accelerated and expanded our restructuring plan to realign staffing levels consistent with the removal of all future DISH activity,” Hillabrant said. “In total, we are reducing our tower and corporate workforce and continuing operations by approximately 20 percent, ending at about 1,250 full time employees.”
Crown Castle said last month Dish defaulted on $3.5 billion in payments. The company terminated the contract over the issue and is suing to enforce the agreement and collect what it says it’s owed.
EchoStar reached deals to sell many of its spectrum licenses for more than $40 billion last year. The companies have maintained that the sales were effectively forced by Federal Communications Commission pressure, leaving Dish unable to meet its contract obligations because of something that wasn’t its fault and thus able to exit contracts and lease agreements related to its 5G network.
Infrastructure companies have sued over the issue, arguing that the FCC didn’t technically force EchoStar to sell its spectrum, and that the company is improperly avoiding paying its subsidiaries’ bills.
Hillabrant said Crown Castle’s position was that Dish was obligated to remove its equipment from the company’s towers. New Street Research analyst David Barden said in a Wednesday investor note the firm thought that was unlikely.
If that happens, “Our view is you send an army of techs into the field and start snipping wires. Next you start tearing down gear and selling it for scrap,” he wrote. “It’s conceivable that this is actually EchoStar’ plan. Let the towers pay to decommission their network for free while they aren’t getting paid.”
More litigation against Dish
There are a total of at least six lawsuits against Dish Wireless over the company’s move to exit contracts in the wake of its parent company EchoStar’s spectrum sales, Crown Castle said in a new filing.
In addition to major tower companies American Tower and Crown Castle, the litigants include Zayo, Diamond Towers, co-location service provider DataVerge, and wireless construction company Sabre.
Sabre said in a U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York complaint that Dish shouldn’t be able to exit the contract and should still owe about $2.8 million, and DataVerge said in a New York Supreme Court complaint it should still receive $356,000. The Zayo and Diamond Towers suits were filed in Colorado state court and the underlying documents were not immediately accessible.
Crown Castle submitted an updated complaint on Jan. 30 that looped EchoStar in directly.
“DISH’s tactics here are not unique to Crown Castle, but instead are part of an industry-wide playbook that has been orchestrated by EchoStar to permit it to reap the proceeds of the AT&T and SpaceX Transactions, while simultaneously impeding DISH from making billions of dollars in contractually committed payments to its tower partners and other vendors,” the company wrote.
EchoStar has said it’s declining to comment on pending litigation.
Tower companies want FCC to step in
Tower companies have been pushing the FCC to mandate that EchoStar honor Dish’s contracts when it approves the spectrum sales to AT&T and SpaceX. A dozen executives met with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Jan. 20 to make their case.
“The law and the contracts are on the towercos’ side, but the concerted push presumably shows that they 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 Wednesday 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.”
Carr didn’t go into how the agency was considering the issue when asked at the agency's January meeting. EchoStar has opposed any conditions, arguing the agency can’t place terms on a company divesting FCC-regulated licenses.
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