Dish Defaults on American Tower Payments
Dish is arguing it is exempt from contracts after its parent company EchoStar reached deals to sell much of its spectrum.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29, 2026 – Dish Wireless has defaulted on lease payments to another tower company.
American Tower told the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday that Dish had “failed to meet its payment obligations, and is in default under” the companies’ 2021 contract. The company didn’t say how much Dish owed in payments.
EchoStar, Dish’s parent company, 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 its lease agreements. The proceeds of the sale are set to stay with EchoStar, which is setting up a new financial arm to manage the money.
Crown Castle, the other infrastructure company whose contract Dish defaulted on, and American Tower are both suing Dish over the issue, arguing the company is still on the hook for its contract obligations.
The tower companies argue that the FCC never ordered EchoStar to do anything, the company is trying to avoid paying its subsidiary's bills after a lucrative business decision.
EchoStar did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company had declined to comment on the Crown Castle default earlier this month, citing the ongoing litigation.
The FCC was probing EchoStar’s license rights last year, as Chairman Brendan Carrwas adamant the company wasn’t putting its airwaves to productive use. Carr closed the probes after EchoStar announced major spectrum sales to SpaceX and AT&T.
The agency still has to approve EchoStar’s spectrum sales, in which AT&T would receive 3.45 GigaHertz (GHz) and 600 MHz licenses, and SpaceX would receive AWS-4, PCS H-block, and unpaired AWS-3 airwaves. Infrastructure companies and contractors have been asking the agency to tack conditions onto its approval.
They continued the push in a meeting between Carr and ten tower company executives last week, arguing that the agency should condition its approval of the spectrum sales on EchoStar setting aside enough of the proceeds to pay Dish’s obligations.
“This approach does not pick winners or prejudge any dispute; it simply ensures that funds are available if and when amounts owed by DISH/EchoStar are confirmed,” the group wrote.
EchoStar has argued against the FCC imposing any conditions related to its contracts and lease agreements, claiming the agency lacks the ability to do so as the company is selling rather than acquiring FCC licenses.
“EchoStar has been unable to locate an instance where the Commission imposed substantive conduct conditions on an assignor,” the company wrote in a December filing. “This is not surprising – doing so would improperly expose former licensees to continued Commission oversight, unbound from any statutory authority, solely by virtue of their former licenses.”
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