EchoStar Down 9,000 Mobile Subs
CEO Ergen said company had settled ‘hundreds’ of contract disputes.
WASHINGTON, March 2, 2026 – After four quarters of positive growth, EchoStar’s Boost Mobile brand lost 9,000 mobile subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2025. Wall Street had been expecting the good times to keep rolling, with predicted additions of more than 160,000.
“We think this is a result of intensified competition in the space after Dan Schulman’s appointment as Verizon CEO,” New Street Research analyst David Barden wrote. “Given Verizon’s guidance for wireless net adds in 2026, we expect competition to remain elevated in 2026.”
After reaching deals to sell valuable spectrum licenses for more than $40 billion, EchoStar is decommissioning its mobile network and transitioning to serving Boost and its 7.5 million subscribers largely on AT&T infrastructure. EchoStar said in a 10-K filing that it had no customer traffic on its own wireless network since November.
As part of the decommissioning process, EchoStar subsidiary Dish Wireless, which operated the network, is telling tower companies and infrastructure providers that it’s no longer bound by contracts and lease agreements. The company’s position is that Federal Communications Commission inquiries forced the spectrum sales, leaving Dish, which won’t see any proceeds from them, unable to pay through no fault of its own.
Tower companies are not happy about that, and several have sued. They argue the FCC didn’t actually force the company’s hand, and that EchoStar should be required to pay its subsidiary's bills after lucrative deals.
EchoStar founder and CEO Charlie Ergen said on the company’s earnings call Monday that the company had settled “hundreds of contracts” with other companies, including with a “large tower company,” though he didn’t specify which.
The three largest tower companies in the U.S. by Wireless Estimator’s count have each sued Dish, claiming the company is still bound by their contracts and owes them billions in some cases.
Among others, American Tower, Crown Castle, SBA Communications – the top three tower companies – Diamond Towers, Harmoni Towers – also in the top 10 – and Zayo Group and Comcast have so far filed lawsuits against Dish.
The Comcast suit was filed recently on Feb. 27 and is seeking $54 million in damages, according to EchoStar’s 10-K.
“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.”
He said the litigation process would likely be lengthy and that it would take time before it would be clear how things would shake out.
The fourth quarter losses from EchoStar’s wireless segment were much lower than Wall Street expected, just $66 million versus a predicted $483 million.
Analysts at both New Street Research and MoffettNathanson said in investor notes that some of that was likely due to EchoStar not making payments. Ergen said on the call that some of the tower decommissioning costs were captured by a previous $16 billion impairment charge from the third quarter of 2025, when the company reached the spectrum deals and set out to turn down its network.
More spectrum sales, SpaceX
Asked about whether EchoStar would sell the rest of its spectrum, Ergen said the company’s goal was to “make sure that that’s going to get used in the quickest, and fastest, and best way for consumers and for technical leadership in the United States.”
“I hope maybe we play a part in that, but we may not,” he said. “But it’s still obviously a valuable asset that we have.”
The company filed to participate in the FCC’s AWS-3 auction this June. EchoStar still owns AWS-3 licenses.
About $10.5 billion of the company’s $42.6 billion in spectrum sale proceeds is in the form of SpaceX stock. SpaceX, controlled by Elon Musk, recently combined with xAI, another Musk company and the entity reportedly is mulling an IPO this year.
The combination deal reportedly valued SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAi and $250 billion, and the IPO could value the company as high as $1.75 trillion, Bloomberg reported last week. Ergen said “They move at a pace that most companies don’t. I don’t think any amount of valuation is crazy there.”
SpaceX provides low-Earth orbit satellite broadband service, and is looking to break further into the direct-to-cell satellite mobile space with airwaves it’s purchasing from EchoStar. The company is planning a new generation of satellites for the service, now called Starlink Mobile, which would launch later this year if approved. German wireless carrier Deutsche Telekom said Monday it was partnering with SpaceX on the service starting in 2028
“When you connect any square inch of the planet, that’s just a big business,” Ergen said.
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