EchoStar to FCC: Undermining Licenses Illegal
Company CEO Charlie Ergen got a long-awaited meeting with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr Wednesday.
WASHINGTON, June 16, 2025 – EchoStar Chairman Charlie Ergen finally got a meeting with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr on Wednesday. Company executives took the chance to reiterate their position that undermining EchoStar’s spectrum licenses would be illegal.
The meeting came the day before, according to a Bloomberg report, President Donald Trump summoned Carr to the White House with him and Ergen and urged the two to resolve the dispute over EchoStar’s spectrum.
The EchoStar side emphasized “the importance of regulatory certainty to continued innovation and investment” and reiterated its position that the FCC following through on sanctions against the company’s spectrum licenses “would be unlawfully retroactive, arbitrary, and capricious,” according to an ex parte filing submitted Friday and posted Monday.
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Responding to petitions from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Vermont-based VTel Wireless, the agency opened two proceedings last month targeting EchoStar. One sought input on whether the FCC should reconsider a 2024 decision to extend the company’s 5G buildout deadlines, and one asked whether the company was effectively using its 2 GigaHertz mobile-satellite service spectrum.
Echostar has maintained the inquiries are unwarranted and that SpaceX is attempting to use the FCC to access its airwaves. EchoStar has missed more than $500 million in interest payments since the probes began, raising fears of bankruptcy, and the company has said previous attempts to set up a meeting between Carr and Ergen went unanswered.
“The actions contemplated by the above-captioned proceedings have already created a dark cloud of uncertainty over EchoStar’s spectrum rights,” the company said in its Friday filing. “With a bond payment coming due at the end of June, this cloud has effectively frozen EchoStar’s decision making.”
Bloomberg reported the Wednesday meeting did not go well for EchoStar, and that Ergen went to plead with the White House before Trump phoned Carr and urged a deal that would avoid bankrupting the company.
EchoStar declined to comment. The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reactions and commentary
Blair Levin, policy advisor at New Street Research and former FCC official, said in a note to investors it’s not clear how the situation will shake out, but that “it is likely to now involve less pain” for EchoStar. He said any agency action would probably be delayed to allow for negotiations.
“That does not mean that the threat of a bankruptcy proceeding is over,” he wrote. “It means that Carr, in contemplating his path forward, must act in a way that allows him to convince people in the White House that if there is a bankruptcy, it was not due to his own actions.”
A wide array of stakeholders, including some conservative think tanks and former Republican FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington, have weighed in on EchoStar’s side, essentially arguing the agency risked upending the multibillion-dollar spectrum license market if it revoked or undermined EchoStar’s.
EchoStar licenses in several bands are tied to compliance with the 5G deployment deadlines the agency extended to 2028 last year, and the company says its 2 GHz mobile-satellite service spectrum can’t be shared with other users like SpaceX, something the FCC agreed with in the past. The agency either revoking the extensions or moving to institute sharing in the 2 GHz band would threaten EchoStar’s licenses.
The company was supposed to become the fourth national wireless competitor after the first Trump administration cleared T-Mobile’s purchase of Sprint, and its open radio access network is part of the government’s effort to stand up a less centralized wireless vendor marketplace to compete with Chinese firms like Huawei.
