Dish Network focused on shopping for spectrum licenses in city areas during the FCC’s incentive public sale, CEO Charlie Ergen mentioned Monday. And it’s putting a excessive precedence on the potential variety of linked units—not individuals—because it prepares to construct a community devoted to the Internet of Things.
Dish spent $6.2 billion to purchase licenses during the public sale of 600 MHz that wrapped up final month, far exceeding the expectations of most analysts. Dish earlier this yr outlined plans to build an NB-IoT network to offer connectivity to a variety of units aside from conventional tablets and smartphones.
“We had been pleasantly shocked that because the public sale went on it turned clear—on the finish of the primary spherical, on the second spherical—that the value was not going to go up it was going to remain sub-$20 billion based mostly on our projections,” Ergen mentioned during the corporate’s first-quarter earnings name Monday. “And we felt that was most likely in extra of 50 cents on the greenback by way of the true worth of the spectrum. So we had been then in a position to not solely get our nationwide spectrum but in addition then to remain within the greater cities the place we felt notably the web of issues could be useful.”
Indeed, the public sale fetched $18.2 billion in whole proceeds, falling far in need of analysts’ estimates that had ranged from $25 billion to as much as $80 billion. T-Mobile was the one firm to bid greater than Dish, committing to spend practically $eight billion on the airwaves.
Dish is eschewing the standard MHz/POP spectrum valuation, Ergen mentioned, wanting as a substitute on the potential worth of megahertz per gadget.
“Based on the inhabitants, each analyst at all times quotes megahertz per POP, however the final a number of auctions we’ve type of checked out the place we expect issues are going. We checked out it (as) megahertz per factor, not megahertz per POP,” Ergen mentioned. “So whether or not it’s streetlights or coronary heart screens or drones or no matter, we’ve at all times checked out it as megahertz per factor. And once you try this, clearly, the extra densely populated cities are fairly a little bit of a cut price low cost, should you consider our technique is correct.”
