US wireless: After the spectrum rush

Investors are hoping Charlie Ergen’s seven-year-long wager on the airwaves used to connect America’s 336 million mobile phones and tablets is about to pay off.

Shares in Dish, his satellite TV group, have jumped by more than a third in the past year, even as he has warned that the glory days are over for the US pay TV industry. That is because Dish controls lots of US spectrum, much of it acquired at bargain prices. The company has no immediate use for it -- it does not own a wireless telecommunications network, nor is it building one. Yet as with many other commodities, there is a finite amount -- and there are fears it is becoming scarce. Ergen might not need it, but someone will. If oil and steel were the resources that defined the 20th century, then spectrum is the commodity that will be needed to deliver the digital economy.