Craig Moffett: Dish deal ‘terrible’ for AT&T

Long-time analyst Craig Moffett said "AT&T has let Dish off the hook" in Dish's new services agreement with AT&T, which guarantees AT&T at least $5 billion in wholesale revenue over ten years. With a two-year “transition period” on top, it is arguably more like a twelve-year deal, and that’s a “huge, game-changing win” for Dish, Moffett said. What matters is not the wholesale revenues that T-Mobile loses but the competitive damage done to the industry by enabling Dish to be a hybrid mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) “indefinitely.” The comments came after Dish announced, through its own press release and an 8-K filing, that AT&T will be Dish’s MVNO network partner. AT&T replaces T-Mobile, whose acrimonious relationship with Dish has been widely reported despite Dish’s role in getting the merger with Sprint approved. A large part of that rancor is due to T-Mobile’s plans to shut down its code division multiple access (CDMA) network by January 2022, leaving a good portion of Dish’s Boost Mobile customers in the lurch. For years, Dish has acquired licensed spectrum without building out a network to show for it. That has rankled, to no end, wireless carriers that have spent billions on wireless spectrum and built out bona fide networks while Dish’s spectrum sat idle. To say that AT&T “let Dish off the hook” is like throwing gasoline on a bonfire.