Dish MVNO deal with AT&T could be start of something new

It’s quite possible that Dish Network could strike a network service agreement with a rural or regional US operator, along the same lines as it did with AT&T. Granted, the deal with AT&T is on a bigger scale, but the same principles apply. The company has talked with a number of regional and rural operators about doing partnerships. Despite their very public battles, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen made it clear that T-Mobile remains “super important” to Dish as it will continue to use T-Mobile’s network to serve customers. But one could imagine Dish teaming up with other operators in rural America. “Now AT&T, as much as geographies as they cover, which is a lot, they still don’t cover," said Ergen. "There are still rural carriers, including UScellular, that cover areas that AT&T does not or T-Mobile does not,” Ergen said. When asked about how quickly Dish will be able to move the traffic from the T-Mobile network onto the AT&T network, Ergen said AT&T will be the primary partner from a mobile virtual network operator's perspective going forward, but that doesn’t mean it’s transitioning all of its customers off the T-Mobile network. “They remain an important part of what we’re doing to the extent they want to be an important part of what we’re doing,” he said.