Dish Wireless bankruptcy is a regulatory failure years in the making

Hindsight is 20/20. But you didn’t need a crystal ball in 2019 to know that the U.S. government’s decision to tap Dish Network (eventually, Dish Wireless) to become the country’s fourth wireless carrier wouldn’t pan out well. And the regulators who waved it on—both at the time and as cracks in the plan became more evident—need to be held accountable. I’d argue that we never should have even gotten to this point. Not even close. Dish shouldn’t have been positioned as a prospective fourth Tier 1 provider in the first place. The whole point of handing Dish the Boost Mobile business as part of the T-Mobile and Sprint merger was to jumpstart its mandated effort to become the nation’s fourth Tier 1 wireless carrier. To achieve its purpose, Dish also had to build out its own network. But by the time the deal was sealed, Dish already had a track record of not meeting buildout targets for its wireless licenses.