Dish Network’s proposal to buy Sprint Nextel (CD...
Dish Network’s proposal to buy Sprint Nextel (CD April 16 p1) faces regulatory hurdles beyond those faced by a SoftBank buy of the nation’s No. 3 carrier, said Jeff Silva, analyst at Medley Global Advisors, in a research note. Silva…
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said most of the needed regulatory approvals for SoftBank/Sprint are nearly complete. “While antitrust implications of a Dish-Sprint deal would be minimal [at] best and no foreign ownership/national security issues overlaid, there nonetheless is a regulatory risk of sorts with respect to having to begin anew a government review process at a time when Verizon and AT&T already have leads over Sprint in 4G LTE deployment in the US,” he said. “In addition to the time component if a Dish-Sprint deal were put before the FCC and [Justice Department], there is a question of the regulatory environment in which such a transaction would play out. Put another way, we're not sure [Dish] Chairman Charlie Ergen made any friends at the FCC during the FCC rulemaking to repurpose 2 GHz (S band) mobile satellite service spectrum for mobile phone operations. Such things are not supposed to matter in a policy context, but sometimes they can."