- Dish Network (DISH -0.7%) impresario Charlie Ergen is pursuing his personal "Manhattan Project" -- a race against a deadline to put the satellite TV company's spectrum hoard to work in a next-gen wireless network.
- The company has until March 2020 in a use-it-or-lose-it situation with its spectrum, and the Dish chairman has put a countdown on every employee's computer, he tells Bloomberg: “This is Management 101 -- it’s how you get disparate people to focus in one direction.”
- “It took them four years to design and build the atomic bomb," he continues. "And that’s about how long it’s going to take us to design and build the greatest 5G network. And we are in the first year of building that today.”
- Dish has been sitting on large spectrum holdings for years and observers have had to speculate about what the famously circumspect Ergen was planning.
- Now the approach seems clear, but stakes are rising: A 5G system will be key to keeping up with China, as Ergen notes, but the idea of teaming up with a big wireless partner on costs is less likely now, with Sprint (S +0.4%) and T-Mobile (TMUS +0.2%) moving slowly but steadily along a path to merge rather than combining with Dish.
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Original article