Dish's Ergen tells DBJ: 'We're not feeling any pressure' to make a deal

Speculation is still rife that Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) and T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) will forge some kind of deal, but Dish CEO Charlie Ergen said that he does not feel any pressure to make any kind of deal, though he declined to comment directly on a transaction with T-Mobile. "We're not feeling any pressure to do anything," Ergen said in an interview with the Denver Business Journal.

"If Comcast and Time Warner [Cable] had been allowed to merge, there might've been more urgency to react to that," he said. "When that's turned down by the government, then you have more flexibility to stay where you are. Normally, as a rule, at Dish we'd rather be proactive. But there's times when you want to stay."

Dish controls 40 MHz of mid-band AWS-4 spectrum in the 2 GHz band and 10 MHz of 1900 PCS H Block spectrum. Dish's designated entity partners won 25 MHz of spectrum in the FCC's recent AWS-3 auction, though the FCC has not yet awarded those companies the spectrum licenses.

Ergen added: "People want to see us do something with our spectrum, regardless of what it is, because that will move our stock up or down and they want to participate in that. So people write a lot of things and speculate a lot of things." Article