New Street Research (NSR) analysts believe the Elon Musk/Twitter legal battle eventually will improve the prospects for Dish Network in obtaining terrestrial rights for the 12 GHz band.
To recap: Musk withdrew his offer to buy Twitter and now he and the company are in court arguing about what happens next. Twitter filed a complaint seeking to force Musk to honor his agreement to buy the company. The case is likely to be litigated quickly, possibly starting as early as this fall, wrote NSR analysts Blair Levin and Matt Perault in a July 18 report.
Without predicting how the whole thing gets resolved – they’re leaving that up to others to speculate whether Musk will be compelled to pay the $44 billion he committed to earlier – the analysts said the bottom line is that Democrats generally no longer like or trust Musk and a significant portion of Republicans are likely to feel the same way.
SpaceX and Dish have been embroiled in a bitter fight over the 12 GHz band, with Dish and its colleagues in the 5G for 12 GHz Coalition arguing that SpaceX recently launched a misinformation campaign to “save” Starlink, which uses the 12 GHz band.
SpaceX/Starlink claims the Dish-led plan for 5G in the 12 GHz band would cause harmful interference and ruin their satellite-based service, a stance the coalition says is an attempt to stifle competition. Dish also says the FCC has authorized 15,000 MHz of other spectrum for Starlink service – spectrum that Starlink “did not pay a penny for.”
“We have said before, and continue to believe, that the issue will be decided based on the engineering study currently being undertaken by the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET). Given Musk’s popularity among Republicans a month ago, however, there was the possibility that the two Republican Commissioners could have either delayed or voted against the OET recommendation in a way that would help Musk,” the NSR analysts said.
Now the analysts think the prospect of the Republicans doing so is less than whatever it was several months ago.
Indeed, Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr, who previously had suggested that the FCC should only grant the coalition’s petition if it resulted in a “win-win” for all stakeholders, “told reporters last week that he continues to hope the agency will authorize terrestrial broadband services in the 12.2-12.7 GHz band so long as the new services don’t cause harmful interference to satellite incumbents, saying, ‘Ultimately, that’s going to come down to a very technical analysis,’” the NSR analysts noted.
For those not following the play-by-play, Musk raised the ire of former President Donald Trump after the Tesla/SpaceX executive said it’s time for Trump to “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset,” with Trump responding on his Truth Social network.
It all works out in Dish’s favor. “While we await the result of the OET study, we think one clear consequence of Musk’s withdrawal and his dispute with Trump is that there will be little to no Republican Hill pressure on the Republican Commissioners to help Musk, which is a positive for Dish,” the NSR analysts concluded.
Last week, members of Dish’s executive team, including Chairman Charlie Ergen, met with FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and other FCC members in Washington, D.C., to talk about their 5G buildout and the 12 GHz proceeding.
When the FCC authorized Starlink’s use of the 12 GHz band, the grant was explicitly conditioned on the outcome of the 5G rulemaking and the FCC has expressly warned Starlink that if it deploys using the 12 GHz band it “proceeds at its own risk” and that “any investments made toward operations … assume the risk that operations may be subject to additional conditions or requirements as a result of any future Commission actions,” Dish told the commission.
Dish has been the primary user of the 12 GHz band to provide service to satellite TV customers and argues that if 5G were to pose an interference risk, it would be the first to oppose it, but it insists that sharing between satellite and terrestrial operations is the best use of the spectrum.