- Landlords say Dish failed to provide guidance on removing antennas and other 5G gear that was deployed in support of Dish’s now-defunct 5G network
- Unlike major tower firms pursuing lawsuits, mom-and-pop property owners lack resources to fight back – unless they pursue a class action
- Industry groups are urging regulators to tie Dish/EchoStar spectrum deals to vendor and landlord compensation
Cliff Steinberg’s family owns a busy street corner building in the SoHo district of Manhattan. The first floor is home to the Grand Street Social restaurant, with various commercial tenants on other levels of the five-story building.
About four years ago, he was approached about using the building to house Dish’s 5G antennas. Negotiations ensued and a year later, he signed a lease with Dish, with the understanding that he would be able to supervise the deployment of the equipment on the roof and wires throughout the building.
Extensive renovations were made and the arrangement worked until late last year, when he received a letter saying Dish was no longer going to pay its rent, which was $4,000 a month.
“It’s very personal for me because this building is in my family,” he told Fierce. “I’m lucky because it’s a nice corner. Good visibility. That’s why they wanted their antennas there.”
Steinberg said he’s signed dozens of leases over the years, some of them with large corporate entities. He never had any reason to think a company the size of Dish – controlled by billionaire EchoStar CEO and Chairman Charlier Ergen – wouldn’t live up to its commitments.
The problem: Steinberg’s now stuck with a bunch of 5G antennas and related equipment on his building – and Dish isn’t responding to any of his communications. How does he get rid of it?
“There is no one to talk to,” he said. “They’re obviously the 800-pound gorilla. It’s really distasteful what they’re doing. It’s a hardship for a lot of people.”
Church relied on Dish lease payments
The Second Church of Christ, Scientist in Corona del Mar, California, is in a similar bind. The church was approached by Dish in 2022 about putting equipment on the building in exchange for several thousand dollars in monthly rent, according to said Derek Davis, a member of the church.
Things were going OK until they received a letter from EchoStar COO John Swieringa in November citing a “force majeure” event and telling them they were no longer going to get paid.
“Our church relied on those lease payments to meet our budget for the year, and this has kind of blown a hole in everything for us. It's really upset our financial planning,” Davis said.
“We were hoping that we could have a discussion with Dish and try to come to some kind of understanding with them, but they're just not responding to us,” he said. “They were supposed to remove all of the stuff that they put on top of our church and put it back in the same condition and that's just been completely ignored.”
Dish washing?
Business and estate planning attorney Marshall Lewis represents a family trust that owns a furniture store on National Avenue in San Diego. It was a Sprint cell site location until Dish took it over. Lewis said it would probably cost about $50,000 to remove the equipment and restore the building. All told, they’re probably losing $150,000 on the entire thing when considering lost rental payments.
He wrote a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) questioning the “force majeure” event and said he’s found no indication that the FCC required Dish to sell off its spectrum frequencies or did anything that forced Dish Wireless to terminate its cell phone business.
In fact, he asserts that Dish was not forced to sell and merely failed to market Boost Mobile subscriptions. He never saw any big sales promotions by Dish and he’s wondering if the plan all along was for Dish to fail, eventually enabling the company to profit from the sale of its frequency licenses.
“I think the FCC should require that they make everybody who was a victim in this whole. They should pay the leases at least to the extent of their existing termination dates, and they should pay to remove all the equipment and restore the premises,” he told Fierce. “That would be appropriate.”
Lewis said he was made aware of some of Dish's shenanigans via the website of Best, Best & Krieger, which also has a name for it: Dish Washing.
EchoStar/Dish didn’t respond to Fierce’s request for comment for this story.
Lobbying efforts continue
The big publicly traded tower companies – American Tower, Crown Castle and SBA Communications – are involved in lawsuits against Dish over unpaid rents. But the smaller property managers don’t have the kind of resources required to fight individually in court. Some of them said they would consider being part of a class action suit.
They’re also supportive of the American Wireless Builders Coalition’s efforts to persuade the FCC to withhold approval of EchoStar’s ~$42 billion spectrum transfers to AT&T and SpaceX until EchoStar agrees to honor the commitments Dish made to tower companies and rooftop landlords.
The coalition includes tower and fiber companies, contractors and entities like the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA).
WIA has been saying for a while now that EchoStar’s tactics amount to a shell game that threatens to upend the way the entire wireless infrastructure industry does business. All told, they figure infrastructure providers are owed somewhere in the ballpark of $7 billion to $10 billion for services rendered.
The question of who is responsible for removing Dish’s gear seems obvious, but of course, it’s more complicated than that. Ergen’s lawyers argue that Dish Wireless is not a party to the AT&T and SpaceX agreements and therefore isn’t entitled to receive any of the spectrum sale proceeds at closing.
The coalition fears that because their contracts are with Dish and not EchoStar, Dish may be able to weasel out of its obligations. And because an FCC-approved administrative change in 2023 allowed Dish to merge with EchoStar and EchoStar to be the official license holder, the FCC’s review of these spectrum transactions may be their last best hope for restitution.
Crown Castle: It’s on Dish
During Crown Castle’s Q4 earnings call in February, New Street Research analyst David Barden asked Crown Castle CEO Christian Hillabrant about what happens when a carrier no longer pays its bills. Do they go in and rip out the hardware and snip wires?
Hillabrant declined to disclose details about a specific customer but said at the end of the day, if a customer doesn’t pay and they’re in default, it’s on them to remove the equipment in a timely basis.
Barden was highly skeptical that Dish would ever do that.
“Well, we’ll see,” Hillabrant said. “The contract has been terminated and it’s their obligation to remove the equipment.”
More broadly, Hillabrant said he’s been in the industry for about 30 years and can’t remember a time in recent memory where an operator just turned off the lights and walked away from their obligations. “It’s pretty amazing, actually, to have witnessed this in my lifetime,” he said.
Big tower companies and smaller property owners alike are waiting to see what unfolds at the FCC.
“Everyone’s just holding their breath and waiting,” Steinberg said. “Hopefully something will come out of the FCC. It’s wait and see. I really just want them to come in, take their hardware, leave my roof the way it should be left and say goodbye and good luck.”