Ownership

Dish Network isn’t the only entity eyeing T-Mobile’s 800 MHz spectrum. Someone else who’s intimately affiliated with the spectrum is showing an interest, and it’s not one of the big wireless carriers. Burns & McDonnell (B&M), a large engineering and consulting firm, is seeking permission to participate in the court proceeding where Dish is asking for more time to buy T-Mobile’s 800 MHz spectrum licenses, according to a research note by New Street Research (NSR). Dish filed for an extension with the US District Court for the District of Columbia earlier in August, 2023.

Great Plains Communications is one of a growing number of tier 2 and 3 providers with long-term roots that has been acquired by an investment firm, a move that has helped the company expand rapidly.

In July 2023, wireless and broadband provider Vistabeam acquired Airbits, which served the towns of Estes Park and Pole Hill, which are in Colorado’s Front Range area. Vistabeam also established a digital empowerment Center in Yuma, Colorado. The move into Colorado’s Front Range area is a sign that fixed wireless access (FWA) technology is maturing. The acquisition includes 25 towers. Vistabeam’s footprint is 40,000 square miles and covers more than 100 towns in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming.

Dish Network wants to buy 800 MHz licenses from T-Mobile, but it doesn’t have $3.5 billion on hand to finance the purchase, so it’s asking the US government to give it 10 more months to come up with the capital. In a filing with the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Dish argues that turmoil in global capital markets in the past few years have made Dish’s ability to buy the licenses more onerous than anticipated. Dish figures that 10 months is enough time to raise additional capital and obtain financing, in part because its just-announced 

In a deal involving Ohio service providers, NKTelco has acquired Hometown Cable. The deal includes more than 6,000 addresses in and around the communities of Coldwater, St. Henry and Montezuma, as well as fixed wireless access assets serving Mercer, Auglaize, Miami and Darke counties. Former Hometown Cable customers will be supported by NKTelco’s fiber ring, which offers status monitoring and continuity services. They also will have access to the Flight Data packages and multi-gigabit broadband, NKTelco says.

The latest battle between free and expensive information started with a charitable gesture. Brewster Kahle runs the Internet Archive, a venerable tech nonprofit. In that miserable, frightening first month of the Covid pandemic, he had the notion to try to help students, researchers and general readers.

Lumos Fiber successfully signed a $1.1 billion sustainability-linked infrastructure financing to fund its ambitious fiber roll-out plans and refinance existing indebtedness. This represents the first ever project finance style fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) infrastructure financing in the US for an existing and integrated FTTH platform, and the first US FTTH sustainability-linked financing structure.

Tillman FiberCo received a $200 million investment from Northleaf Capital Partners to fuel plans to build an open-access fiber network in five states. The deal with Northleaf leaves the door open to another $300 million investment when the time is right. Founded in 2021, Tillman FiberCo is a subsidiary of Tillman Global Holdings, whose other subsidiary, Tillman Networks, is a well-known player in the telecommunications construction world. But unlike its sister company, Tillman FiberCo not only designs and builds fiber networks, but also owns them.

The Big Four—Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet—are unquestionably in the government’s crosshairs. Yet their stocks are more valuable than ever, which suggests that investors, at least, are betting that the antitrust hullaballoo won’t add up to much. Why?  One reason is that in going after Big Tech, trustbusters are going after some of the most popular companies in America. Surveys routinely find that Amazon is the most trusted company in the US, with Google and Apple not far behind in the “most admired” rankings.

If UScellular were to sell some of its wireless assets, “under most scenarios that’s an opportunity and a positive for where we’re trying to go,” said Charlie Ergen, chairman of the board of DISH Network and