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Sprint reportedly courting Dish to provide the network for proposed mobile phone service

Sprint reportedly courting Dish to provide the network for proposed mobile phone service

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dish logo ces 1020
dish logo ces 1020

Yesterday, we heard a rumor that Dish was in talks with Blockbuster to sell mobile phones at the movie chain's remaining retail stores, and now Bloomberg is reporting that Sprint has approached Dish about a partnership to get the satellite provider into the cell phone game. Sprint's network would power this rumored service, making Dish just the latest MVNO to run on Sprint's network — Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile are just two of several who currently utilize Sprint's spectrum to run their services.

In exchange for running its proposed service on Sprint's network, Dish would give Sprint access to its unused mobile airwaves. Sprint would also either share revenue from customers signing up for Dish wireless service, or Dish could just pay a straight fee to the carrier. Such a partnership would be a bit of an about face for the two companies — Sprint has lobbying the FCC to make technical changes to Dish's spectrum holdings because it believes it will interfere with the neighboring spectrum block. While this new partnership is far from confirmed, it might help Sprint and Dish settle their other spectrum-related concerns.