Dish tells FCC its Sprint buyout is ‘better for national security’

April 19th, 2013

Peter Nolan

Dish founder and Chairman Charlie Ergen.

(Credit:
Screentshot by Dan Farber/CNET)

It appears that when Dish wants something it doesn’t give up.

After making a surprise bid of $25.5 billion to acquire Sprint on Monday — which would snatch the mobile provider from the hands of Japan’s SoftBank — Dish submitted a filing to the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday claiming a SoftBank acquisition of Sprint wouldn’t be good for U.S. national security.

According to Reuters, Dish requested that the FCC suspend the review of SoftBank’s possible buyout of Sprint. In the filing, Dish claimed that Softbank didn’t have the “existing in-market infrastructure” and that “Dish’s merger proposal is better for American consumers, better for Sprint shareholders, and better for national security than the SoftBank proposal.”

This isn’t the first time that the feds have gotten involved with the Sprint buyout over national security concerns. In January, the U.S. Justice Department asked the FCC to put off SoftBank’s purchase saying it and other agencies need time to review the deal’s implications. Dish’s newest request with the FCC is basically a underscoring of these same arguments.

Sprint’s board of advisors is contemplating Dish’s proposal even though the mobile provider had previously agreed to Softbank’s $20.1 billion offer to buy 70 percent of the company. According to Reuters, Dish asked the FCC to wait to rule on the merger until Sprint had made a decision.

(CBS, which owns CNET, is in active litigation against Dish over its Hopper digital video recorder.)

CNET contacted Sprint for comment. We’ll update the story when we get more information.

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