DISH Wireless Sticks Small Property Owners with 5G Equipment Removal Costs
EchoStar (NASDAQ: ECHO) Chairman Charlie Ergen’s vision of establishing DISH Wireless as the U.S.’s fourth nationwide mobile network operator was aided by more than 3,000 small property owners around the country, according to Bloomberg. This figure includes more than 80 churches that agreed to install antennas on their rooftops and steeples to generate extra income.
But DISH stopped paying rent last year after regulators began questioning its 5G plans. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June, Inside Towers reported. Now DISH has abandoned the 5G equipment, leaving property owners and managers footing the bills to remove it themselves.
Michael Grace, co-founder of Grace Capital outside Chicago, said DISH hasn’t paid its $2,500 monthly rent since last fall for antennas atop a 10-story office building that Grace’s firm manages in Knoxville. The equipment is so bulky that Grace says he’ll have to hire a crane company for around $49,000 to remove it. Leaving it in place would make him liable should there be an accident, he says.
Most property owners are owed less than $100,000, according to Bloomberg. DISH has said the bulk of their costs can be recovered through a $2.4 billion FCC trust created by EchoStar and funded with sales of spectrum licenses to SpaceX and AT&T, Inside Towers reported. The trust specifically sets aside $200 million for smaller property owners. The FCC said in a July 30 order that funds are earmarked for “decommissioning” and other expenses. However, smaller property owners still say it is still not clear how much they will receive or when.
The key juncture in the process comes October 13. Judge Christopher Lopez, who is overseeing the case in a Texas bankruptcy court, is scheduled to consider approving DISH’s restructuring that is being challenged by creditors.
Ivan Gold, a lawyer representing about 40 smaller landlords, told Judge Lopez in a July court hearing that the process DISH creditors must go through to collect is so convoluted and lacking key details that it’s impossible for them to know what they’ll get back. Smaller creditors are “the roadkill of the wind-down of DISH Wireless,” Gold remarked to the judge at the hearing.
DISH commenced building its novel “open RAN, cloud native 5G” network in late 2020 after acquiring Boost Mobile from Sprint, Inside Towers reported. By spring 2025, DISH had deployed more than 144,000 radios across 24,000 tower sites, according to Inside Towers Intelligence.
Crown Castle (NYSE: CCI) and American Tower (NYSE: AMT) are challenging DISH’s Chapter 11 filing, arguing the deal would effectively wipe out billions of dollars in committed lease payments owed under the master lease agreements that DISH signed.
Beyond towers, DISH hardware is still installed atop New York City apartment buildings, a water tower in Vadnais Heights, MN, an office tower in Oakland, CA, and an Associated Bank building in Greenfield, WI.
DISH also had leases with a few Masonic temples and scores of churches in smaller towns, in what was initially considered a win-win situation. The churches would receive incremental annual rental revenue. For DISH, such buildings tend to be good cell site locations because they are centrally located, their steeples offer suitable heights for wide area signal coverage and the antennas can be inconspicuous.
The claims filed so far by churches and other smaller landlords are often substantially higher than what DISH says it owes, Bloomberg reported. DISH said smaller property owners will be fully repaid but has also argued in court that the FCC’s actions triggered a force majeure event that excused it from obligations under its leases. Creditors dispute that claim, knowing that bankruptcy law restricts landlords’ ability to recover the cost of removing equipment from their premises.
Read the original article on Inside Towers Intelligence.
