Today it was announced that Dish has purchased a bigger chunk of EchoStar worth $800 million. As part of this deal Dish now owns nine new broadcast satellites. This follows an agreement back in 2017 in which Dish bought EchoStar’s set-top box development, Sling TV, software development employees, and satellite TV ground infrastructure.
“In 2017, when Dish acquired the EchoStar assets that we needed to deliver the Dish TV and Sling TV customer experiences, key broadcast satellite operations and services remained with EchoStar,” said Dish president and CEO Erik Carlson. “This transaction brings those operations, including the BSS satellites, associated assets and key team members, in house and we expect those additions will create operational efficiencies and improve both free cash flow and EBITDA.”
With this deal Dish now owns EchoStar VII, EchoStar X, EchoStar XI, EchoStar XII, EchoStar XIV, EchoStar XVI, EchoStar XXIII, Nimiq 5 and QuetzSat-1 satellites.
How exactly Dish plans to use this for Sling TV is unknown at this time. For now, we will have to wait and see how Dish uses its larger share of EchoStar.
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