CEO of Dish Network (NASDAQ:DISH), Charlie Ergen, has just announced that he is stepping down from his position to focus all of his energy on its wireless business.
The company has now named Erik Carlson as their new Chief Operating Officer. Ergen is a co-founder to the company and will retain his voting control and stay on the board, as chairman. Back in 2011, Ergen removed himself from the CEO position but ended up returning in February of 2015.
Early in the market today, Dish Network’s shares were up 1.2 percent to 52.55 a share.
Dish has been unable to score a deal with a wireless provider recently, despite cobbling together almost 95 MHz of radio spectrum.
The Federal Communications Commission has placed certain conditions on the company and is now requiring them to provide a wireless network due to their current MHz purchase. With the CEO stepping down to focus on this primarily, management has indicated this plan is in two phases and the first should be rolled out by 2020. The stipulations by the FCC were set for 2020 and Dish Network is hoping that their second phase will have a 5G network.
There have been talks of AT&T (NYSE:T) possibly acquiring Dish Network, as they purchased DirecTV back in 2015 but there have not been any clear movements towards this, lately. Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) has made a statement that their company is not interested in acquiring the Dish Network.
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