Can EchoStar/DISH Invoke the ‘Force Majeure’ Clause to Avoid Paying Contractual Obligations?

Men in suits with contract paper on desk, one man handing the other a thick envelope.

An interesting battle is brewing over whether EchoStar (NASDAQ: SATS) must pay tower companies and contractors for commitments made while its subsidiary’s DISH Wireless network was being constructed. It’s one that involves hundreds of millions of dollars with tower companies that support DISH’s roughly 24,000 cell sites and dozens of contractors who were hired to install these sites.

In the company’s 3Q25 earnings call, Charlie Ergen, EchoStar Chairman and CEO, claimed that the FCC’s ultimatum in May for the company to either activate key spectrum blocks or lose them, was a “force majeure” event. EchoStar responded by selling blocks of spectrum to AT&T (NYSE: T) and SpaceX for a total of around $40 billion, along with turning over the RAN portion of its 5G network to AT&T under a hybrid MNO arrangement, Inside Towers reported. Though the deals still must be approved, EchoStar believes that, under the circumstances, it should be relieved of having to pay existing tower leases and for contracted work already completed but not yet paid.

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