Amazon seemingly has flags planted in everything these days, from groceries and video games to space ships and drones. Their next move could position themselves as your wireless carrier.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon and Dish are currently in talks regarding a potential partnership on launching a wireless network. Dish has been snapping up spectrum to build the network out for some time and they’d have things taken care of on the deployment side. Amazon’s role, then, could be purely financial.
According to the report, Dish is looking to position their network more for the growing field of IoT, though it’s implied you could still buy and use phones and tablets on it.
In all likelihood, Dish wouldn’t necessarily look to supplant the behemoths known as AT&T and Verizon with this move, but instead use it to improve their footing against their current TV competitors who all seem keen on outfitting themselves with wireless to offer service bundles to their customers. Comcast is one such company who is making a play in that realm, and we can only imagine that more will be looking to encroach that space one way or another.
Of course, Verizon and AT&T are already pushing hard on the TV + Wireless arena. AT&T, for instance, added DirecTV to their roster to go alongside U-Verse to offer one of the most comprehensive telecom bundles in the game. Verizon has done much of the same, though with limited deployment on the TV end it makes for a nice gap that seasoned players will want to fill. We should be hearing more as we inch closer to Dish’s 2021 FCC deadline on using the high-speed spectrum they’ve been buying up.
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