Lowell McAdam, the CEO of Verizon Communications, has poured cold water on the notion that his company might follow AT&T’s lead and purchase a DTH broadcaster.
Speaking at a TMT conference in Boston today, McAdam said: “I don’t feel that owning a…
Lowell McAdam, the CEO of Verizon Communications, has poured cold water on the notion that his company might follow AT&T’s lead and purchase a DTH broadcaster.
Speaking at a TMT conference in Boston today, McAdam said: “I don’t feel that owning a satellite company is something I’m finding intriguing at this point.”
Following AT&T’s US$48.5bn acquisition of DirecTV announced on 18 May speculation has mounted that Verizon could buy America’s other DTH provider, Dish Network.
“I know there are reports out there that we are talking to Dish,” McAdam told the conference. “I can tell you that’s somebody’s fantasy.”
He said he thought the AT&T/DirecTV deal made sense for those companies, but that Verizon was not looking to do another merger following its US$130bn consolidation of Verizon Wireless. The deal closed earlier this year and McAdam said Verizon was focused on paying that off.
McAdam conceded that Dish had some interesting assets and there were things the company could do with Verizon, but he said that he was more interested in over-the-top, mobile-first video services as opposed to what he called a “linear play”.
Asked to comment on the prospect of a possible merger between Sprint Corp and T-Mobile US, the CEO said: “If it becomes a three player market the economist would argue that we’d probably be better off … Typically three player markets are more stable than four player markets.”
McAdam also took the opportunity to praise the regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), on its rules for the AWS-3 auction later this year. The FCC has not put any limits on how much spectrum Verizon can buy in the tender.
However, McAdam was cautious about the 600 MHz auction scheduled to take place in 2015, whereby broadcasters will surrender their licences which will then be repurposed so that they are suitable to offer wireless services and sold to the mobile network operators.
Last week the FCC announced the rules for the incentive auction, which will severely limit how much spectrum Verizon can buy.
McAdam said there was “a lot more information that needs to be gleaned from the process”, not least how ready the broadcasters were to play ball.
