Japan’s SoftBank is in talks with Dish Network on a fixed wireless broadband partnership, the chief executive officer of SoftBank told Reuters on Thursday.
Dish, which has some 55 MHz of frequencies, mostly in the 2GHz, would likely use some of Clearwire’s 120 MHz of frequencies in the 2.6 GHz band. Dish, of course, is looking for towers and infrastructure to support its own frequencies.
Dish now has 10 MHz near 2GHz (recently acquired from the H Block auction), and 40 MHz of MSS spectrum adjacent to it. Dish also owns a 5 GHz swath on the 700 MHz band. That totals 55 MHz.
Today Sprint Spark is delivering wireless peak speeds of 60Mbps, although coverage is limited. Sprint’s Network Vision currently combines 4G FD-LTE at 800 MHz and 1.9 GHz and TD-LTE at 2.5GHz spectrum, with carrier aggregation in the 2.5GHz band. With more than 120 MHz available at 2.6 GHz and 8