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- David Zaslav says consumers have too much streaming choice, while Charlie Ergen has no choice but to sell wireless spectrum to Elon Musk
David Zaslav says consumers have too much streaming choice, while Charlie Ergen has no choice but to sell wireless spectrum to Elon Musk
Also in our weekly newsletter covering all things technology, media and telecom, we make an early-morning Sunday prediction of an Emmy cleanup for Netflix's 'Adolescence'
Daniel Frankel & David Bloom
September 15, 2025
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Elon Musk gets EchoStar’s AWS-4 spectrum, just as Brendan Carr and the FCC planned all along
Despite the very public collapse of his chainsaw-wielding role with the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk has retained insider status with the Trump administration.
As orchestrated beginning to end by the FCC, Chairman Charlie Ergen and EchoStar agreed to sell its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses to Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband company for $17 billion — half of it in cash, the other half in the form of stock in Starlink’s parent company, SpaceX. Additionally, SpaceX agreed to pay $2 billion toward interest payments on EchoStar’s debt through 2027.
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