DISH
#I would say the odds are greater that we wouldn't do something before the deadline than we would.
But you just never know.
My experience with deals are that people can sit around and talk about them and they're just not going to happen, but when somebody decides to do something, they move pretty quick.
I agree with your statement, there are a lot of complexities around this auction that are going to take some time.
I don't think that anybody really knows exactly what this auction is going to entail, including probably the FCC.
It's a courageous act on the part of the FCC to try to do it on this time line, and I commend them for that.
But it is complicated.
No.
<UNK>, sorry, can you just clarify your second part about being the front end.
Yes.
Okay.
To your first question about DVR, I think it is something that our customers do request.
And as <UNK> mentioned, we have development underway on a lot of different things that could enhance the product, whether it's multistream or DVR or other features and things like that.
There's nothing to announce right now but it is something that we look at.
What we are trying to do is trying to follow what our customers want, really, and deliver what they want.
In terms of your question about being the front end, as you see more and more these segmented OTT offerings, whether it's HBO or CBS or Showtime, I think you do get to a situation where it will become more complicated for customers to assemble their bundle that they want because they may not be all on the same devices, even.
Or if they're on the same device, you have to switch between this app and that app.
It does cause a little bit of ---+ I think it increases the complexity for content discovery.
As you know, we have HBO within Sling TV but we also increasingly participate with some of the devices on their strategy for content discovery where we will feed them all our metadata about the programming that we have so that they can surface it not only to existing customers but no non-Sling customers.
There's a lot of people that are focused on solving that problem that I think does have the risk of getting more complicated with more fragmented OTT services launching.
I think you answered your own question.
First of all, there's a ton of stuff that we need to do regardless of how we go strategically.
There's just a lot of stuff we have to do anyway.
But we don't have any particular ---+ for the most part, I hope our investors are long-term investors and people aren't trying to trade in their stock to make a quick buck.
Certainly from a management perspective we only have five rules but one of them is think long term.
And I think where we as a team have thought about things long term, it's normally paid pretty good dividends for us.
They got a different perspective.
But we are six years into a wireless strategy, I think we are six years into it.
Whether we go another year or two years or three years before we go in a particular direction I don't think is that material to us.
I know that there's always a lot of angst on the press and investors for things to happen.
We don't make a lot of decisions but the ones you do make on the strategic side better have good chance of success.
We have private conversations with people and we are not going to talk about them on a public conference call.
Look, I think that any number of companies would strategically commit malpractice if they didn't look at the spectrum position that we have because it would be a strategic advantage over their competitors.
The need for spectrum is only getting greater.
The government, congress has passed rules to go look for more spectrum, but I think it's 30 megahertz by 2022.
So, there's just not a lot of spectrum in the mid-band, high-capacity spectrum that's going to be available.
If you're in the wireless business or you use wireless spectrum, you have to look at protecting yourself.
Real estate is important and spectrum is real estate.
We are well positioned to do something with our spectrum.
We will do something with the spectrum.
It will get built out.
How it gets built out and whether we do it with somebody else or whether somebody else buys it and leases it and builds it out remains to be determined.
The alternative for us would have been to do what DirecTV did, which was just to buy back our stock and then sell to a company, sell our video business to a company, and we decided to take a longer-term strategic view of it.
In answer to your second one, Viacom has been a long-term partner so it would take a lot for us not to do a deal with them.
But they have to be realistic that their ratings have deteriorated over the last three or four years, in some cases in a material way, and that the world has changed somewhat.
And to the extent they were given a fair deal, I think, and there's a reality embedded in that deal, I think we will get a deal done with them.
My challenge to our team is look for every reason that you can to do a deal with Viacom.
Internally we are not looking at the alternative of not doing a deal with them.
It's just that we know what bureau measurement is, we know, within our consumer base, what people watch and place a value on.
We know there's alternatives for their product today that weren't there three or four years ago.
You can get kids programming on YouTube and Netflix, and it's quite good.
And some of it's even Viacom product.
So, the world has changed a little bit.
But, on the other hand, they have great content.
They still are big part of what we have done.
They have helped us.
I think we are a pretty loyal company.
They have helped us be successful so it would take a lot for us not to do a deal, but those things can happen.
What was the other question.
Oh, the cable industry ---+ it's probably a better question for the cable industry.
First, there's consolidation in the industry, and is that allowed to take place or not, and if so are there conditions and what are those.
But I think the cable industry is potentially poised to be a serious competitor in the wireless industry.
They certainly have the ability to put their toe in the water and just do an MVNO deal.
The cable industry has had stumbles in the past in the wireless industry.
In fact, they have sold out of it.
So, whether you jump back in again with both feet or whether you maybe look at the MVNO deal and see how it goes, they have a lot of options as to what they may or may not do.
To the extent that they got in the industry, obviously it would put pressure on the incumbents, and certainly put spectrum pressure on the incumbents.
I feel like we are positioned pretty well.
The details are pretty similar, the two cases.
The one difference is that Charter doesn't own NBC.
Other than that, it's the exact ---+ if you look at what the FCC and the Justice Department said, there's nothing about the Charter deal that varies from that to be allowed.
As we know, Washington picks winners and losers.
I'm sure that Charter is well aware of that and they will spend a lot of time getting their deal done.
Which essentially means consumers have one choice for broadband, and broadband has become ---+ you only have one choice for electricity but that's regulated.
So, an unregulated market where you only, from a practical reason, have one choice of broadband is a serious issue and something that this Administration has been very focused on.
But it will have repercussions throughout the industry, for sure, either way that they decide.
It's certainly, I believe, is a path of where video is going to go.
In China already the vast majority of viewing minutes are on mobile devices for video.
If you're a content company, you just can't ---+ again, it would be malpractice to put your head in the sand and not think about how you're going to get on mobile devices.
And, of course, the advertising for mobile devices is now close to 80% of Facebook's revenue and it was 0% three years ago.
All the trends are moving in that direction, <UNK>.
Obviously, one of our visions was to use our spectrum for video because it's, again, high-capacity spectrum.
I think some companies will see it get there sooner than others and they will set the rules.
I don't think you want to be a follower in that.
The way I would say it is we have some of the building blocks of that in terms of we have technology, we have spectrum and we have video customers, we have an in-home installation network, we have encryption, we have billing, we have customer service.
So, we have a lot of the building blocks but we don't have all the building blocks.
We don't have things like back haul and WiFi and things that the cable industry has.
No one company today has all the building blocks.
AT&T is probably closer today than they were before the DirecTV acquisition.
We just think that ultimately that's going to sort its way out.
And typically what happens is something happens in the industry and somebody makes a move and somebody starts gaining market share because of it and the other people have to react to it.
And whether we are on the front end of that or the back end of that, I would much rather be on the front end of that.
But whether that happens or not, I don't know.
