EchoStar, which recently agreed to sell its Dish and Sling TV businesses to DirecTV to create a new pay-TV giant, lost 43,000 net pay-TV subscribers in the third quarter, compared with a drop of 64,000 in the year-ago period, the company said on Tuesday.The company disclosed in a regulatory filing that it added around 145,000 net Sling TV subscribers in the latest quarter, compared with a year-ago gain of 117,000. It ended September with 2.14 million Sling TV subs. EchoStar also recorded a net decline of about 188,000 in its traditional Dish satellite TV subscribers, ending September with 5.89 million.That left its total pay-TV sub figure at 8.03 million, down from 8.07 million as of the end of June.EchoStar also unveiled on Tuesday “the successful completion of various transformative strategic transactions positioning its business for the further enhancement of its nationwide Open RAN 5G Network.” The transactions include around $5 billion in debt restructuring and the addition of “$5.2 billion of fresh capital” to its balance sheet for “investment in (a) nationwide Open RAN 5G network and other general corporate purposes.”Added the company: “Today’s announcements highlight the tremendous value of EchoStar’s spectrum asset portfolio serving as the sturdy platform on which EchoStar will accelerate its deployment of a nationwide wireless service to vigorously compete with incumbent wireless carriers.”Telecom mogul Charlie Ergen‘s EchoStar is led by Hamid Akhavan as president and CEO, with Ergen serving as executive chairman. It was created as of the start of the year via an all-stock merger of satellite TV and streaming service provider Dish Network with broadband and communications provider EchoStar Corp.
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