Dish will pay AT&T $5 billion to serve its mobile customers

AT&T is set to provide voice, data and messaging services to Dish's Boost Mobile, Ting and Republic Wireless customers for the next 10 years. Dish plans to pay AT&T at least $5 billion as part of the deal, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

To serve customers of both companies, AT&T may be able to use parts of the wireless spectrum to which Dish holds licences, as The Wall Street Journal notes. Before now, T-Mobile provided services to the nearly 9 million customers of Dish’s mobile brands.

The deal might draw the attention of regulators, who enabled Dish to join the mobile market when it approved the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint. The conditions of the complex deal included T-Mobile divesting Boost. The plan was for Dish to rent services from T-Mobile for seven years while it built its own mobile network.