Things were looking rough for Charles Ergen for a while.

In the fall of 2023, the satellite mogul saw his estimated net worth fall to under $800 million, down from its 2015 peak of $20.1 billion. That’s when the share prices of his companies EchoStar and Dish hit 25-year and all-time lows, respectively. Dish was losing money, staggering under $21 billion in debt and hemorrhaging pay TV subscribers. Meanwhile, the outlook of the wireless network he’d promised the government to develop appeared uncertain. Many analysts believed his businesses were destined for bankruptcy.

Now Ergen, a former professional poker player, appears to have upgraded his junk hand. On Tuesday, EchoStar announced that AT&T had agreed to buy its 600 MHz and 3.45 GHz spectrum licenses—among its most valuable spectrum—for around $23 billion. The share price of EchoStar closed at $50.87 on Tuesday, up 70% from the day before. That’s higher than it had been at any time since spinning off Dish in 2008 (the companies, cofounded by Ergen, merged again at the end of 2023 and now operate under the EchoStar brand). Ergen’s estimated net worth soared with it, hitting $6.6 billion on Tuesday—up from $3.6 billion hours earlier. By the end of trading on Wednesday, his fortune had more than doubled to $7.8 billion.

But behind his personal good fortune are more complicated consequences for consumers. The sale dooms his promised nationwide 5G mobile network, and with it hopes of a more competitive cell service market anytime soon. EchoStar will be unable to develop that network without the low-band and mid-band spectrum it’s just signed away; its press release acknowledged that network elements “will be decommissioned over time.” (EchoStar did not respond to a request for comment.)

The Federal Communications Commission had approved the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint in 2019 with the prerequisite that a new mobile operator replace Sprint—otherwise, the United States would be left with only the “big three”: T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon. Ergen, who had been buying up spectrum licenses since 2008, was best positioned to oblige. The FCC extended his soon-to-expire licenses and allowed him to buy Sprint’s prepaid wireless brand. The condition: He needed to launch a postpaid brand to compete with the “big three” and develop a widespread 5G network.

The commission required that Ergen meet a series of aggressive deadlines for building out that network, and prohibited him from selling his 600 MHz licenses to “big three” operators before late 2026. They didn’t want Ergen to do exactly what he’s doing now—make an initial public effort to become a fourth challenger, but quickly drop the attempt and hawk his spectrum. Even at the time, some onlookers suspected that Ergen’s plan was to buy spectrum low and later sell high.

In May, the commission launched an investigation into whether Ergen was meeting his 5G buildout deadlines. EchoStar said the probe was threatening its business, skipped loan interest payments and appeared close to filing for bankruptcy. Then Ergen met with President Trump and the FCC chairman in June and somehow resolved the issue, Bloomberg reported; the commission pivoted from pushing him to build a network to pushing him to sell his capabilities to do so.

Tuesday’s spectrum deal also sounds the death knell for some of EchoStar’s cutting-edge software. The company was developing the first “open radio access network,” or O-RAN, in the United States. With a cloud-native design, it was set to be faster, cheaper and more customizable than other networks.

“That’s the unfortunate part I see in all of this,” says Roy Chua, founder and principal at AvidThink. “The mobile network they had built was actually quite innovative, and they did it in record time with a very efficient spend.” (Some of EchoStar’s O-RAN innovations have since spread around the world, he adds, and so haven’t been completely lost.)

The deal is certainly a boon for Ergen and other shareholders. Though EchoStar could eventually shut down—as customers continue to switch from pay TV to streaming, the future of its satellite TV and internet provider is barely brighter than the 5G network—the company can likely now take full advantage of selling off its holdings for a tidy sum. It still has roughly two-thirds of its spectrum left, which could lead to a windfall as big as the one from AT&T, says Chua. Potential customers include the “big three,” as well as Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Another element that bodes well for EchoStar is that AT&T is paying a premium for the spectrum. It will fork over $23 billion; Ergen bought the licenses for a combined $13.5 billion in 2017 and 2022. The sale will also give EchoStar the liquidity to pay off much of its $26.9 billion in debt. The transaction is expected to close in mid-2026, unless regulators block it. Morningstar pegs that risk at 25%.

Shareholders are betting on the deal’s success. “I don’t think anybody has believed that EchoStar would actually be a going concern as a real business for at least two or three years,” says Craig Moffett, senior managing director of MoffettNathanson. “If you owned the equity, you believed that—whether they went into bankruptcy or didn’t—when the spectrum was liquidated, it would go for a high enough price that there would be money left over for the equity holders.” He adds that even more cash could have been doled out had EchoStar filed for bankruptcy, because then its lease tower agreements would likely have been annulled, leaving fewer liabilities: “It’s a strange situation, where the equity holders arguably would be better off if the company declared bankruptcy.”

EchoStar still owns Boost, the cell brand that was supposed to challenge the existing giants in the market. But it will now keep running on top of AT&T’s network, and to a lesser extent, T-Mobile’s, rather than eventually shifting to its own network. The Boost business is poised to remain much smaller than Ergen had suggested. It may have trouble staying competitive at all.

Says Moffett, “We may all go to our graves never knowing whether Charlie ever had any intention whatsoever to be a telecom operator.”