CNN has an article explaining more on what it is that Echostar Dish Networks bought of spectrum in the US 700Mhz spectrum auction:

Dish Network bought a relatively thin slice of airwaves — a 6 megahertz block within the 700 MHz frequency band. The block covers most of the U.S. except New York, Los Angeles and Boston.

Verizon got 12 megahertz while ATT got 10 megahertz. So Dish Networks spectrum is slightly smaller, but it could still be used for a lot of things.. Verizon has got the only nationwide licence, ATT got coverage for 100% of the 200 largest cities in the USA while Dish Networks coverage is nationwide except New York, Los Angeles and Boston which Qualcomm picked up. Dish’s license holdings cover 76% of the U.S. population.

If anyone has ideas and knows what can be done with that kind of spectrum please post in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?t=14352

Dish Networks also invested 150 million dollars in the satellite Internet startup TerreStar, so in combination with that 6 megahertz of 700Mhz spectrum, perhaps the 700Mhz would be used partly for uploading, while the downloading could come directly from some kinds of satellites.

Perhaps the 6megahertz can be used for some kind of video-on-demand service in combination with the proposed white spaces in the unlicensed 700Mhz spectrum that Google wants to develop solutions for.

Or it could also maybe be used for SlingPlayer bandwidth to stream Slingbox content to an Archos wirelessly according to RCRnews.

It could also be used to display targeted Google advertising on regular satellite TV.

I hope that Echostar will be able to deploy their 700Mhz network using net neutrality, thus installing small broadcast boxes in people’s homes, and asking people to hook that box up using Ethernet to their existing broadband Internet connection or enter in a WPA password to their local WiFi access point. And this way re-broadcasting that existing bandwidth on their spectrum and simply providing their services over IP and using other ISPs bandwidth. They can still setup their own broadcast antennas on high masts, perhaps hooking up to Google’s dark fiber bandwidth when it is available. But if they could also use some of their 12.7 million existing Satellite TV customers broadband Internet bandwdith, forward and use that, in cooperation with FON. This could speed deployment up and increase the available coverage and bandwidth.