Just one day after SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son attacked the Dish Network over its plan to buy U.S. wireless carrier Sprint, Dish chairman Charlie Ergen hit back by saying that Sprint would benefit by being owned by an American company and not by a foreign company such as the Japanese SoftBank. Reuters reports Ergen said that in addition to offering a higher price for Sprint, Dish would be the best choice to run Sprint because “we are an American company and the modernization of Sprint’s network will have to be done from the U.S.”
Ergen went on to say that “you have to climb the towers here and you’ll have to have U.S. employees who speak English,” while adding that “it doesn’t mean that the other guys are bad, it’s just that we have an advantage.”
The deadline for Dish to intervene and buy Sprint also got a little tighter Thursday after the Securities and Exchange Commission put its stamp of approval on Sprint’s merger with SoftBank. If all goes according to plan, SoftBank says it plans to finalize its Sprint acquisition by July 1st.
