After Dish Network paid $712 million for airwaves in the last spectrum auction, there was a ton of speculation as to what the satellite TV company was going to do with it. Now, the company says it is thinking of using the licenses to build a mobile TV service with the help of a yet-to-be-determined partner, Multichannel News reports. The company purchased the airwaves in the big March auction, winning enough licenses to cover the entire country, except for New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston. Because the cost of building a network would be high—between $500 million to $2 billion, some analysts estimate—it’s likely the company will take time to make any decision.

Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen and vice chairman Carl Vogel said during its Q1 conference call that they still have to pick the right technology, the right business model, and the right partner, before it rolls out mobile TV. “Overall, our intent is to certainly bring in partners,” Vogel said. “We’re a long, long, long way from building anything out. We’re a long, long, long way from deciding who our partners will be and when, but we do think it is a valuable piece of spectrum that gives us an opportunity to have numerous strategic discussions that will provide an asset that’s additive to the business we already have.”

AT&T (NYSE: T) sounded defensive about the speed of its network during a presentation to Wall Street analysts this morning. Currently, AT&T offers DSL-like speeds where it has HSDPA deployed, but AT&T’s Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said at a Morgan Stanley event today that by next year, it will start delivering speeds up to 20 mbps, and by 2010, they will surge to an impressive 100 mbps. Without saying it, I’m sure AT&T wanted us to point out that it will have a much faster network than the one being proposed by the high-profile Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel and Clearwire joint venture that dominated the headlines last week. The yet-to-be approved Clearwire-Sprint JV, backed by Intel (NSDQ: INTC), Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and a handful of cable operators, expects to deliver around 6 mbps to 140 million people by the end of 2010.

De la Vega’s comments were likely a reaction to Clearwire and Sprint’s claims that they will be the first to roll out 4G in the U.S., and will be two years ahead of the competition. AT&T, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and T-Mobile have all chosen to use LTE, a technology that hasn’t even been standardized yet. But AT&T is essentially arguing that it doesn’t matter—through simple software upgrades, it can have much faster speeds than Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). “It’s clear to us, we are in the early stages of the wireless data revolution, and there are significant opportunities ahead as we ramp up,” de la Vega said. “Through interim steps, we can deliver more speeds everyday. It’s a promising time for the business, and we have a strong record of executing, and we have a strong spectrum position that gives us a great foundation for delivering…We are in a new age—as I call it, a great age—of wireless. It is just ahead of us and we are positioned to lead.”

Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) confirmed today that it will support the Linux mobile-phone operating system, and join the LiMo Foundation as a core member, signaling its commitment to the platform. As part of the announcement, LiMo announced a list of other new supporters, including SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM), Infineon Technologies, Kvaleberg, Mozilla, Red Bend Software, Sagem Mobiles, and SFR. [Releases]

Kyle Malady, Verizon’s VP-network, said in a conference call this morning that Linux will be added to the platforms Verizon already supports, including Windows Mobile, Palm (NSDQ: PALM) and Brew. It does not preclude the No. 2 carrier from joining Google’s (NSDQ: GOOG) Android platform in the future, Malady said. LiMo was chosen over Google’s Open Handset Alliance because it already had handsets in the marketplace, and had a variety of members crossing all sections of the industry. “We anticipate that as we move down the path of Linux, we’ll be looking at it as the OS of choice in handset lineup moving forward,” he said. Verizon will first launch lower-end phones, and move up to smartphone and PDAs with the first phone expected in 2009. Verizon will encourage its handset partners to use the OS even if it is not a part of LiMo. Verizon, which will make a big financial commitment by hiring people, expects the open platform to lower development costs.

Verizon’s commitment to LiMo should not be too much of a surprise given that its partial owner, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), is a founding member; however, it’s the largest commitment by any North American carrier. AT&T (NYSE: T), Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel and T-Mobile have all come out in favor of Android.

Targeting Enterprise
ZDNet UK writes that LiMo is in talks with a couple of major Linux distributors to bridge enterprise and mobile. “The principle area of interest [regarding these two companies] is evolving the software stack such that it’s really fit for purpose as a mobile platform in the enterprise segment, and will support applications and services for enterprise which interoperate comfortably on mobile devices and desktop devices,” said Gillis. “It’s seamless enterprise computing, basically.”

Ovum analyst Adam Leach is quoted as being surprised by this because the consumer space is seen as a bigger opportunity—but if a company sells Linux software to enterprises it makes sense they’d want to connect mobiles to that rather than targeting a whole new audience. Leach also said the latest announcement makes Android look bad: “After a good start and big fanfare, we’ve just seen prototype demos. It seems to me that they’re not making the progress that we would expect.”