• by Wayne Friedman , December 5, 2017

Charlie Ergen, founder and chairman/CEO of Dish Network, will drop his role as CEO of the company to pursue the company’s “emerging wireless business.”

Dish, which has long sought to compete with big mobile technology players AT&T and Verizon, spent $6.2 billion on wireless spectrum during an FCC auction earlier this year.

Erik Carlson, president/COO, will be promoted to the CEO role, and will continue to report to Ergen.

Dish Network also announced other executive shifts.

Brian Neylon will be executive vice president/group president of Dish TV. He had been executive vice president, customer acquisition and retention.

Warren Schlichting is now executive vice president/group president of Sling TV. Schlichting had been executive vice president of marketing, programming and media sales. He will continue to have oversight of the Dish Media Sales and Dish programming.

John Swieringa succeeds Carlson as COO at Dish, overseeing all operational activities for Dish TV, Sling TV and wireless groups, as well as customer-support centers, and the company’s in-home installation workforce and IT department. Swieringa had been executive vice president at Dish.

Vivek Khemka, executive vice president/chief technology officer of Dish Technologies, will join Carlson's leadership team. Dish Technologies is responsible for technology strategy, product management, engineering, product development, supply chain management, broadcast operations and OTT delivery.

Mid-morning trading of Dish Network’s stock was down 0.4% to $51.76. Its stock traded at a high of $66.00 last July, falling to $46.49 in late October of this year.

Recently, media analysts upgraded Dish’s stock, as a number of communications companies -- T-Mobile and Verizon in particular -- are possibly looking to make a deal for Dish’s spectrum assets.

For its third-quarter period, Dish reported a decline of 129,000 subscribers. Revenue for the company sank 5% to $3.58 billion.