For one, Dish Network or DirecTV might do a deal with Apple to offer consumers who normally default to their local cable company another reason to give them a try.
While it is hard to predict how the FCC will rule, we do think this is the first shot by DISH in what could be a long and messy court battle for Clearwire.
The upshot of the filing is that the company at this point under the terms of the Sprint deal could have drawn down some new financing from Sprint, but has opted not to do so while it continues to review the counter-offer from Dish.
On Friday, news was continuing to emerge about a flurry of lawsuits between Dish Network, which last week released a tool to let its DVR customers do exactly that, and the major television networks.
We already know the FCC isn't best pleased about the fact 93 million Americans are making do without access to home broadband, and this latest event was an opportunity for it to dish some more info on its forthcoming National Broadband Plan.