US tower company American Tower confirmed last week that Dish Wireless has defaulted on tower rental payments that are part of a multi-year Strategic Collocation Agreement (SCA).

The defaulted payments were confirmed by ATC via an 8-K filing, and comes as little surprise after Dish said it's no longer obligated to honor the agreement after selling significant spectrum sales to AT&T and SpaceX last year.

Dish argues that the company was forced to sell the spectrum following pressure from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), meaning its agreement with ATC "constituted force majeure."

The company is in a similar spat with Crown Castle, another US tower operator, and also defaulted on payments to the towerco earlier this month.

Both American Tower and Crown Castle have filed lawsuits against Dish for the latter's attempts to get out of its long-term contract.

"As previously disclosed, the company filed a complaint seeking a declaratory judgment that Dish has not been excused from its obligations under the SCA, that the SCA remains in full force and effect, and that Dish remains required to perform all of its obligations under the SCA," said American Tower in its filing.

In late August, AT&T announced it would pay $23 billion to Dish's parent company EchoStar to acquire approximately 30 MHz of nationwide 3.45 GHz mid-band spectrum and roughly 20 MHz of nationwide 600 MHz low-band spectrum for around $23bn in an all-cash transaction.

Just two weeks later, Elon Musk's SpaceX struck a $17 billion deal to snap up EchoStar's AWS-4 (Advanced Wireless Spectrum) and H-block spectrum licenses.

It stems back to EchoStar's run-in with the FCC after the regulator's chair, Brendan Carr, said in May that the agency would investigate EchoStar's use of 5G spectrum as the company continues its 5G build-out across the US.

Following the spectrum sales, EchoStar's Boost Mobile will transition to a "hybrid" MVNO via AT&T's mobile network.