DISH: The Third Biggest Pay-TV Service

[Gregg Lengling]

Early Monday, EchoStar announced that its DISH Network satellite TV service had passed the 11 million customer mark. The company said the milestone pushed DISH Network over Time Warner Cable to become the third largest pay-TV provider in the United States.

In the last five years, DISH Network has added more than 7.6 million net new customers, EchoStar said. DISH Network passed the 10 million customer milestone in June.

Time Warner reports fourth quarter results Friday, including numbers for its Time Warner Cable unit. It's expected that Time Warner Cable will not report a significant increase in its video subscriber counts. Time Warner Cable said basic video cable subscribers declined 11,000 between second and third quarter.