tmobileThe battle for who might buy T-Mobile is heating up.

A report by Reuters today said that Dish Network is considering a bid for the Bellevue-based wireless carrier. It also says that the satellite provider has already reached out to Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s parent company and majority shareholder about a potential takeover, and that company’s chairman Charlie Ergen wants to expand Dish’s holdings outside the TV market to take advantage of the wireless spectrum that Dish currently controls.

The news comes after a report last week saying that Sprint was also interested in acquiring the carrier, and plans to make a bid for it in the first half of 2014. The anonymous sources cited in the article said that Dish isn’t surely going to make a bid for the company, but will enter the fray if Sprint bids.

Dish tried to acquire Sprint earlier this year, but lost out to a bid by Japan-based SoftBank. It also was a suitor of Bellevue-based Clearwire, which ended up in the hands of Sprint.

A bid by Dish may go over better with regulators than one from Sprint, considering the Justice Department blocked a $39 billion deal that would have let AT&T buy T-Mobile in 2011 because of fears that it would stifle competition.

T-Mobile, which is the No. 4 U.S. carrier and has been undergoing a radical transformation under the direction of CEO John Legere, was not immediately available for comment on this piece.

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