The Dish Network made a $25.5 billion bid Monday to merge with Sprint Nextel.

Dish said that a merger between theitself and the nation's third largest wireless carrier could roll television, high-speed Internet and cellphone services into a single package that would be faster and more affordable for consumers.

"It really means that we're going to give consumers what every consumer wants," Charlie Ergen, Dish Network's chairman, told the New York Times in a phone interview. "They want broadband and video and voice in their home and want the exact same thing outside the home. And they want it to look and feel and priced outside the same as it is inside."

Under the terms of its proposed bid, Dish Network said it was offering a cash-and-stock deal worth about 13 percent more than SoftBank's bid, which Softbank agreed in October to acquire a 70 percent stake in the American cellphone operator in a complex deal worth about $20 billion.

"The Dish proposal clearly presents Sprint shareholders with a superior alternative to the pending SoftBank proposal," Ergen, said in a statement.

Dish Network values its offer at $7 a share, including $4.76 in cash and the remainder in its shares.The offer is 12.5 percent above Sprint Nextel's closing share price on Friday, according to the New York Times.

Ergen said a "Dish/Sprint merger will create the only company that can offer customers a convenient, fully integrated, nationwide bundle of in- and out-of-home video, broadband and voice services."

No further details of what Dish would exactly do with Sprint Nextel has been released.

"Sprint Nextel today confirmed it has received an unsolicited proposal from Dish Network to acquire the company," said Roni Singleton, a Sprint spokeswoman. "The company said that its board of directors will evaluate this proposal carefully and consistent with its fiduciary and legal duties. The company does not plan to comment further until the appropriate time."