What's happening
Dish, the fourth US carrier, has been racing to deploy its 5G network in time to meet an FCC deadline to cover 20% of the US population -- but it's only announced service in one city so far.
Why it matters
Dish took on its fourth carrier role when Sprint and T-Mobile merged, but the FCC expected Dish to cover enough of the US by a June 14 deadline. Dish could face fines and lose spectrum licenses if it fails.
Dish Network, the satellite TV giant and fledgling mobile carrier, is poised to miss its Tuesday's deadline to offer 5G wireless service to at least 20% of the US population.
Dish acquired wireless spectrum for years, but very little of a wireless network materialized. Then in 2020, Dish entered the mobile market by acquiring some of Sprint's mobile licenses, which Sprint was shedding as part of its merger with T-Mobile. The complex transaction suddenly made Dish the country's fourth-biggest carrier and led to the creation of Dish Wireless service.
But the Federal Communications Commission had a stipulation. To ensure competition, the regulatory agency required Dish to make sure 20% of Americans would be covered by its 5G network by June 14, 2022, a target the carrier is poised to miss.
Although Dish has been building out its network, the carrier has only confirmed 5G service in one US city, which went live last month. Unless Dish has quietly activated service in over two dozen more cities since then, it seems the carrier hasn't met its FCC-mandated target.
A host of issues conspired to trip up Dish. The company acknowledged during an earnings call earlier this year that it had underestimated how much work it would take to get its own 5G network up and running. Supply chain issues only made the situation worse.
It's unclear whether Dish will suffer any consequences for potentially missing the deadline. Neither Dish nor the FCC responded to a request for comment.
Here's what you need to know about Dish's 5G plans:
Why did the FCC put this requirement on Dish?
The deadline is the result of a huge shift in the US mobile industry two years ago, when T-Mobile and Sprint combined in a $26.5 billion deal. The FCC nearly quashed the deal out of concern that it would lead to market concentration by taking one carrier out of the market. Only AT&T, Verizon and the new T-Mobile would remain.
But Dish, which tried to add mobile service to its satellite TV offerings a decade ago, saw the carrier consolidation as an opportunity to become a mobile player. The company paid $5 billion for Boost Mobile, Sprint's prepaid mobile brand, as well as Sprint's 800MHz wireless spectrum specifically for 5G. Dish also secured rights to use part of T-Mobile's 5G network.
Dish still needed to build out its own 5G network, a task that it started mostly from scratch. To ensure Dish mobile customers would have solid service, the FCC originally set March 7, 2020, as the deadline for the company to have its 5G network up and running. The FCC also stipulated that coverage should reach 20% of the US population.
The deadline, however, was pushed back at Dish's request several times. The latest deadline was set for June 14, 2022. Dish Chairman and co-founder Charlie Ergen decided against requesting another extension and expected that the carrier would meet the FCC deadline, the Fierce Wireless news site reported in May.
Did Dish make the deadline?
It doesn't seem that Dish has met its goal of covering 20% of the US population by June 14. According to the FCC's terms, failing to meet the deadline could result in Dish's license for wireless spectrums being revoked and paying fines of up to $2.2 billion, the Light Reading news site reported earlier this year.
How far along is Dish's 5G network?
In early May, Dish made its 5G service publicly available in Las Vegas. Customers sign up for the service through "Project Genesis," an early access program that costs $30 per month and currently is only available on Motorola Edge Plus handsets. (The service plans accommodate other phones in the future.)
In February, Dish had said its 5G service would be live in more than two dozen cities by the June deadline. And after the Las Vegas service launched to the public, the carrier published a list of 113 cities it planned to include in Project Genesis. As recently as its first quarter earnings call in May, Dish had said it remained confident that it would activate 5G service in enough cities to reach 20% of the US population by the June deadline.
The carrier, however, hasn't made public where 5G service has gone live other than Las Vegas, which is the only city listed with active service on the Project Genesis site.
In addition to securing Sprint's 800MHz range, Dish has also bid in several separate auctions to secure 5G spectrum licenses. These include spending $7.3 billion in January on midband 5G in the 3.45GHz spectrum and $913 million on the so-called C-band 5G in 2020. Combined, the chunks of connected 5G spectrum will serve as the backbone of its service.
While Dish can use some of T-Mobile's 5G spectrum for years to come as part of agreements between the carriers, Dish also paid AT&T at least $5 billion in July 2021 for a 10-year contract to lean on the latter's 5G network while it builds out its own infrastructure.
What's taking Dish so long?
Unlike other carriers, which built their 5G networks on existing 4G LTE, Dish has more or less been building its network from scratch. It's also building the service on OpenRAN, a flexible type of cellular network that uses infrastructure from multiple vendors.
Dish executives have acknowledged that they'd underestimated the work it would take to build their network and that they hadn't anticipated supply chain issues.
"dish" - Google News
June 14, 2022 at 07:00PM
https://ift.tt/NVuXLYj
Dish's 5G Rollout Was Supposed to Hit a Milestone Today: What You Need To Know - CNET
"dish" - Google News
https://ift.tt/UofGO5R
No comments:
Post a Comment