Dish fights off critics, claims 5G efforts on track

Dish Network has cleared some hurdles in its long march to become a mobile network operator, but considerable work and uncertainty remains.

Despite the calamity brought on by COVID-19, Dish still plans to launch 5G service in a single market with a network core before the year ends, Chairman Charlie Ergen said.

Dish expects to spend between $250 million and $500 million on its wireless division this year, but added that it will probably be at the lower end of that range. Ergen also again claimed that the company is confident it can build a nationwide network for $10 billion, albeit with some caveats.

“We haven’t done a good job of presenting that and articulating that,” he said on the company’s first quarter of 2020 earnings call. “That doesn’t include spectrum purchases, it doesn’t include millimeter-wave (mmWave) buildout and those kinds of things, but it includes that total macro layer that’s competitive in the United States, well beyond the FCC requirements.”

Funding for that effort is a major concern among analysts, particularly as the decline of Dish’s satellite and over-the-top TV businesses accelerates. “Building a network will self-evidently be an enormously costly undertaking. Much of the funding for that undertaking will have to come from their satellite TV business,” analysts at MoffettNathanson wrote in a research note.

For now, Dish’s executive team isn’t flinching and it doesn’t anticipate a need to secure additional funding until next year. Meanwhile, it has a lot to accomplish before then.

―SDX Central