With DISH’s announcement yesterday that it has signed seven new tower agreements, the company is hoping to keep priming the pump in anticipation of a nationwide 5G rollout. With an eye on the shot clock, the deal provides access to 4,000 towers nationwide and follows other arrangements in the past few months with Crown Castle and Vertical Bridge. Crown’s deal offers 20,000 site locations and Vertical Bridge’s over 300,000 in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. DISH projected its initial rollout to be at around 50,000 sites, but now will likely top that, according to market analyst Spencer Kurn of New Street Research.
Dave Mayo, DISH Executive Vice President of Network Development, said the deal is “tremendously important for DISH’s rapid roll-out of a new, nationwide 5G network. Each of these new tower partners will play an important role in bringing our network to life.”
According to promises made to regulators when T-Mobile acquired Sprint, the company must offer 5G broadband service by deploying a core network to at least 20 percent of the U.S. population no later than June 14, 2022. By June 14, 2023, 70 percent of the country must have access to the DISH services on their AWS-4, Lower 700 E Block, and AWS H Block licenses. Per a deadline extension granted by the FCC in September of 2020, if DISH fails to meet the buildout deadline in specific markets, the license in that particular area terminates automatically.
Making up the seven new tower portfolios are: Harmoni Towers, Mobilitie, Parallel Infrastructure, Phoenix Tower International (PTI), Tillman Infrastructure, Tower Ventures and Vogue Towers. The vendors will also provide a variety of services to help accelerate the installation of 5G radios on the newly-acquired infrastructure.
“As PTI continues to grow across the world,” PTI’s CEO Dagan Kasavana told Inside Towers, “partnering with new wireless entrants like DISH is one of the hallmarks to PTI’s ongoing growth and success and is in line with our mission statement of helping our partners achieve their goals. We look forward to working closely with DISH on its build-out needs and being an infrastructure partner of choice to all of the Mobile Network Operators we work with internationally.”
“We love working with DISH. Our companies have an aligned mentality, we both love to move quickly and solve complex business challenges. We’re excited to be part of a new network rollout and to help DISH meet their goals. All of our towers have brand new steel and were constructed by us in the past few years, which makes processing apps quick and painless,” Alexander Schwartz, Vice President at Tillman Infrastructure told Inside Towers.
By Jim Fryer, Inside Towers Managing Editor
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