DISH’s wireless cloud-based network will fill a need for private enterprises that the incumbent carriers will have a difficult time replicating, Dave Mayo, the company’s Executive Vice President, Network Development, told an audience at this week’s Connect (X) in Denver. He was interviewed by Robert McDowell, Former FCC Commissioner and Partner at Cooley LLP.
“Our competitors have legacy switches and those legacy switches really prevent the carrier from being able to put core network elements on the customers’ premise, particularly in enterprise locations,” Mayo said. “I think the incumbent carriers are going to have a hell of a time figuring out how to put core network elements so that customer data doesn’t have to leave a customer. It always has to come back to the switch.”
Many enterprise applications, such as manufacturing facilities, refineries or mines, want to keep their data on their campuses, which demands that a core network element is placed on premise. “We’ll be able to do that with the way we’re architecting the network,” Mayo said.
Mayo said DISH will appeal to CIOs by eliminating the need to constantly refresh their WiFi networks in a way that gives them the benefits and mobility of a wireless network but the privacy and security of their own network.
DISH is still on track to cover 20 percent of the population by June 14, according to Mayo. On the same date next year, June 14, DISH is required to cover 70 percent of the U.S. population. DISH is working on primarily colocating on sites, to meet the requirement. The third milestone DISH must reach is covering 75 percent of the population in each one of the 416 Partial Economic Areas across the country, which must occur by mid-2025.
“Colocating is much faster than some of the individual rooftop leases where you have to negotiate in some of the bigger markets on the two coasts,” Mayo said.
DISH is designing its footprint that is large enough to cover each of the Metropolitan areas, so that handovers to roaming partners are minimized. But outside of the initial footprint, DISH will use both T-Mobile and AT&T for roaming.
“That just keeps the network more ubiquitous and more seamless for our customers and creates a better customer experience,” Mayo said.
Mayo expects approval from the Department of Justice to be handed down with respect to a proposed settlement of the dispute with T-Mobile over the shut down of its 3G CDMA network, which Boost customers were using.
Mayo highlighted the importance of the general contractors to the DISH build out. Mayo tries to maintain a backlog of permitted and zoned sites so that the GCs are kept busy. “I know how sawtooth a GC’s life is,” he said. “We’ve done everything we possibly can to smooth that out so that they’ve got a continuity of work over a period of time. It has paid big dividends. We’ve retained our GCs.”
Mayo said DISH has designed 36 unique markets nationwide to orchestrate and design the build out. Each market has autonomy in terms of the way it operates beyond the tower deals. Within those markets, the GC relationships are housed and managed by the local teams.
Mayo noted that a lot of tower companies don’t have a clear understanding of where they have space for additional antennas. “I have to take the risk from a time perspective and pay the cost of a structural analysis of the tower to figure out whether or not I can actually go on the tower. It seems kind of backwards,” Mayo said.
With nine million Boost customers, DISH is already the fourth largest wireless carrier, Mayo noted. While the Boost users provide a starting point, DISH will market a wireless product to its embedded customer base in the satellite TV business. DISH announced at an investor conference recently that it plans to move its current prepaid Boost customers to a post-paid service, known as Boost Infinite.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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