DISH Network’s build out of their 5G wireless network seems to be well on its way with their newest announcement; a planned collaboration with chipset giant Qualcomm to develop the nation’s first cloud-native, open radio access network compliant 5G network. More notably known as a satellite TV provider, providing both English and Latino TV packages, DISH will be transitioning off as a wireless provider.
Recent DISH Wireless partnerships include Crown Castle (for tower leasing), Fuitsu (for radio units), Mavenir (for cloud-native voice, data, messaging), Altiostar (for open RAN) and it won’t stop there. It’s likely DISH Network has many more secret partnerships that have not been announced to the public to keep their wireless launch strategy confidential. However, it has been confirmed that a big supporter of the open RAN movement, Nokia, will be one of the infrastructure suppliers testing their new 5G network with other vendors.
It’s also been released that the public will not see anything from the DISH Qualcomm partnership at launch. Unfortunately Qualcomm’s timeline simply does not match up with DISH Network’s. Qualcomm has already announced to the public that any hardware samples of its new 5G radio access network chipset platform is not anticipated to drop until 2022 for select vendors only. Qualcomm didn’t state who these select vendors will be, but given this new collaboration to develop an open RAN 5G network, and DISH leading open RAN in the US, it’s likely DISH Network will be one of the select vendors.
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What Is Open RAN (Radio Access Network)?
Open RAN is the future of building wireless networks because it enables network operators to mix and match their components from anywhere. This is important because it allows network operations to choose whatever vendors they would like to use. In a closed radio access network, network operators are stuck choosing from only a few vendors that can adapt to the proprietary functionality required for build out.
Why Is Open RAN Important To Wireless?
Open RAN opens up the competition and makes room for the little guy. There’s nothing proprietary in an open architecture build out that could get in the way of small startups to compete with larger more established companies that we are used to seeing in the wireless space.
Since open RAN is still new, many industry experts see it as a trend with some hesitation on being too optimistic. It’s just too early to speculate if this open architecture is a hopeful trend or if it is indeed sustainable enough to stick around in the long term. However, it is speculated that if open RAN catches enough momentum, it’s very possible that well-known companies like Cisco and Intel could swoop in and simply buy up small open RAN companies to gain network operators business instead of competing with them if they wanted to. This scenario is a real possibility since the exit strategy of many startup open RAN companies is a buyout by these larger well-known companies.
Thus far, DISH Network is leading the way in open RAN proponents in the United States. It is unknown how much open RAN can catch on, but we do know that DISH will always hold the advantage through their opportunity to work any combination of vendors since the network is completely vendor-neutral. Since it is vendor-neutral from launch, the option will always be there and no matter what happens, no single vendor or collection of them will be able to take that away from DISH Network. DISH is really holding the keys to disrupting the entire wireless industry in the US and only time will tell how it all pans out.
