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Dish plans to build a comprehensive, standalone 5G network across the United States
America’s newly formed telco, Dish, is aiming to have its first 5G network sites live by the end of 2020.
Dish Network’s chairman, Charlie Ergen, said that his company would focus on building out its 5G networks as soon as possible.
In an interview with news site Axios, Ergen said that there was sufficient capital in play to commence its network buildout immediately. Dish will also be acquiring pay-as-you-go provider, Boost, from Sprint.
"We have money on hand today to acquire Boost and start building our network for a couple of years," he said. "We ultimately will need capital."
Dish will build a standalone 5G network, i.e. one that does not make use of existing 4G and LTE network architecture. Therefore, it will need to wait until standalone standards have been released in 2020.
As part of the partial divestiture of pay-as-you-go assets that proceeded regulatory approval of the Sprint/T-Mobile merger, Dish acquired significant amounts of spectrum to supplement that which it was already holding.
"We are accumulating enough spectrum to go compete against the industry giants," he added.
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