Dish Network/Boost Mobile cell/5G buildout thread

[iansltx]

Hot take for y'all: if DIsh doesn't come to an agreement to buy Boost, they should be forced to lease their spectrum to whoever does, indefinitely. Because we all know that, given the option, Dish will sit on their spectrum and do precisely nothing useful with it for years. Right up until they're forced to loan it to someone who actually has a network.

[Tengen31]

Hot take for y'all: if DIsh doesn't come to an agreement to buy Boost, they should be forced to lease their spectrum to whoever does, indefinitely. Because we all know that, given the option, Dish will sit on their spectrum and do precisely nothing useful with it for years. Right up until they're forced to loan it to someone who actually has a network.

Could be but that's also a pretty big fine to pay.

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[iansltx]

1 minute ago, Tengen31 said:

Could be but that's also a pretty big fine to pay.

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk
 

Oh, it's definitely a huge fine to pay. The intention is getting a 4th mobile carrier out of this, and I'd personally rather it be dish if they get their darned network deployed.

They actually have plenty of spectrum of their own, and have it spec'd for largely unpaired use on the AWS side, so with NR-SA they could have some pretty phenomenal speeds. If they ever. Freaking. Deploy. Their. Network.

[Tengen31]

Oh, it's definitely a huge fine to pay. The intention is getting a 4th mobile carrier out of this, and I'd personally rather it be dish if they get their darned network deployed.
They actually have plenty of spectrum of their own, and have it spec'd for largely unpaired use on the AWS side, so with NR-SA they could have some pretty phenomenal speeds. If they ever. Freaking. Deploy. Their. Network.

Yeah have your see what the future holds. If they build out network but do it without buying boost that is a big mistake. They need to have a standout prepaid carrier. TMobile has metro, att cricket and vzw visible. Dish can change the Boost name if they see fit. Yes boost has lost customers, but that is likely do to running off sprint and not having access to tmo where sprint doesn't have coverage and lack of VOLTE. Running off TMO network for the first 7 years and if dish can have more coverage by that time when sprint did that will help also.

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[JimBob]

Another speculative article about Dish, Boost, and T-Mobile.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/operators/dish-s-intentions-once-again-question-day

[bigsnake49]

It seems that Dish will close the Boost transaction on July 1st:

The company did not officially close the purchase, nor did it provide any of the parameters of the pending deal, including how many customers might be involved or the final price.

But the company's announcement – made via an SEC filing – represents Dish's intention to enter the wireless industry, first as an MVNO of T-Mobile and, potentially, as a nationwide 5G network operator.

It appears that the Department of Justice had to step in during the negotiations between T-Mobile and Dish to push the transaction forward. "On June 17, 2020, the Department of Justice (the 'DOJ') determined that T-Mobile has complied with the requirement in the final judgment entered by a federal district court in Washington, D.C. on April 1, 2020 (the 'Final Judgment') to provide Dish the ability to cross-provision any new or existing customer of the prepaid business with a compatible handset onto the T-Mobile network," T-Mobile wrote in its own SEC filing on the matter. "As a result, we believe all conditions to closing under the Asset Purchase Agreement (other than those conditions that can only be satisfied at closing) have been satisfied and, subject to the satisfaction of the conditions that must be satisfied at closing, the closing of the Prepaid Business Sale will occur on July 1, 2020."

https://www.lightreading.com/5g/dish-said-it-will-buy-t-mobiles-boost-on-july-1/d/d-id/761784?

 

All of you can breathe now 😅!

[JimBob]

3 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

It seems that Dish will close the Boost transaction on July 1st:

The company did not officially close the purchase, nor did it provide any of the parameters of the pending deal, including how many customers might be involved or the final price.

But the company's announcement – made via an SEC filing – represents Dish's intention to enter the wireless industry, first as an MVNO of T-Mobile and, potentially, as a nationwide 5G network operator.

It appears that the Department of Justice had to step in during the negotiations between T-Mobile and Dish to push the transaction forward. "On June 17, 2020, the Department of Justice (the 'DOJ') determined that T-Mobile has complied with the requirement in the final judgment entered by a federal district court in Washington, D.C. on April 1, 2020 (the 'Final Judgment') to provide Dish the ability to cross-provision any new or existing customer of the prepaid business with a compatible handset onto the T-Mobile network," T-Mobile wrote in its own SEC filing on the matter. "As a result, we believe all conditions to closing under the Asset Purchase Agreement (other than those conditions that can only be satisfied at closing) have been satisfied and, subject to the satisfaction of the conditions that must be satisfied at closing, the closing of the Prepaid Business Sale will occur on July 1, 2020."

https://www.lightreading.com/5g/dish-said-it-will-buy-t-mobiles-boost-on-july-1/d/d-id/761784?

 

All of you can breathe now 😅!

Excellent.  Price of DISH stock now significantly up: https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/DISH

[S4GRU]

14 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

It seems that Dish will close the Boost transaction on July 1st:

The company did not officially close the purchase, nor did it provide any of the parameters of the pending deal, including how many customers might be involved or the final price.

But the company's announcement – made via an SEC filing – represents Dish's intention to enter the wireless industry, first as an MVNO of T-Mobile and, potentially, as a nationwide 5G network operator.

It appears that the Department of Justice had to step in during the negotiations between T-Mobile and Dish to push the transaction forward. "On June 17, 2020, the Department of Justice (the 'DOJ') determined that T-Mobile has complied with the requirement in the final judgment entered by a federal district court in Washington, D.C. on April 1, 2020 (the 'Final Judgment') to provide Dish the ability to cross-provision any new or existing customer of the prepaid business with a compatible handset onto the T-Mobile network," T-Mobile wrote in its own SEC filing on the matter. "As a result, we believe all conditions to closing under the Asset Purchase Agreement (other than those conditions that can only be satisfied at closing) have been satisfied and, subject to the satisfaction of the conditions that must be satisfied at closing, the closing of the Prepaid Business Sale will occur on July 1, 2020."

https://www.lightreading.com/5g/dish-said-it-will-buy-t-mobiles-boost-on-july-1/d/d-id/761784?

 

All of you can breathe now 😅!

I knew that DISH would not walk away.  It was a bluff.  They pretty much were committed.  But Charlie couldn't pass up an opportunity to turn the screws and try to renegotiate a better deal thinking he may have an upper hand.  I don't believe the Feds would have ever reversed the Sprint/Tmo transaction.  Too far gone.  And Tmo did all the right things in good faith.  It just could have left DISH in the cold.  And that's what I meant by 'blow up in their faces" for the member who asked the question up the thread.

Robert

[red_dog007]

I don't even think this was a big deal.  There was no required purchase needed until July 1st.  Analysts "predicted" it would be earlier, they were wrong so "OMG. DISH IS DOING WHAT DISH DOES".  If the prediction was closing on July 1st, like the agreement states, we'd have less click bate. 

For Dish, I think they have valid concerns with a Boost handoff.  Wasn't until mid June that DOJ confirmed TMobile was compliant. If I was Dish, I wouldn't hold TMobile at their own word that they were complaint so the DOJ stepping in a good thing. Plus in the mean time Dish could argue the value of the Boost business has decreased but I wouldn't expect much room there for them to haggle that. 

 

If I knew Dish was rapidly building out their network I'd put on a line on them just out of curiosity. 

[dkyeager]

Cash flow wise Dish may have gotten Boost for nothing.  https://www.fiercewireless.com/operators/dish-to-raise-1b-for-general-corporate-purposes  Boost was the most profitable part of Sprint according to the anti-trust judge.

[bigsnake49]

On 6/25/2020 at 1:09 PM, dkyeager said:

Cash flow wise Dish may have gotten Boost for nothing.  https://www.fiercewireless.com/operators/dish-to-raise-1b-for-general-corporate-purposes  Boost was the most profitable part of Sprint according to the anti-trust judge.

Dish might have to settle for lower income from their leases since T-Mobile just signed leases with two other companies:

T-Mobile has applied for instant spectrum leases with Channel 51 License Company and LB License Co. to lease 600 MHz spectrum in a number of major markets, including Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, New Orleans, St. Louis, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta and Seattle, among others.

Currently, these companies are lending 600 MHz spectrum to T-Mobile to help the carrier boost its network during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The parties have filed their application with the FCC, and if granted, the leases would exist until February 28, 2023.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/operators/t-mobile-strikes-600-mhz-spectrum-leases-8-out-10-top-markets

 

[PythonFanPA]

This showed up in my email this morning (I'm a Dish subscriber):

https://ir.dish.com/news-releases/news-release-details/dish-advances-o-ran-network-selects-fujitsu-5g-radio-units-and

[bigsnake49]

8 hours ago, PythonFanPA said:

This showed up in my email this morning (I'm a Dish subscriber):

https://ir.dish.com/news-releases/news-release-details/dish-advances-o-ran-network-selects-fujitsu-5g-radio-units-and

Yeah it looks like they might be getting serious about deploying their network. A little more detail courtesy of Light Reading:

Importantly, Fujitsu will supply the physical radio hardware that will broadcast 5G signals from atop Dish's cell towers around the US. Dish said in a release that it will use Fujitsu's lowband Tri-Band radio unit (supporting spectrum bands n71, n26 and n29) and midband Dual-Band radio unit (supporting spectrum bands n70 and n66), both of which adhere to open RAN design principles. Dish added that the radios would support passive MIMO. 

https://www.lightreading.com/5g/dishs-5g-radios-to-come-from-japans-fujitsu/d/d-id/762069?

 

 

 

 

Edited June 30, 2020 by bigsnake49

[PythonFanPA]

DISH enters retail wireless market with close of Boost Mobile, advances build of the nation's first standalone 5G network:

https://ir.dish.com/news-releases/news-release-details/dish-enters-retail-wireless-market-close-boost-mobile-advances

[bigsnake49]

Well, there goes nothing 😂.

All jokes aside, I am very happy that they took the first step towards becoming the fourth carrier.

[red_dog007]

Wonder how they will move on their network.  If they deployed it like TMobile is deloying 600MHz, I'd put a line on them. 

[iansltx]

18 hours ago, red_dog007 said:

Wonder how they will move on their network.  If they deployed it like TMobile is deloying 600MHz, I'd put a line on them. 

If I had to guess, they'll deploy just enough to meet their federally mandated requirements (70% of the US population within ~3 years), based on where the concentration of their Boost Mobile customer usage is. They've got a sweetheart roaming/MVNO agreement with T-Mobile for seven years so there will be a ton of places it won't make sense to build out. They'll deploy with 600 MHz in those areas first, since that'll be the quickest way to satisfy the buildout requirements...plus 700 downlink. AWS deployments will probably start with the same cell sites, but i expect there'll be AWS-only sites in cities as that's one fewer set of radios to set up and I'm convinced Dish will build this network as cheaply as they possibly can.

[bigsnake49]

26 minutes ago, iansltx said:

If I had to guess, they'll deploy just enough to meet their federally mandated requirements (70% of the US population within ~3 years), based on where the concentration of their Boost Mobile customer usage is. They've got a sweetheart roaming/MVNO agreement with T-Mobile for seven years so there will be a ton of places it won't make sense to build out. They'll deploy with 600 MHz in those areas first, since that'll be the quickest way to satisfy the buildout requirements...plus 700 downlink. AWS deployments will probably start with the same cell sites, but i expect there'll be AWS-only sites in cities as that's one fewer set of radios to set up and I'm convinced Dish will build this network as cheaply as they possibly can.

They have ordered triband n71, n26 and n29 low frequency RRUs and dual band n70 and n66. Something tells me that they will deploy the lower band first and then deploy enough of the midband RRUs to meet the deployment requirements. Of course I expect them to deploy first in the urban areas then suburban. Overall I think they will live within their means as far as deployment, shielded by the roaming agreement with t-mobile. 

For me the interesting event will happen in 3 years when T-Mobile's leases with other holders of 600Mhz spectrum expire. Will we see a bidding war between T-Mobile and Dish for those leases?

[iansltx]

4 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

They have ordered triband n71, n26 and n29 low frequency RRUs and dual band n70 and n66. Something tells me that they will deploy the lower band first and then deploy enough of the midband RRUs to meet the deployment requirements. Of course I expect them to deploy first in the urban areas then suburban. Overall I think they will live within their means as far as deployment, shielded by the roaming agreement with t-mobile. 

For me the interesting event will happen in 3 years when T-Mobile's leases with other holders of 600Mhz spectrum expire. Will we see a bidding war between T-Mobile and Dish for those leases?

They won't have to deploy midband RRUs to meet deployment requirements since 600/700/800 travels further, and the tech is the same for both. Midband will be solely a capacity play, since that'll get them 40 MHz of downlink and 15 MHz of uplink in most areas (see https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/wake-doj-deal-where-dish-s-spectrum-and-how-much-does-it-have). That's on top of low-band, which after n26 comes online will be 20x15 (albeit split over three different bands) at least, and a symmetric amount more in some markets. With a comparatively minuscule customer count, the network should fly with that amount of spectrum.

My guess is that in three years Dish won't have touched 30% of the US population, so T-Mobile will be able to renew 600 licenses in those areas uncontested, including in plenty of rural areas, for another three years. For the remaining 70% of the US population (which will be a pretty small % of territory, so a rather small number of licenses), there'll be areas where Dish will try to squeak by with a low-band-only build, and *those* are the areas they'll be compete more on for spectrum leasing. For areas where there's enough traffic to build out mid-band, Dish may or may not need the extra 600...and those are probably the same areas T-Mobile will have a blanket of n41...so competition for that spectrum may be a bit more tepid, with the winner being whoever has more 600 sites lit since site density will determine capacity.

One interesting thing to note here: Boost already sells a phone that's (partially) compatible with Dish's upcoming network: the S20 (n66 and n71). In pure dollar terms, they're subsidizing that phone the most our of their entire lineup, selling it at $720. Still spendy, but at least they'll have *some* phones in the field that support the new network, and as time goes on they'll be able to sell the S20 for cheaper. Assuming they're okay with folks dropping down to T-Mobile LTE for voice since the X55 modem can't do VoNR, and sitting primarily on n71 because the phone can't aggregate NR-NR.

It's probably worthwhile for them to get a variant of the S20 recertified with n70, as that's adjacent to bands 66 and 25 so radio performance should still be fine. That would give the S20 access to their full native mid-band network on a phone most likely to be picked up by the folks who'd use the most data on their network.

With all that said, I would *not* expect Dish to pick up any more 5G phones until they're able to get one with an X60 or equivalent modem; having a network spread across slices of five bands from the get-go means NR-NR aggregation is important, and it'll take VoNR to keep phones from dropping down to roaming on TMo to make phone calls. So I don't expect Boost will get the A51 5G or A71 5G...better to sell LTE-only phones and then introduce phones with better chipsets later, to avoid heavily subsidizing phones twice.

Then, once you've got a $400 phone with VoNR, sell bundle it with two months of unlimited-everything service and you're off to the races. I figure we'll be at that point by this time next year, at which point I'll probably pick that phone up to see what Dish's network is like...as long as they allow tethering at full speed.

[red_dog007]

Dish has ~8 million customers.  I don't expect Dish to have the growth that TMobile has had.  Lets say Dish is lucky to add an average of 1M customers a year for 5 years.  That puts them only at 13M customers. Even if they were TMobile like in the ability to add at least 1M new customers a quarter, in 5 years that is 20M + 8M, so 28M.

Whatever network they build I think it'll focus very much just in the big cities where they have the most customers right now and plan to push sales the most. It doesn't make sense for them to build a nationwide network and use all their bands.  It doesn't even really make sense to build a low-band network to hit their 70% pop coverage.

I could see Dish coming to an agreement with TMobile to broadcast their spectrum.   Like why would they need to cover 70% pop if they have few customers. Also I could see if Dish continues forward in good faith and the deadlines are near that the FCC could be willing to come to some form of agreement with Dish to not penalize them if they are unable to get TMobile to host use their spectrum.

[greenbastard]

On 7/4/2020 at 12:47 PM, bigsnake49 said:

For me the interesting event will happen in 3 years when T-Mobile's leases with other holders of 600Mhz spectrum expire. Will we see a bidding war between T-Mobile and Dish for those leases?

If there is a purchase option on the current T-Mobile leases, then there probably won't be much of a bidding war.

[Yuhfhrh]

On 7/4/2020 at 6:13 PM, iansltx said:

since the X55 modem can't do VoNR

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/tmobile-achieves-significant-5g-firsts

The X55 modem can do VoNR (Done on T-Mobile with a OnePlus 8). I would expect T-Mobile to add VoNR via software update to all X55 phones once they have SA and VoNR ready on the network side.

[iansltx]

On 7/6/2020 at 10:04 AM, red_dog007 said:

Dish has ~8 million customers.  I don't expect Dish to have the growth that TMobile has had.  Lets say Dish is lucky to add an average of 1M customers a year for 5 years.  That puts them only at 13M customers. Even if they were TMobile like in the ability to add at least 1M new customers a quarter, in 5 years that is 20M + 8M, so 28M.

Whatever network they build I think it'll focus very much just in the big cities where they have the most customers right now and plan to push sales the most. It doesn't make sense for them to build a nationwide network and use all their bands.  It doesn't even really make sense to build a low-band network to hit their 70% pop coverage.

I could see Dish coming to an agreement with TMobile to broadcast their spectrum.   Like why would they need to cover 70% pop if they have few customers. Also I could see if Dish continues forward in good faith and the deadlines are near that the FCC could be willing to come to some form of agreement with Dish to not penalize them if they are unable to get TMobile to host use their spectrum.

Thing is, building a coverage focused network to cover 70% of the US population using 600 isn't *that* expensive. It's the capacity play that's expensive. You need capacity if you have a ton of customers, which 10MM isn't.

Alltel had 12 million customers when Verizon bought them, and covered a larger area than Dish will need to. If you spend $5 billion building a network for, say, 15 million customers, and don't have to subsidize those customers, that's not a huge outlay in the scheme of things.

[iansltx]

Just did some quick adding and 70% of the US population is in the largest 114 US MSAs. If Dish covered every MSA above 475k population (so, everything from Lafayette, LA on up), and service stopped completely outside MSA borders, they'd hit their 70%. That's while covering none of places as large as Reno, NV.

Oh, and if you cover the San Juan, PR MSA, you can just hit the top 110 other MSAs, down to Pensacola, FL (so, everything with >= 500k population).

Now, I fully expect Dish to omit some MSAs in the top 114 in favor of others that are closer to their footprint, or have more Boost Mobile user concentration, but this isn't a ridiculously huge lift...and is why Dish is saying they'll be building out only 15k cell sites by 2023...and they'll have help from T-Mobile as TMo casts off a bunch of redundant sites, many of which would love to immediately get a new tenant.

[bigsnake49]

Contrary to my expectations Dish did confirm that they are going to buy 800Mhz from T-Mobile, as if purchasing triband low frequency RRHs (n71, n26 and n29) was not enough:

"As part of Dish Network's $1.4 billion agreement last week to purchase around 9 million Boost-branded mobile customers from T-Mobile, the company also quietly said it would purchase billions of dollars of additional spectrum.

Dish agreed to move forward on a previously announced plan to purchase 13.5MHz of 800MHz spectrum nationwide from T-Mobile for a whopping $3.6 billion. Based on the terms of the companies' agreement, Dish said it would potentially purchase the spectrum during 2023, and that T-Mobile might continue to use a portion of the spectrum until 2025.

The transaction might not actually happen, given that it's not scheduled to close for another three years and much can happen between now and then. That the companies last week reiterated their plans to go through with the deal only underscores the fact that Charlie Ergen – the chairman of Dish Network and a key architect of the company's 5G strategy – ostensibly has an utterly inexhaustible desire for spectrum."

https://www.lightreading.com/5g/dish-networks-ergen-has-a-big-appetite-for-5g-spectrum/d/d-id/762196?