Dish Network/Boost Mobile cell/5G buildout thread

[4GHoward]

Here is the official news release..

https://about.dish.com/2022-06-15-DISHs-Smart-5G-TM-Wireless-Network-is-Now-Available-to-Over-20-Percent-of-the-U-S-Population

 

[red_dog007]

Any official coverage maps yet?

[RAvirani]

19 hours ago, red_dog007 said:

Any official coverage maps yet?

Here you go:

https://imgur.com/a/G7W73GI

[clbowens]

1 hour ago, RAvirani said:

Here you go:

https://imgur.com/a/G7W73GI

So is red where they have active coverage (5G towers) and blue where they own spectrum?

[RAvirani]

2 minutes ago, clbowens said:

So is red where they have active coverage (5G towers) and blue where they own spectrum?

Red is active coverage, black is currently permitting (covering imminent) and light blue is roaming. 

[Paynefanbro]

DISH and T-Mobile Expand Network Services Partnership

https://about.dish.com/2022-06-21-DISH-and-T-Mobile-Expand-Network-Services-Partnership

Quote

DISH Network (NASDAQ:DISH) and T-Mobile (NASDAQ:TMUS) signed an amendment to the 2020 Master Network Services Agreement (MNSA) that provides customers of DISH's retail wireless brands, including Boost Mobile, access to T-Mobile's nationwide 5G network.

The amendment, which will become effective upon approval by the United States Department of Justice, incorporates financial and operational changes, including improved pricing and enhanced roaming solutions for DISH 5G customers in consideration of an annual minimum revenue commitment through the remaining term of the MNSA.

 

[clbowens]

4 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

DISH and T-Mobile Expand Network Services Partnership

https://about.dish.com/2022-06-21-DISH-and-T-Mobile-Expand-Network-Services-Partnership

 

So, this is good news for T-Mobile, right?

[Paynefanbro]

1 hour ago, clbowens said:

So, this is good news for T-Mobile, right?

If I had to guess, it probably just allows T-Mobile to achieve parity with AT&T with regard to their roaming deal with Dish. Potentially a lot of money in this deal for T-Mobile. The CMO of T-Mobile said;

Quote

"While DISH customers will benefit from our network, this deal also locks in a multi-billion dollar revenue commitment for our business. It's a win-win."

 

[iansltx]

More of a big deal for Dish, since now they have really good roaming agreements with everyone except Verizon, so once they get their network stuff set up they'll have the best coverage on cheap plans, so not a whole lot of reason not to use them. At which point Dish can build out a thin network layer for outdoor coverage (tight enough spacing for n70 outdoors) and take their sweet time on providing anything more than that due to cheap roaming. They can add sites based on really high roaming usage as needed, but they'll have a few years to do that, and they could add those sites as n48/77 small cells overlaying their macro grid in a surgical fashion, much as AT&T is adding n77 on their own network. Kinda brilliant for "build a network on a shoestring" use cases.

[red_dog007]

Dish already has customers on a TMobile sim or an AT&T sim.

Genesis customers will have a Dish sim, so should theoretically be able to 5G roam on either AT&T or TMo.

As it says, just an amendment to their existing contract so I don't think anything too exciting.  

[Trip]

2 hours ago, iansltx said:

More of a big deal for Dish, since now they have really good roaming agreements with everyone except Verizon

Do they have one with US Cellular?

- Trip

[iansltx]

1 hour ago, Trip said:

Do they have one with US Cellular?

- Trip

I think there was talk of one, including tower leases. Don't think they do now though. With the TMo overbuild going on though, there may not be much of a need to actually roam on USCC.

[dkyeager]

5 hours ago, red_dog007 said:

Genesis customers will have a Dish sim, so should theoretically be able to 5G roam on either AT&T or TMo.

That is my hope. They roam on whoever is best.

[RAvirani]

3 hours ago, Trip said:

Do they have one with US Cellular?

- Trip

There is an MLA with USCC. 

[gr8nuguy]

2 hours ago, iansltx said:

I think there was talk of one, including tower leases. Don't think they do now though. With the TMo overbuild going on though, there may not be much of a need to actually roam on USCC.

i actually roam on Us cellular 5g in parts of fremont, ne, even though tmobile has "1" 5g tower here

[dkyeager]

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/dish-loses-its-appeal-related-34b-bidding-credits-spectrum

almost real money

[S4GRU]

13 hours ago, dkyeager said:

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/dish-loses-its-appeal-related-34b-bidding-credits-spectrum

almost real money

Thanks for posting.  It was sneaky and definitely a direct affront to the rules. They got caught.  And now after all this time, money spent on legal pursuits and fines, this was a very expensive mistake.

Robert

[iansltx]

So my hotspot would've gotten delivered today, but Dish screwed up the delivery address. So now I'm waiting for a call back from them as they sort things out with FedEx. Hopefully they call soon enough that I can pick up at a FedEx location here or something, as I really want to play with it both here (Albuquerque) and in Denver, and then in San Marcos/New Braunfels.

[Yuhfhrh]

On 6/14/2022 at 9:47 PM, Yuhfhrh said:

I've placed an order for the hotspot as well. Looking forward to playing around with it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dish5G/comments/vim4dg/dish_wireless_working_well_in_houston_tx/

[Paynefanbro]

Signals Research Group just completed their 25th 5G NR benchmark study and released a preview of their findings in their newsletter. They tested Dish's and T-Mobile's 5G networks in Las Vegas. Here are the key takeaways:

Quote

Dish has 10 MHz of Band n71 (600 MHz) as well as at least 20 MHz of Band n70/n66 (2 GHz), with Band n71 always serving as the primary cell (P cell), meaning the smartphones always used Band n71 for uplink data transfers and for VoNR calls. As a frame of reference, we also tested the T-Mobile 5G network, including 15 MHz of Band n71 and 100 MHz of Band n41 (TDD 2.5 GHz). We tested this network in SA mode to make it easier to compare results between the two networks, as well as in NSA mode when conducting our voice tests. By default, this meant voice calls on the T-Mobile network used VoLTE (Band 66) while they used VoNR on the DISH Wireless network.

— — — — —

[Dish's] overall network performance wasn’t terrible, and there were some indications of quite good performance, but there was no consistency in the performance and consistency is something that consumers expect. For example, downlink testing produced some high throughput, and much better than we observed on the Rakuten network after normalizing for channel bandwidth, but there was very inconsistent use of carrier aggregation (CA). Uplink test results definitely favored UDP while with HTTP there was a big disparity in performance versus the T-Mobile network. It was also quite easy for the data transfer to stop or deliver very low data speeds while mobile. We also observed VoNR voice quality (MOS) that was as good, if not better, than anything we’ve captured with VoLTE, but there were also frequent instances with very poor voice quality, even while stationary and with good RF conditions. Another fly in the ointment, and which impacted our testing, was the frequent switching of the smartphones on the DISH Wireless network to the AT&T network. We excluded these results in our study, but we had to be on our toes when collecting the data to identify when this situation occurred.

Based on the data we have at our disposal (we weren’t able to capture chipset diagnostic messages on the DISH Wireless network), we believe there are opportunities for the operator to improve the RF conditions with more cell sites and better RF optimization and for the vendors to enhance the performance of their platforms via software upgrades. AWS (Amazon Web Services) may also play a factor in the results or at least the use of this platform could have impacted the high latency and voice results we obtained.

https://signalsresearch.com/issue/5g-the-greatest-show-on-earth-25/

[dkyeager]

The see Dish as the Beta network for a while. Basically once they have secured their licenses and have inexpensive phones that utilize all their bands I hope to see them reduce the edge space of their network or improve the transfer performance so customers have more of an invisible handoff experience. This will likely be late 2023. 

[red_dog007]

22 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Signals Research Group just completed their 25th 5G NR benchmark study and released a preview of their findings in their newsletter. They tested Dish's and T-Mobile's 5G networks in Las Vegas. Here are the key takeaways:

https://signalsresearch.com/issue/5g-the-greatest-show-on-earth-25/

Man I wish I could get on their beta right now.  Looks like I'll have to wait until Dec or so. 

The report is not surprising really.  Largely only have employees roaming around running tests and what not.  I am sure lots of testing is needed to iron out bugs, fix things.  Though a lot of it might be denser network.  Only so much you can do and money is spread out very thin when you have such a large target to hit. 

[dkyeager]

8 hours ago, red_dog007 said:

Man I wish I could get on their beta right now.  Looks like I'll have to wait until Dec or so. 

The report is not surprising really.  Largely only have employees roaming around running tests and what not.  I am sure lots of testing is needed to iron out bugs, fix things.  Though a lot of it might be denser network.  Only so much you can do and money is spread out very thin when you have such a large target to hit. 

I see it as more of an economic calculation.  Basically go after the areas where they have the best odds of retaining or attracting customers versus their MVNO arrangements. The quicker they can switch back and forth between 5g and MVNOs the finer grained this decision zone can be. 

Field results will beat theory.  In Sprint days this was up to 15 minutes in theory. In practice AT&T could be quite sticky.  I remember driving by 3 Sprint sites while still stuck on AT&T roaming. Dish will need to do better to thrive. Both their MVNO arrangements reportedly now cost them about $1.50 per GB. With volume that may fall to $1.

[iansltx]

Got the hotspot, and got it set up (took a call in, but wasn't a big deal). Roaming data is a low-throughput mess without IPv6 connectivity, but it does work. Haven't gotten the hotspot somewhere with a decent DishNet signal so not sure how the native network performs in Albuquerque. Should know in the next few days. IP address while roaming was us-east-1, with the accompanying 200+ms latency penalty. Will be interesting to see whether the device starts roaming on T-Mobile as well now that the agreement includes in-market roaming on that side.

[Paynefanbro]

The Verge wrote an article on Dish’s network. 
 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/1/23188077/dish-wireless-project-genesis-first-week-testing-speeds-coverage