Dish’s ‘New 5G Network’ Remains Kind Of A Mess

You might recall that the Trump administration fix" to the competition and layoff problems created by the Sprint T-Mobile merger (which consolidated four major wireless players into three major players) was to have Dish build a new 5G network. But the effort has been a sloppy mess from the start, and three months into its commercial launch, there's not a whole lot of indication it's gotten much better.

The Verge has been putting the Dish network through its paces, and continues to come away disappointed, noting that the network still only supports one phone, coverage is spotty at best, and the company couldn't even be bothered to build a working customer support portal:

Perhaps the biggest missing piece for Project Genesis is any sort of account management system. Because of some launch-day issues that have since been resolved, I had to sign up with a service address that isn't actually my home address. To change it, I had to contact support because there's currently no web portal or screen in the app that lets you see or change those details.

As we noted a few times, the proposal was never likely to succeed.

One, because Dish had no track record in this space outside of a parade of empty promises. Two, because the remaining three providers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) and Wall Street want less price competition and would be incentivized at every step to ensure it fails. And three, because an incompetent and feckless FCC (displaying various degrees of said incompetence and fecklessness under both parties) would not likely dole out more than wrist slaps should Dish miss major build out milestones.

Under FCC and DOJ merger rules, Dish's semi-functional 5G network has to cover 70% of the population by next June and 75% of the U.S. by 2025. And then of course it needs to attract consumers and remain financially viable, which will be hard to do without phone selection or working customer service.

Despite bubbly banter from telecom trade mags, Dish hasn't shown the competency to pull this off. At any point. And the FCC (be it under Trump or Biden) hasn't shown it's competent enough to hold Dish's feet to the fire. At any point. Dish also continues to bleed money from its sagging satellite TV and existing wireless business (which was supposed to cushion the huge costs of building out this giant 5G network).

I still tend to think Dish drags the feckless FCC along for a few years before the company sells whatever it has built and its huge spectrum holdings to somebody like Verizon. At which point the FCC (maybe?) doles out a few wrist slaps for missing key milestones (which will be blamed on COVID, inflation, or antifa), and Dish CEO Charlie Ergen wanders off into the sunset of retirement.

And I'm still not entirely sure that wasn't the whole goal from the start. Kind of a dumb stage play that extends Dish's publicly traded life span a few years while spectrum assets appreciate, but primarily provides flimsy justification for approving mindless industry consolidation.