Latest Dish 5G vendors are Everstream, Segra, Uniti and Zayo
As part of its ongoing vendor selection process associated with a nationwide standalone 5G network build, Dish this week announced it is working with fiber providers Everstream, Segra, Uniti and Zayo for it’s Open RAN approach to 5G.
In a press release, Dish called out that uses existing fiber assets rather than constructing new route miles will speed up its time to market. On a recent investor call, Dish said it will have 5G up in some small markets in 2021 with a major market slated for the third quarter of next year.
Company EVP of Wireless Network Operations Jeff McSchooler said in a statement, “The fiber agreements with Everstream, Segra, Uniti and Zayo are critical to helping Dish build our 5G network more quickly and cost-effectively than legacy deployments.”
Everstream bills itself as “the business-only fiber network” that “disrupts the big telecom status quo by only serving businesses.” Everstream has fiber holdings in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Segra’s holdings are focused in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions. Uniti provides nationwide and has network services in the Mid-Atlantic up to Rochester and Albany, New York, in North Carolina, and throughout Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and parts of Texas.
Zayo has fiber holdings in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe; the company has 133,000 route miles of fiber and 44 colocation data centers.
In addition to the four fiber vendors, Dish is working with Mavenir for cloud-native voice, messaging and data services; Crown Castle for tower leasing; Intel and Qualcomm for RAN chips; Digital Route for 5G monetization; Hansen for “catalog-driven software;” Blue Planet for network automation; Nokia for standalone core; MATRIXX Software for dynamic pricing; Tucows for retail wireless; VMware for end-to-end cloud platform; Fujitsu for radios; and Altiostar for vRAN software.
