Dish Network laid out its 5G story during a four-hour analyst event Tuesday, promising to grow its smartphone business from around 8 million customers today to between 30 and 40 million at some unspecified point in the future.

The company said it plans to do so in part by launching postpaid services under its new Boost Infinite brand sometime in the fall. Company officials, however, declined to provide specific pricing for that planned offering, hinting only that it might reward customers who keep their data usage low.

However, company officials argued that Dish's 5G opportunities in the enterprise space represent a larger opportunity overall. There, the company speculated that it would eventually capture 20% of the private 5G networking market. The company said that the market will be worth a total of $30 billion by 2025.

"We expect it to become the envy of the rest of the world," said John Swieringa, the president and COO of Dish Wireless. "At Dish, our best days are ahead of us."

Figure 1: The Dish Wireless headquarters building in Littleton, Colo.
(Source: Dish)

Dish executives said that the company has now passed the most difficult part of its 5G journey: Constructing the framework for a nationwide wireless network built on open RAN specifications. Dish recently launched commercial services on its 5G network in Las Vegas, and company officials promised to expand that coverage to 20% of the US population by the middle of June – meeting US government coverage mandates.

The design of that network is key, according to Dish officials. They said Dish will be able to operate a 5G network at a fraction of the cost of incumbent heavyweights like Verizon and T-Mobile, thereby giving Dish the opportunity to gain share with less expensive and more versatile services.

But company officials also argued that Dish will be able to entice enterprise customers with a network that is more capable than the networks of its rivals. For example, Dish's Stephen Bye said that the company will be able to meet enterprise customers' strict service level agreements (SLAs) in a way that established 5G providers cannot, thanks to the virtualized, cloud-native, standalone 5G design of Dish's network.

"We're not perfect yet, and we certainly have to scale, but our company has certainly built the most modern network in telecommunications today," said Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen.

"It's not an easy thing to do, what they're doing," agreed analyst Don Kellogg with Recon Analytics. He said the US hasn't seen a new entrant in the mobile industry for two decades.

However, "timing is everything," he said. "Until they have owner's economics on the network, it will be really hard to go to market with really aggressive offers."

Dish is required to cover 70% of the US population by roughly this time next year with its 5G network. The company said it expects to meet that goal in part thanks to its new agreement with 5G equipment supplier Samsung.

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— Mike Dano, Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies, Light Reading | @mikeddano