Dish Network has selected Intel for its 5G rollout, as the satellite company works to be the fourth nationwide carrier.
As part of T-Mobile’s purchase of Sprint, the magenta carrier sold portions of its spectrum to Dish. T-Mobile also agreed to allow Dish to piggyback off of its network for several years. The government’s goal in requiring these concessions was to help create a viable nationwide carrier to help fill the void left by the T-Mobile/Sprint merger.
Dish has been moving full-speed-ahead in its efforts to roll out its network, enlisting Nokia to provide the necessary software and now partnering with Intel to use its 5G infrastructure technology. Dish is attempting to create the nation’s first virtualized, O-RAN (open-radio access network), 5G network. O-RAN enables carriers to use equipment and hardware from multiple vendors, marrying the various components together using a set of defined interfaces.
“Fully virtualized, cloud-native networks, like the one DISH is building, bring the same server economics that transformed the datacenter,” said Dan Rodriguez, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s Network Platforms Group. “We are excited to partner with DISH to lay the foundation for a truly agile network and have already begun working with our OEM partners who have designed FlexRAN-based servers to enable a variety of new innovative use cases and services.”
As part of the partnership, the two companies are also working together to further the O-RAN standard.