New Street Research says that Dish Wireless should make its FCC imposed deadline forcing it to cover 20% of the U.S. with its 5G signal by June 14th.
By June 14th of next year, it must cover 70% of the U.S. or more with wireless service running at a download data speed of 35Mbps or faster, to be verified by a drive test. Meanwhile, Dish is building its own standalone 5G network which uses 5G technology end-to-end. Non-standalone 5G networks provide services using 5G along with older technologies including 4G/LTE.
Analysts covering the wireless business believe that Dish Wireless will still need to operate as an MVNO for voice service even within the 20% of the country that will be covered by Dish's 5G signal starting on June 14th. That was confirmed by Dish's Ergen last month when he said that Dish Wireless would first use its own 5G signals"for data." Ergen also noted that Dish's 5G service would be"less robust at the outset" than he had hoped.
New Street continues by saying,"While VoNR is working for Dish in Las Vegas, our sense is that it has been tough to optimize it in other markets, and specifically, to accomplish seamless handoffs between VoNR on Dish’s network and VoLTE on either AT&T or T-Mobile’s network when a customer moves beyond Dish’s network coverage and onto the MVNOs."
Despite having issues with VoNR , New Street says that Dish will meet its regulatory requirements covering 20% of the U.S. with its 5G service by a week from this Tuesday."Based on our read of Dish’s commitment to offer '5G Broadband Service,' it seems unlikely to us that Dish will be considered to have failed to achieve 20% coverage if they rely on the MVNOs for voice services within that coverage at the outset, while only using their own network for broadband services.