Samsung Teams Up With Dish To Provide 5G Services In The United States

JAKARTA - Samsung has signed a multi-year contract deal to sell equipment to Dish for its upcoming 5G network in the United States. This is one of the biggest radio deals for the South Korean company since its main contract with Verizon in 2020.

Samsung positioned itself as a contender for the top telecommunications equipment supplier after Nokia and Ericsson in the United States by winning a $6.6 billion contract deal with Verizon, and the contract with Dish strengthened their position in the United States.

"This is a huge deal, more than a billion dollars for Samsung Networks," Alok Shah, vice president at Samsung, told Reuters. "We will ship our first product to Dish later this year."

Dish itself already has Microelectronics Technology Inc. Taiwan (MTI) and Fujitsu Japan as suppliers for 5G radios.

Dish is building a 5G network using the latest technology that has the potential to lower costs and deliver new services, and has tied up with companies ranging from Amazon and Intel to smaller ones like Altiostar and Mavenir.

While Dish has yet to launch a commercial network, they have committed to regulators covering 20% of the US population by June, and at least 70% of the population by mid-2023.

"We have a goal of achieving 20% of population coverage by June and we are on track to achieve that," Dish Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Bye said in an interview.

"We've had beta users on our network for some time, testing our network... we just haven't announced a commercial launch yet and you'll see that in the coming weeks," he said.

Dish, which has set up network infrastructure in dozens of cities, is also facing supply chain issues that are hurting companies globally, including in the telecommunications industry.

Bye said the supply chain has been tough for 12-18 months and the challenges won't go away in the next few months. But Dish has all the components to hit its June coverage target.

Dish also tested its 5G network using a Samsung Galaxy S22 phone and plans to continue using the phone throughout the network deployment process.

“We work closely with other device vendors and you can look at the Boost website and you will clearly see that we have relationships with many device vendors,” said Bye.

Boost Mobile, the prepaid cordless phone brand owned by Dish, lists phones from Samsung, Motorola, and Apple on its website.