T-Mobile ‘the Grinch’ for CDMA Shutdown Plan, Says Ergen
Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen let loose Thursday at T-Mobile and CEO Mike Sievert for their defense of plans to shut down the legacy CDMA wireless network by year-end (see Ref:2104140036]). T-Mobile’s potential to disenfranchise millions of customers makes the carrier comparable with the Grinch who stole Christmas, said Ergen on a Q1 call.
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Ergen has "always had high respect for the management at T-Mobile and particularly their CEO,” he said. “But I was disappointed when he went on TV and really said a couple of untrue things. One was that it was no big deal that he was turning the CDMA network off.” Another “shocking” untruth, said Ergen, was that “he had to do it because the FCC was requiring it, demanding it.” T-Mobile's plans, he said, will leave millions of mainly lower-income customers in the lurch, despite promising the California Public Utilities Commission last year that it wouldn't end CDMA service for three years. "That's heartless,” he said. “That’s just not the T-Mobile that I’ve seen before. They’ve become the Grinch.” According to Ergen, “the Uncarrier has become the uncaring carrier, and that’s a shame.” T-Mobile didn’t respond to questions.
Dish picked Amazon Web Services as the "preferred cloud provider" for its open radio access network-based 5G build (see 2104210057) because “they were the best in class for what we needed,” said Ergen. Deployment starts later this year, with Las Vegas the first market, said Dish in its April 21 AWS partnership announcement. Ergen thinks “at the end of the day,” Dish will be Amazon’s “largest customer” in cloud, “and they may be the largest customer in our network,” he said. Dish shares closed 8.3% higher Thursday at $45.05.
The Las Vegas build will be fashioned from a “cloud-native infrastructure,” said Stephen Bye, Dish executive vice president-chief commercial officer. “It’s also a 5G-native network. We’re not trying to put 5G on top of 2G, 3G and 4G.” The network is being designed using “all the spectrum bands that we have,” he said. Plans are “on path” to launch Las Vegas in Q3, “but it’s one of a number of markets we have coming on. We just haven’t announced those markets through the end of the year.”
Though Dish has “activity going on” throughout the U.S. to deploy a nationwide 5G network, the Las Vegas deployment will be “the first one that people can touch and feel and experience,” said Bye. “We’ve proven that ORAN, from a technology perspective, can work. Now we’re in the execution phase, now we’re in the deployment phase.” The network “is designed to support all customers, across all segments,” consumer and enterprise, he said.
Other disclosures: (1) Ergen said he doesn’t regret that Dish bailed early from participating in the FCC C-band auction. “I feel confident that we have a very good feel for what the value of the spectrum was,” he said. Dish concluded that because of the “structure” and “dynamics” of the auction, “it went far beyond what a reasonable company would bid,” he said. “That was a level that didn’t make sense for our company.” (2) Ergen again said he thinks a Dish/DirecTV combination is “inevitable” if the transaction can clear regulatory hurdles. He deferred questions to DirecTV parent AT&T, which didn’t respond to our queries.