Ergen Divulges Plans for 5G Tower Builds

December 19, 2019

Ergen

The federal trial to decide the fate of the State’s lawsuit against the Sprint/T-Mobile provided some new details on how Charlie Ergen, CEO of Dish Network, will build out his 5G network, if the merger goes through.

The company’s strategy for its 5G network calls for 2,500 towers by 2021, 10,000 sites by 2022, 15,000 sites by 2023, 30,000 sites by 2023 and eventually 75,000 sites, according to statistics provided by New Street Research (NSR). Dish’s NB-IoT network will comprise 1,000 sites.

“The inclusion of Dish into the T-Mobile / Sprint merger is positive for the towers in three respects: first, it eliminates the prospect of the worst-case scenario for the towers (a T-Mobile / Sprint deal without conditions); second, it will likely drive a faster network build from Dish; and third, the towers will likely capture more revenue from Dish building independently rather than with a network partner as we previously assumed,” Spencer Kurn, NSR analyst, wrote.

Since Ergen’s testimony, the Wall Street Journal reported that banks are willing to lend Ergen $10 billion to build the 5G network.