6 October 2025
Dish’s bid to become a competitive fourth mobile operator in the US has hit a dramatic speed bump following recent announcements of spectrum sales to AT&T and SpaceX. These deals indicate the end of Dish’s ambitions to build a network using Open RAN technology that rivals the leading mobile operators. But how will this news impact the wider Open RAN ecosystem?
What has happened to Dish?
Following the Sprint/T-Mobile merger, Dish entered the market aiming to compete with the remaining incumbents – AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. Dish was one of the champions of Open RAN technology, deploying its network using radio equipment from Fujitsu and Samsung, cloud infrastructure from Amazon Web Services, and software, architecture and automation services from Mavenir. Dish’s intention was to leapfrog legacy technology and compete through a greenfield network built on open, software-driven principles.
But building a nationwide network from scratch proved challenging due to the enormous capital burden of deploying a network with extensive coverage in a country the size of the United States – and required significant and swift commercial gains to counterbalance the massive investments. However, by 2025, Dish’s subscriber market share remained at a modest 1.7%1, and after running into regulatory scrutiny over buildout obligations, it became clear that the company’s spectrum holdings were more valuable in the hands of rivals. The sales to AT&T and SpaceX were a clear acknowledgement that Dish failed to meet its business plan ambitions.
Dish’s exit deals a massive blow to the Open RAN ecosystem
Whilst Dish’s struggles are not linked to any inherent technology issues with Open RAN, its market exit will have a large knock-on impact on the Open RAN ecosystem.
Dish’s decision in favour of Open RAN as a greenfield operator can be well understood – as it is much easier for a new entrant (greenfield) operator to adopt Open RAN. This is because, unlike established (brownfield) operators, new entrant operators would not have to deal with the complexities of integrating the Open RAN solution within their existing legacy networks, which use proprietary hardware and software from incumbent vendors.
Dish is the largest of three MNOs globally that have fully committed to OpenRAN (the other two being Japan’s Rakuten and Germany’s 1&1). Therefore, Dish’s exit will have a direct impact on Open RAN vendors, including Fujitsu, Mavenir and Samsung, for whom Dish was a significant early customer. For example, Samsung supplied 24 000 Open RAN-compliant 5G radios in its initial shipment to Dish2, which is a large proportion of the 38 000 Open RAN compliant sites it has deployed worldwide3. Dish’s exit will clearly result in Open RAN vendors losing a large proportion of their business.
Established operators offer little immediate hope for Open RAN
To achieve scale, Open RAN will need established operators to put their faith in the new technology. News of further collaborations emerge regularly – just recently, Grameenphone, a Bangladesh-based mobile operator owned by Telenor Group, announced its plans to deploy Open RAN across its network in partnership with Rakuten Symphony.
However, significant concerns on the side of established operators remain, including:
- Financial concerns: Open RAN requires enormous investment without a clear ‘killer app’ or vast cost savings in sight
- Operational concerns: There remain concerns on interfaces, interoperability, and support
- Security concerns: The use of open interfaces and multi-vendor components increases the risk of software vulnerabilities and supply chain threats.
What does the future hold for Open RAN?
The failure of Dish is a major setback for Open RAN vendors, as most existing operators continue exploring Open RAN at small scale at best. For the tide to change, the current Open RAN operators will have to lead the charge and showcase performance, revenue or cost saving breakthroughs that will justify a move away from legacy operations. At present, it feels like Dish’s exit has kicked such opportunities further out, and that widespread Open RAN adoption will remain a pipedream for the foreseeable future…
[1] AT&T, Dish, T-Mobile, Verizon, ‘Annual report pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024
[2] Samsung, ‘DISH Wireless Launches Virtual Open RAN 5G Network with Samsung’ 23 February 2023
[3] Samsung, ‘Samsung Deploys 38,000 O-RAN Compliant vRAN Commercial Sites Around the World’, 15 February 2024
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