Fledgling standalone (SA) 5G operator and digital TV stalwart Dish Network said it was flying “closer to the sun” in a tight credit market during a frank first quarter earnings call.
“I do think we operate pretty conservatively,” Dish chairman Charlie Ergen told analysts on the call. “But I do think the markets had historical great changes in the last year and that certainly has pushed us closer to the sun, but not too close.” he added.
The chairman noted that Dish had a narrow window to perform and execute “and address our capital structure.” It is not a position the company is unfamiliar with, however, he noted.
Dish’s net income dropped dramatically for the quarter. The company reported income of $233 million for the first quarter of 2023. Compared to $433 million for the same quarter a year ago.
Retail wireless net subscribers, from its prepaid Boost Mobile operation, decreased by approximately 81,000 in the first quarter, compared to a net decrease of 343,000 in the year-ago quarter. The company closed the quarter with 7.91 million retail wireless subscribers.
The new radio hope
Dish is hoping that its cloudified 5G SA postpaid network will start to play into its revenue at some point. Currently, the company is building out the network to support the 70% of the U.S. population coverage total it has told the Federal Communications Commission it will achieve. Executives on the call seemed confident that Dish would meet that deadline.
However, that is only the first step. The company has several devices ready for the network and plans to launch the iPhone in the back half of this year.
Chairman Charlie opined: “Realize that one of things we’ve done is built a network with voice-over-new-radio [a.k.a. 5G voice or VoNR], so we’re the only person in the United States, really in the world other than the Chinese, that does that at scale.”
VoNR can only be enabled on a pure 5G SA network.
“We haven’t made substantial progress in the enterprise business in terms of announcements but behind the scenes, obviously,” Ergen hinted. He said that companies looking to build 5G private networks can look to the greenfield network of Dish to “build it right.” Whether that means that the corporations build it themselves, use Dish, or use partners like Cisco, Dell or AWS.
“That’s a 2024 event for us,” he added.
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