Competitors are focused on FWA and MEC as routes to 5G monetization
With operators spending billions to deploy, package and sell connectivity-backed solutions, 5G monetization has moved front-and-center in operator’s messaging. Verizon, for instance, recently laid out its three-year service revenue outlook and sees fixed wireless access and mobile edge computing among its most likely paths to 5G monetization. In addition to FWA, T-Mobile US is looking to pick up enterprise market share and rural subscribers. DISH, for its part, is still keenly focused on building and operationalizing its network, but the new entrant has given some indications of how it looks to leverage its money and work towards achieving a return.
As DISH builds out its greenfield 5G network in the United States, the company has emphasized the importance of serving the enterprise space, focusing particularly on providing network customization and flexibility. Many of its partnerships demonstrate this focus, highlighting the need for automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning for network optimization and to support the deployment of advanced 5G services at scale.
Network slicing for 5G monetization
DISH has said its private enterprise 5G capabilities are “unique” compared to other Tier 1 providers, pointing to its cloud-native network, in particular, as a differentiator. Specifically, a fully cloud-native network will allow it to sell virtually partitioned slices of its network tuned to the precise needs of an industrial user. While there’s different flavors of private networks, including networks deployed in spectral set asides and fully owned and managed by the end user, DISH would be carving up its public network in a manner that, to an enterprise user, would work like a bespoke build.
“The good thing about these private networks that we’re working on is they’re not constrained by the geography of building our macro network,” DISH’s Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Bye said during an August earnings call. “So, we’re able to serve customers in different geographies within that environment. And then, the other thing, which is also important to highlight, it’s across all verticals. There isn’t a specific vertical that has an interest in this. We’re seeing interest across every vertical and every industrial segment.”
He said the network capabilities DISH is planning to develop are “unique compared to what the other operators have in the market today. And so, not to say that they can’t get there in the future, but we clearly have an advantage today that we’re taking advantage of.”
AWS partnership can help DISH be a “network of networks”
Supporting those capabilities is AWS, which DISH’s Chief Network Officer & Executive Vice President Marc Rouanne told attendees at 2021’s AWS re:Invent is helping the provider achieve the flexibility and scale they need to become a “network of networks” to help provide customized services to enterprise customers based on speed, latency and other requirements. Dish is using AWS to host its RAN and 5G Core.
“It’s not just one size fits all like we used to do,” Rouanne said during a keynote address. “Enterprise 5G customers need customizable services — individualized 5G networks matched to enterprise needs. This customizability will be “a game changer for businesses across the industry and enterprises.”
DISH claimed that, in leveraging AWS, it will be the first telecom company to run its service on the public cloud. In line with this goal, the company also announced a partnership with Spirent Communications to enable automated, large-scale 5G core testing.
Of the partnership with Spirent, Rouanne commented: “As we deploy our cloud-native 5G network, we’re looking forward to seeing the transformation of how organizations and customers will order and consume 5G services on their own slices and private networks.”
He also provided additional insights on how DISH plans to leverage the swift and virtualized cloud-based 5G testing capabilities that Spirent is providing, stating the DISH’s ambition is to “offer one or many slices to any enterprise.”
“Each enterprise could have many slices: Some high-speed slices, some very secure slices, some monitoring slices,” he continued. “The problem is that they will have different requirements, so they will have different features. They will have different capabilities. Some may optimize for latency, some may optimize for cost, some may optimize for reliability or redundancy or security — or all of it. Which means that the testing of the slice has to be specific.”
Will network slicing availability match market demand?
If you look back at recent telecom industry marketing buzz, there was a time when network slicing was effectively billed as a panacea for 5G monetization. As it stands today though, Standalone 5G, a pre-requisite for slicing, is scaling somewhat slowly; on the other hand, private networks, both 4G and 5G, are proliferating a terrific clip. There’s an emerging line of thinking that by the time operators are able to offer network slices easily and at scale, global, distributed enterprises will have already invested in private networks. In this case, network slicing would find itself more of an enabler for small- and medium-sized firms.
DISH is also working with DigitalRoute, which will provide a cloud-native Usage Data Platform to help the provider monetize new services and complex business models by ensuring flexibility and enabling better support for a wide variety of businesses and industries.
5G monetization, DigitalRoute CEO Andreas Zartmann, said, “will be complex and continuously evolving. It will require usage data to be processed from disparate network slices, from the edge, from the data centers and from various service applications and APIs. Our platform brings this all together to enable the complex scenarios of the future. The time when telecoms only charge per gigabyte is over.”
Learn more in the free report “How to sell 5G: Will an ecosystem approach open up enterprise opportunity?”
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