Dish, Cisco strike partnership for 5G enterprise services and a deep transport network relationship
Dish Wireless will both use Cisco equipment and software as a key part of its 5G network infrastructure and also plans to offer Cisco solutions to enterprise in a joint go-to-market strategy.
The new partnership is designed to “enable businesses to capitalize on DISH’s 5G network and application infrastructure to support new hybrid work models,” the two companies said in a release.
Dish will join Cisco’s reseller and managed services program for enterprise services, but the relationship is much more extensive than that: The two companies say they will invest in “joint go-to-market plans,” will “co-innovate” on virtual routing (Dish plans to use Cisco XRv9K virtualized routers running on AWS for its 5G network, along with virtual cell site routers at the tower), and generally, Cisco is playing a major role in Dish’s transport network.
Dish’s vision for its network depends heavily on the flexibility and scaling of automated network slicing, very similar to what it has described in its testing strategy. The Cisco partnership also includes plans for Dish’s transport network, where Cisco is working to make it an “open, cloud-based network that will predict, self-heal and self-optimize with closed-loop automation for transport network slicing,” the partners said.
Dish said that Cisco is helping it to build out a “lean, world-class DevOps organization” that will make the company more agile and faster-to-market with new solutions, through continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) testing and zero-touch onboarding that reduces the time lag between product development to pre-production, and from testing to production.
Dish said that its new 5G network will enable it to “customize solutions and enable enterprise-driven slices of its network to meet the needs of specific industry verticals,” and thereby provide a “customized approach will grant enterprises across industries the access to rapidly reap the full benefits of 5G.”
Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen called Dish a “key player” among Dish’s vendors.
“Working with Cisco is central to achieving our goal of delivering a best-in-class experience for enterprises,” Ergen said. “Our ability to continually drive value and enhance capabilities for our customers is a key differentiator for DISH, and positions us to disrupt the industry with more innovation, speed, agility and security.”
“Cisco and Dish are disrupting the mobile and enterprise markets by launching cloud-powered 5G services in record time through innovative technologies, fostering new application development and improving the overall customer experience,” said Chuck Robbins, Cisco’s chairman and CEO. “Together, we look forward to helping businesses across industries transform their networks to support the evolution of hybrid work models, the transition to Network as a Service (NaaS) offers, and the expansion into new markets including IoT.”
