Category Archives for "Managed Services News"

Jul 20

Dish Spurns T-Mobile, Turns to AT&T for Wireless Help

By | Managed Services News

The nonexclusive network services agreement deals a blow to T-Mobile and bolsters Dish’s goal of covering 70% of the U.S. population by 2023.

The musical chairs of wireless partnerships continues — this time with AT&T and Dish Network.

The companies signed a strategic partnership that makes AT&T Dish’s primary mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). The network services agreement pays AT&T more than $5 billion over the next 10 years. Dish will use AT&T’s wireless network to expand coverage for Dish customers and support its goal of covering 70% of the U.S. population with its OpenRAN-based 5G network by 2023. On the other hand, AT&T can use the spectrum that Dish has been collecting over the last decade, though it must request it.

Swieringa, Johna_Dish

Dish’s John Swieringa

Customers of Dish’s Boost Mobile, Ting Mobile and Republic Wireless retail brands will benefit from the partnership. John Swieringa, Dish’s chief operating officer and group president of retail wireless, said AT&T is offering transport and roaming services.

“Teaming with AT&T on this long-term partnership will allow us to better compete in the retail wireless market and quickly respond to changes in our customers’ evolving connectivity needs as we build our own first-of-its kind 5G network,” Swieringa said.

AT&T maintains both a “low-band” network that reportedly covers more than 250 million people, as well as a smaller but faster “high-band” (also known as mmWave) network.

AT&T’s Thaddeus Arroyo

“Teaming with Dish on this agreement is not only a testament to the strength of our network, but it further validates the investments we’ve made in our fiber and wireless infrastructure,” AT&T Consumer CEO Thaddeus Arroyo said.

Implications

The nonexclusive deal raises all the more intrigue when we remember that Boost Mobile and Republic Wireless currently use the Sprint network that T-Mobile acquired. Dish entered the wireless market after the U.S. Justice Department ordered T-Mobile to sell Boost Mobile to Dish in order to complete its merger with Sprint. The Justice Department wanted to ensure that a fourth wireless carrier existed to ensure competition.

Parker, Tammy_GlobalData

GlobalData’s Tammy Parker

Tammy Parker, senior analyst at GlobalData, noted that T-Mobile and Dish haven’t exactly seen eye-to-eye.

“… although Dish’s involvement [in the Justice Department deal] saved T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint, the relationship between Dish and T-Mobile appears to have been fraught from the start. T-Mobile’s plans to shutter its 3G network by January 2022, leaving many of Dish’s customers without network service, has created an especially contentious standoff between the two companies, which likely helped pave the way for Dish’s new agreement with AT&T.”

Parker notes that AT&T can terminate the agreement if Dish experiences a “qualifying change of control.” In other words, if another party takes over at least half of Dish, AT&T would only need to take care of Dish MVNO customers for another two years.

But Parker predicted that Dish and AT&T will play nice with each other.

“The [network service agreement] is not exclusive for either party, so both can go out and find new dance partners; however, given the depth and breadth of this agreement, that would appear both unlikely and unnecessary,” Parker said.

Light Reading’s Jeff Baumgartner mused that the deal could pan out very well for Dish and very poorly for AT&T.

Dish has announced several different partnerships that will help it build a 5G network. The company announced in April that it would build its 5G network on AWS.

Nokia will provide the 5G standalone core, and Dell will provide Radio Access Network (RAN) and edge compute infrastructure.

AT&T, on the other hand, announced late last month that it will outsource its 5G core network to Microsoft Azure.

Jul 20

M&A Roundup: Deloitte, Granite, HPE, Spectrotel, Telarus, Multiple MSPs

By | Managed Services News

Partners and vendor are filling gaps in their portfolios buying cloud and security capabilities.

Partner M&A continues to hit the news wire.

CF Signature Series StampWe’re seeing MSPs and agents participate in consolidation like never before. Yes, there’s no shortage of IT and security vendors that are buying and selling and getting involved with private equity, but the partners are doing M&A in a big way. Core BTS continued its evolution from VAR to cloud-focused MSP with the acquisition of Aptera Software. Upstack continues to lure telecom consultancies with its deep pockets and the promise of agent equity.

Not all M&A news made the gallery. For example, Xerox enhanced its SMB practice by purchasing a document solutions provider, and Cisco finished purchasing a vulnerability management platform.

Check out the 16 acquisitions that we covered in the slideshow above.

Did you see our previous monthly M&A recap? Check it out.

 

Jul 20

Your Security Blueprint: How to Get Your Marketing & Goal Setting Right

By | Managed Services News

A security blueprint is crucial to cybersecurity success, but requires a solid marketing strategy and goal setting to target new and existing customers.

A solid security blueprint helps you to provide the cybersecurity and threat protection solutions that your customers increasingly demand. But the success of any cybersecurity blueprint relies on a solid marketing strategy and setting the right goals for your business.

What does that mean?

To shed some light, let’s look a little deeper at each of these key areas.

How to Get Your Marketing Right

Your marketing strategy needs to achieve a few critical objectives:

  1. Align with your business plan
  2. Define your target plans and the marketing mediums you intend to use
  3. Help drive your business goals

Crucially, your security blueprint marketing strategy also needs to focus on your services and the benefits you’ll offer to partners–rather than the solutions and technology you provide.

Defining a cybersecurity blueprint marketing strategy begins with examining your value proposition. This outlines the products and services you offer, what makes you stand out from your competitors, and why customers should buy from you.

You can then detail how you’ll sell and deliver your products and services, including identifying the channels you want to use to target customers. This strategy needs to follow the ‘Five Ps’ marketing rules of price, promotion, place, people and process.

From there, you can commission market research that helps you to establish your target audience and create customer profiles. This includes understanding the types of organizations you want to target, who their decision-makers are, and their purchasing and behavioral habits.

How to Communicate with Customers

With your target customers defined, it’s vital to understand how to communicate with them effectively.

While there are some general best practices to follow regardless of your audience, the specifics may differ depending on whether you’re communicating with new business targets or existing customers.

  • Existing customers: Marketing to existing customers requires consistent, ongoing communication. It requires regular touchpoints, such as phone calls and emails, about best practices along with active discussions around customers’ next steps.
  • New customers: When communicating with net new customers, the focus needs to be on what you can help them achieve if they partner with you. Having a good brand image in the organization’s peer group can be crucial to your success here. It encourages customers to elevate your reputation through word of mouth and strengthens your position heading into new sales processes.

How to Set Achievable Goals

In addition to a solid marketing strategy, you also need to set attainable and realistic goals, which is only possible by assessing the current state of your business.

Factors you need to consider include:

  • Who you’re selling to and how
  • How many deals you have and the size of those deals
  • The amount of revenue you’re bringing in
  • Your sales cycle process
  • Lead conversion figures
  • What’s driving your customers’ purchases
  • Your current resources

Getting a good grasp of this information lays the foundations for setting future goals and helps you assess whether your growth targets are realistic. This includes establishing a firm understanding of why you want to expand your offering, the solutions you want to add, the types of businesses you’re targeting and your go-to-market strategy.

Goal setting tends to be a curved progression that starts slowly and accelerates as you progress. It’s essential to set goals low, aim to build momentum, and increase expectations as your expertise develops.

Like your marketing strategy, this often depends on whether you’re targeting new or existing customers. Growth will likely be sharper when targeting existing customers and tends to be a slower process for net new customers.

Furthermore, the SMART framework, which was developed by Peter Drucker, can help you to set goals that are clear and easy to achieve.

This framework offers the following guidelines:

  • Specific: Goals that are sensible, simple, and significant
  • Measurable: Goals that are meaningful and motivational
  • Achievable: Goals that are agreed upon and attainable
  • Relevant: Goals that are realistic, reasonable, and results-based
  • Timely: Goals that are time-limited and time-sensitive

Learn more about cybersecurity marketing and security blueprint goal setting by downloading our From Blueprint to Foundation, Addressing the Gaps in Your Security Design whitepaper.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

Jul 20

Dish Spurns T-Mobile, Turns to AT&T for Wireless Help

By | Managed Services News

The nonexclusive network services agreement deals a blow to T-Mobile and bolsters Dish’s goal of covering 70% of the U.S. population by 2023.

The musical chairs of wireless partnerships continues — this time with AT&T and Dish Network.

The companies signed a strategic partnership that makes AT&T Dish’s primary mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). The network services agreement pays AT&T more than $5 billion over the next 10 years. Dish will use AT&T’s wireless network to expand coverage for Dish customers and support its goal of covering 70% of the U.S. population with its OpenRAN-based 5G network by 2023. On the other hand, AT&T can use the spectrum that Dish has been collecting over the last decade, though it must request it.

Swieringa, Johna_Dish

Dish’s John Swieringa

Customers of Dish’s Boost Mobile, Ting Mobile and Republic Wireless retail brands will benefit from the partnership. John Swieringa, Dish’s chief operating officer and group president of retail wireless, said AT&T is offering transport and roaming services.

“Teaming with AT&T on this long-term partnership will allow us to better compete in the retail wireless market and quickly respond to changes in our customers’ evolving connectivity needs as we build our own first-of-its kind 5G network,” Swieringa said.

AT&T maintains both a “low-band” network that reportedly covers more than 250 million people, as well as a smaller but faster “high-band” (also known as mmWave) network.

AT&T’s Thaddeus Arroyo

“Teaming with Dish on this agreement is not only a testament to the strength of our network, but it further validates the investments we’ve made in our fiber and wireless infrastructure,” AT&T Consumer CEO Thaddeus Arroyo said.

Implications

The nonexclusive deal raises all the more intrigue when we remember that Boost Mobile and Republic Wireless currently use the Sprint network that T-Mobile acquired. Dish entered the wireless market after the U.S. Justice Department ordered T-Mobile to sell Boost Mobile to Dish in order to complete its merger with Sprint. The Justice Department wanted to ensure that a fourth wireless carrier existed to ensure competition.

Parker, Tammy_GlobalData

GlobalData’s Tammy Parker

Tammy Parker, senior analyst at GlobalData, noted that T-Mobile and Dish haven’t exactly seen eye-to-eye.

“… although Dish’s involvement [in the Justice Department deal] saved T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint, the relationship between Dish and T-Mobile appears to have been fraught from the start. T-Mobile’s plans to shutter its 3G network by January 2022, leaving many of Dish’s customers without network service, has created an especially contentious standoff between the two companies, which likely helped pave the way for Dish’s new agreement with AT&T.”

Parker notes that AT&T can terminate the agreement if Dish experiences a “qualifying change of control.” In other words, if another party takes over at least half of Dish, AT&T would only need to take care of Dish MVNO customers for another two years.

But Parker predicted that Dish and AT&T will play nice with each other.

“The [network service agreement] is not exclusive for either party, so both can go out and find new dance partners; however, given the depth and breadth of this agreement, that would appear both unlikely and unnecessary,” Parker said.

Light Reading’s Jeff Baumgartner mused that the deal could pan out very well for Dish and very poorly for AT&T.

Dish has announced several different partnerships that will help it build a 5G network. The company announced in April that it would build its 5G network on AWS.

Nokia will provide the 5G standalone core, and Dell will provide Radio Access Network (RAN) and edge compute infrastructure.

AT&T, on the other hand, announced late last month that it will outsource its 5G core network to Microsoft Azure.

Jul 20

M&A Roundup: Deloitte, Granite, HPE, Spectrotel, Telarus, Multiple MSPs

By | Managed Services News

Partners and vendor are filling gaps in their portfolios buying cloud and security capabilities.

Partner M&A continues to hit the news wire.

CF Signature Series StampWe’re seeing MSPs and agents participate in consolidation like never before. Yes, there’s no shortage of IT and security vendors that are buying and selling and getting involved with private equity, but the partners are doing M&A in a big way. Core BTS continued its evolution from VAR to cloud-focused MSP with the acquisition of Aptera Software. Upstack continues to lure telecom consultancies with its deep pockets and the promise of agent equity.

Not all M&A news made the gallery. For example, Xerox enhanced its SMB practice by purchasing a document solutions provider, and Cisco finished purchasing a vulnerability management platform.

Check out the 16 acquisitions that we covered in the slideshow above.

Did you see our previous monthly M&A recap? Check it out.

 

Jul 20

Your Security Blueprint: How to Get Your Marketing & Goal Setting Right

By | Managed Services News

A security blueprint is crucial to cybersecurity success, but requires a solid marketing strategy and goal setting to target new and existing customers.

A solid security blueprint helps you to provide the cybersecurity and threat protection solutions that your customers increasingly demand. But the success of any cybersecurity blueprint relies on a solid marketing strategy and setting the right goals for your business.

What does that mean?

To shed some light, let’s look a little deeper at each of these key areas.

How to Get Your Marketing Right

Your marketing strategy needs to achieve a few critical objectives:

  1. Align with your business plan
  2. Define your target plans and the marketing mediums you intend to use
  3. Help drive your business goals

Crucially, your security blueprint marketing strategy also needs to focus on your services and the benefits you’ll offer to partners–rather than the solutions and technology you provide.

Defining a cybersecurity blueprint marketing strategy begins with examining your value proposition. This outlines the products and services you offer, what makes you stand out from your competitors, and why customers should buy from you.

You can then detail how you’ll sell and deliver your products and services, including identifying the channels you want to use to target customers. This strategy needs to follow the ‘Five Ps’ marketing rules of price, promotion, place, people and process.

From there, you can commission market research that helps you to establish your target audience and create customer profiles. This includes understanding the types of organizations you want to target, who their decision-makers are, and their purchasing and behavioral habits.

How to Communicate with Customers

With your target customers defined, it’s vital to understand how to communicate with them effectively.

While there are some general best practices to follow regardless of your audience, the specifics may differ depending on whether you’re communicating with new business targets or existing customers.

  • Existing customers: Marketing to existing customers requires consistent, ongoing communication. It requires regular touchpoints, such as phone calls and emails, about best practices along with active discussions around customers’ next steps.
  • New customers: When communicating with net new customers, the focus needs to be on what you can help them achieve if they partner with you. Having a good brand image in the organization’s peer group can be crucial to your success here. It encourages customers to elevate your reputation through word of mouth and strengthens your position heading into new sales processes.

How to Set Achievable Goals

In addition to a solid marketing strategy, you also need to set attainable and realistic goals, which is only possible by assessing the current state of your business.

Factors you need to consider include:

  • Who you’re selling to and how
  • How many deals you have and the size of those deals
  • The amount of revenue you’re bringing in
  • Your sales cycle process
  • Lead conversion figures
  • What’s driving your customers’ purchases
  • Your current resources

Getting a good grasp of this information lays the foundations for setting future goals and helps you assess whether your growth targets are realistic. This includes establishing a firm understanding of why you want to expand your offering, the solutions you want to add, the types of businesses you’re targeting and your go-to-market strategy.

Goal setting tends to be a curved progression that starts slowly and accelerates as you progress. It’s essential to set goals low, aim to build momentum, and increase expectations as your expertise develops.

Like your marketing strategy, this often depends on whether you’re targeting new or existing customers. Growth will likely be sharper when targeting existing customers and tends to be a slower process for net new customers.

Furthermore, the SMART framework, which was developed by Peter Drucker, can help you to set goals that are clear and easy to achieve.

This framework offers the following guidelines:

  • Specific: Goals that are sensible, simple, and significant
  • Measurable: Goals that are meaningful and motivational
  • Achievable: Goals that are agreed upon and attainable
  • Relevant: Goals that are realistic, reasonable, and results-based
  • Timely: Goals that are time-limited and time-sensitive

Learn more about cybersecurity marketing and security blueprint goal setting by downloading our From Blueprint to Foundation, Addressing the Gaps in Your Security Design whitepaper.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

Jul 20

Dish Spurns T-Mobile, Turns to AT&T for Wireless Help

By | Managed Services News

The nonexclusive network services agreement deals a blow to T-Mobile and bolsters Dish’s goal of covering 70% of the U.S. population by 2023.

The musical chairs of wireless partnerships continues — this time with AT&T and Dish Network.

The companies signed a strategic partnership that makes AT&T Dish’s primary mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). The network services agreement pays AT&T more than $5 billion over the next 10 years. Dish will use AT&T’s wireless network to expand coverage for Dish customers and support its goal of covering 70% of the U.S. population with its OpenRAN-based 5G network by 2023. On the other hand, AT&T can use the spectrum that Dish has been collecting over the last decade, though it must request it.

Swieringa, Johna_Dish

Dish’s John Swieringa

Customers of Dish’s Boost Mobile, Ting Mobile and Republic Wireless retail brands will benefit from the partnership. John Swieringa, Dish’s chief operating officer and group president of retail wireless, said AT&T is offering transport and roaming services.

“Teaming with AT&T on this long-term partnership will allow us to better compete in the retail wireless market and quickly respond to changes in our customers’ evolving connectivity needs as we build our own first-of-its kind 5G network,” Swieringa said.

AT&T maintains both a “low-band” network that reportedly covers more than 250 million people, as well as a smaller but faster “high-band” (also known as mmWave) network.

AT&T’s Thaddeus Arroyo

“Teaming with Dish on this agreement is not only a testament to the strength of our network, but it further validates the investments we’ve made in our fiber and wireless infrastructure,” AT&T Consumer CEO Thaddeus Arroyo said.

Implications

The nonexclusive deal raises all the more intrigue when we remember that Boost Mobile and Republic Wireless currently use the Sprint network that T-Mobile acquired. Dish entered the wireless market after the U.S. Justice Department ordered T-Mobile to sell Boost Mobile to Dish in order to complete its merger with Sprint. The Justice Department wanted to ensure that a fourth wireless carrier existed to ensure competition.

Parker, Tammy_GlobalData

GlobalData’s Tammy Parker

Tammy Parker, senior analyst at GlobalData, noted that T-Mobile and Dish haven’t exactly seen eye-to-eye.

“… although Dish’s involvement [in the Justice Department deal] saved T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint, the relationship between Dish and T-Mobile appears to have been fraught from the start. T-Mobile’s plans to shutter its 3G network by January 2022, leaving many of Dish’s customers without network service, has created an especially contentious standoff between the two companies, which likely helped pave the way for Dish’s new agreement with AT&T.”

Parker notes that AT&T can terminate the agreement if Dish experiences a “qualifying change of control.” In other words, if another party takes over at least half of Dish, AT&T would only need to take care of Dish MVNO customers for another two years.

But Parker predicted that Dish and AT&T will play nice with each other.

“The [network service agreement] is not exclusive for either party, so both can go out and find new dance partners; however, given the depth and breadth of this agreement, that would appear both unlikely and unnecessary,” Parker said.

Light Reading’s Jeff Baumgartner mused that the deal could pan out very well for Dish and very poorly for AT&T.

Dish has announced several different partnerships that will help it build a 5G network. The company announced in April that it would build its 5G network on AWS.

Nokia will provide the 5G standalone core, and Dell will provide Radio Access Network (RAN) and edge compute infrastructure.

AT&T, on the other hand, announced late last month that it will outsource its 5G core network to Microsoft Azure.

Jul 20

M&A Roundup: Deloitte, Granite, HPE, Spectrotel, Telarus, Multiple MSPs

By | Managed Services News

Partners and vendor are filling gaps in their portfolios buying cloud and security capabilities.

Partner M&A continues to hit the news wire.

CF Signature Series StampWe’re seeing MSPs and agents participate in consolidation like never before. Yes, there’s no shortage of IT and security vendors that are buying and selling and getting involved with private equity, but the partners are doing M&A in a big way. Core BTS continued its evolution from VAR to cloud-focused MSP with the acquisition of Aptera Software. Upstack continues to lure telecom consultancies with its deep pockets and the promise of agent equity.

Not all M&A news made the gallery. For example, Xerox enhanced its SMB practice by purchasing a document solutions provider, and Cisco finished purchasing a vulnerability management platform.

Check out the 16 acquisitions that we covered in the slideshow above.

Did you see our previous monthly M&A recap? Check it out.

 

Jul 20

Your Security Blueprint: How to Get Your Marketing & Goal Setting Right

By | Managed Services News

A security blueprint is crucial to cybersecurity success, but requires a solid marketing strategy and goal setting to target new and existing customers.

A solid security blueprint helps you to provide the cybersecurity and threat protection solutions that your customers increasingly demand. But the success of any cybersecurity blueprint relies on a solid marketing strategy and setting the right goals for your business.

What does that mean?

To shed some light, let’s look a little deeper at each of these key areas.

How to Get Your Marketing Right

Your marketing strategy needs to achieve a few critical objectives:

  1. Align with your business plan
  2. Define your target plans and the marketing mediums you intend to use
  3. Help drive your business goals

Crucially, your security blueprint marketing strategy also needs to focus on your services and the benefits you’ll offer to partners–rather than the solutions and technology you provide.

Defining a cybersecurity blueprint marketing strategy begins with examining your value proposition. This outlines the products and services you offer, what makes you stand out from your competitors, and why customers should buy from you.

You can then detail how you’ll sell and deliver your products and services, including identifying the channels you want to use to target customers. This strategy needs to follow the ‘Five Ps’ marketing rules of price, promotion, place, people and process.

From there, you can commission market research that helps you to establish your target audience and create customer profiles. This includes understanding the types of organizations you want to target, who their decision-makers are, and their purchasing and behavioral habits.

How to Communicate with Customers

With your target customers defined, it’s vital to understand how to communicate with them effectively.

While there are some general best practices to follow regardless of your audience, the specifics may differ depending on whether you’re communicating with new business targets or existing customers.

  • Existing customers: Marketing to existing customers requires consistent, ongoing communication. It requires regular touchpoints, such as phone calls and emails, about best practices along with active discussions around customers’ next steps.
  • New customers: When communicating with net new customers, the focus needs to be on what you can help them achieve if they partner with you. Having a good brand image in the organization’s peer group can be crucial to your success here. It encourages customers to elevate your reputation through word of mouth and strengthens your position heading into new sales processes.

How to Set Achievable Goals

In addition to a solid marketing strategy, you also need to set attainable and realistic goals, which is only possible by assessing the current state of your business.

Factors you need to consider include:

  • Who you’re selling to and how
  • How many deals you have and the size of those deals
  • The amount of revenue you’re bringing in
  • Your sales cycle process
  • Lead conversion figures
  • What’s driving your customers’ purchases
  • Your current resources

Getting a good grasp of this information lays the foundations for setting future goals and helps you assess whether your growth targets are realistic. This includes establishing a firm understanding of why you want to expand your offering, the solutions you want to add, the types of businesses you’re targeting and your go-to-market strategy.

Goal setting tends to be a curved progression that starts slowly and accelerates as you progress. It’s essential to set goals low, aim to build momentum, and increase expectations as your expertise develops.

Like your marketing strategy, this often depends on whether you’re targeting new or existing customers. Growth will likely be sharper when targeting existing customers and tends to be a slower process for net new customers.

Furthermore, the SMART framework, which was developed by Peter Drucker, can help you to set goals that are clear and easy to achieve.

This framework offers the following guidelines:

  • Specific: Goals that are sensible, simple, and significant
  • Measurable: Goals that are meaningful and motivational
  • Achievable: Goals that are agreed upon and attainable
  • Relevant: Goals that are realistic, reasonable, and results-based
  • Timely: Goals that are time-limited and time-sensitive

Learn more about cybersecurity marketing and security blueprint goal setting by downloading our From Blueprint to Foundation, Addressing the Gaps in Your Security Design whitepaper.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

Jul 20

Dish Spurns T-Mobile, Turns to AT&T for Wireless Help

By | Managed Services News

The nonexclusive network services agreement deals a blow to T-Mobile and bolsters Dish’s goal of covering 70% of the U.S. population by 2023.

The musical chairs of wireless partnerships continues — this time with AT&T and Dish Network.

The companies signed a strategic partnership that makes AT&T Dish’s primary mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). The network services agreement pays AT&T more than $5 billion over the next 10 years. Dish will use AT&T’s wireless network to expand coverage for Dish customers and support its goal of covering 70% of the U.S. population with its OpenRAN-based 5G network by 2023. On the other hand, AT&T can use the spectrum that Dish has been collecting over the last decade, though it must request it.

Swieringa, Johna_Dish

Dish’s John Swieringa

Customers of Dish’s Boost Mobile, Ting Mobile and Republic Wireless retail brands will benefit from the partnership. John Swieringa, Dish’s chief operating officer and group president of retail wireless, said AT&T is offering transport and roaming services.

“Teaming with AT&T on this long-term partnership will allow us to better compete in the retail wireless market and quickly respond to changes in our customers’ evolving connectivity needs as we build our own first-of-its kind 5G network,” Swieringa said.

AT&T maintains both a “low-band” network that reportedly covers more than 250 million people, as well as a smaller but faster “high-band” (also known as mmWave) network.

AT&T’s Thaddeus Arroyo

“Teaming with Dish on this agreement is not only a testament to the strength of our network, but it further validates the investments we’ve made in our fiber and wireless infrastructure,” AT&T Consumer CEO Thaddeus Arroyo said.

Implications

The nonexclusive deal raises all the more intrigue when we remember that Boost Mobile and Republic Wireless currently use the Sprint network that T-Mobile acquired. Dish entered the wireless market after the U.S. Justice Department ordered T-Mobile to sell Boost Mobile to Dish in order to complete its merger with Sprint. The Justice Department wanted to ensure that a fourth wireless carrier existed to ensure competition.

Parker, Tammy_GlobalData

GlobalData’s Tammy Parker

Tammy Parker, senior analyst at GlobalData, noted that T-Mobile and Dish haven’t exactly seen eye-to-eye.

“… although Dish’s involvement [in the Justice Department deal] saved T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint, the relationship between Dish and T-Mobile appears to have been fraught from the start. T-Mobile’s plans to shutter its 3G network by January 2022, leaving many of Dish’s customers without network service, has created an especially contentious standoff between the two companies, which likely helped pave the way for Dish’s new agreement with AT&T.”

Parker notes that AT&T can terminate the agreement if Dish experiences a “qualifying change of control.” In other words, if another party takes over at least half of Dish, AT&T would only need to take care of Dish MVNO customers for another two years.

But Parker predicted that Dish and AT&T will play nice with each other.

“The [network service agreement] is not exclusive for either party, so both can go out and find new dance partners; however, given the depth and breadth of this agreement, that would appear both unlikely and unnecessary,” Parker said.

Light Reading’s Jeff Baumgartner mused that the deal could pan out very well for Dish and very poorly for AT&T.

Dish has announced several different partnerships that will help it build a 5G network. The company announced in April that it would build its 5G network on AWS.

Nokia will provide the 5G standalone core, and Dell will provide Radio Access Network (RAN) and edge compute infrastructure.

AT&T, on the other hand, announced late last month that it will outsource its 5G core network to Microsoft Azure.

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