A closer look at the Dish 5G/satellite effort for the U.S. military

Several top wireless executives – including Dish and EchoStar Chairman Charlie Ergen – recently celebrated the launch of a new private wireless 5G network for the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island, a major naval operation in the Pacific Northwest.

EchoStar released a picture of the ribbon-cutting event, which also featured John Mezzalingua of JMA Wireless, Angela Eberhardt of Cisco and David Tokunaga of Boingo.

Hughes Network Systems first announced the network roughly a year ago. Hughes is the prime contractor for the network, which stems from an $18 million contract from the Department of Defense (DoD), alongside the Information Warfare Research Project (IWRP) consortium. IWRP is a “collaboration to engage industry and academia to develop and mature technologies in the field of information warfare that enhance Navy and Marine Corps mission effectiveness,” according to Hughes.

Other vendors supporting the new network include Boingo (which installs and operates networks at various US military bases), JMA Wireless (which supplied radios for the Whidbey Island network), and Cisco, Dell and Intel (three top equipment vendors for Dish’s growing 5G network).

In response to questions from Light Reading, Hughes’ Rick Lober explained that the base’s new network uses Dish’s 3.5GHz CBRS and 600MHz spectrum holdings, and that it covers “a few acres,” including the base’s flight line and hangars.

The network is intended to support “flight line operations and equipment maintenance,” according to Lober, Hughes’ vice president and general manager for defense and government systems.

The satellite angle

One reason the network is noteworthy is because it combines terrestrial and satellite connections that are both under the purview of Ergen. The network leverages Dish’s terrestrial spectrum holdings and 5G open RAN network architecture, but it also supports a satellite component through Hughes, an EchoStar company.

Ergen, a billionaire, owns a majority of the voting shares of both EchoStar and Dish Network.

“Yes, the deployment includes Hughes Jupiter GEO satellite backhaul with OneWeb LEO to be added for resiliency,” wrote Hughes’ Lober in response to questions from Light Reading. Hughes is an investor in and a partner of OneWeb.

A Hughes official – Rajeev Gopal – offered more details in the company’s press release last year: “Today’s walkie-talkies, paper-trails and telephone conversations will be replaced with a private, secure 5G network over which air station processes and systems will be automated and continuously optimized. What’s more, the standalone, standards-based configuration – including O-RAN standards for flexibility – will connect seamlessly anywhere on the planet using Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellite connectivity,” he said.

To read the complete article, visit Light Reading.