Dish is still working on 911 service for its 5G network

LAS VEGAS – Dish Network technicians are working to make sure the company’s forthcoming 5G network will be able to handle 911 calls and are currently testing the service. The company executives remain confident that Dish will be able to cover 20% of Americans with 5G by a federally mandated June deadline.

Providing 911 services “turns out to be a little harder than we thought,” Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen said during a keynote here at the NATE Unite conference. But he said that “this isn’t something that’s going to take a lot of months.”

NATE is a trade association representing the nation’s cell tower climbers. Ergen spoke at the event Wednesday during a keynote session with FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr that was moderated by Jennifer Fritzsche of Greenhill & Co.

“I’m really happy to see the work Charlie and his team are doing,” Carr said, noting he had recently visited a Dish cell site in Las Vegas. (Carr on Wednesday tweeted about the visit.) “More competition is good.”

Ergen said Dish currently operates 148 cell towers in Las Vegas – a figure that lines up with recent tests of Dish’s network in the city. “The city is pretty well covered today,” he said. Ergen added that Dish is “on track” to switch on commercial 5G services by June.

Unique 5G

Ergen reiterated his argument that Dish will make a splash in the 5G market despite its position as an upstart that will compete against three enormous, established 5G providers in the US. “We’re trying to build a better network than our competitors,” he said. “We’re going to build a better network than anyone else in the world.”

Ergen said the network will be completely unique in the world in that it will exclusively use 5G, it will run in the cloud, it will be based on an open RAN network architecture, and that it will use Voice over NR (VoNR) technology. “That just doesn’t exist,” he said.

“You’re helping us build something special,” Ergen said to the cell tower technicians in the audience.

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