Dish Network has selected Dell Technologies for key parts of the new 5G network it is building in the United States.
Dish has committed to U.S. regulators to covering 70 percent of the country’s population with its network by mid-2023 and will launch its first 5G service in Las Vegas, Nevada later this year. Dish is building its Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) from scratch.
Dish previously announced deals with Fujitsu for cell-tower gear and cloud computing services Amazon Web Services. Dish Network is yet to reveal its specific Capex for setting up the 5G network.
Dell Technologies, as per the 5G contract, will provide Dish with computer servers that will sit at the bottom of cell towers or nearby to crunch data when sending it all the way back to a central data center would cause too much delay, such as helping cars communicate with city infrastructure, Reuters reported.
Dell Technologies is the server market leader with 17 percent share in Q1 2021, ahead of HPE, Inspur, Lenovo and IBM.
“We can put the servers at the bottom of the tower, or we can centralize 10, 15 or 50 sites,” Dish’s Chief Network Officer Marc Rouanne said. “The beauty of this edge cloud is the software can be placed where we want it.”
The deal gives Dell Technologies a flagship U.S. customer for the technology. Earlier this week Vodafone said Dell and others will help it build Europe’s first O-RAN 5G network.
“For us it begins with an infrastructure platform that’s open and industry standard,” Dennis Hoffman, head of Dell’s telecoms systems business, said. “There’s a priority on the ability to scale globally and provide stability.”
