Dish jumps up after AWS cloud deal announcement

Charles Ergen, Chairman and Co-Founder of Dish Network Corp

Jonathan Alcorn | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Dish Network’s shares closed nearly 11% on Wednesday, reaching prices not seen since mid-2019, after the satellite TV company announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services to deploy a 5G network on the infrastructure. from the cloud provider.

Dish is trying to become the fourth national wireless player in addition to distributing video, after T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T. The deal with Amazon is a vital part of Dish’s plan to develop an entirely new network that can deliver more reliable 5G speeds more efficiently than its old competition. It’s also critical that Dish start offering service in mid-2023. That’s when Dish runs the risk of losing its wireless spectrum licenses if it still hasn’t developed an operational wireless network.

Dish will begin operating “the first standalone, cloud-based 5G Open Radio Access Network in the United States, starting with Las Vegas later this year,” the company said in a statement. According to the statement, Amazon and Dish will work together to see how organizations, including Amazon and AWS, use 5G or build their own networks. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Dave Brown, vice president of AWS ‘core Elastic Compute Cloud service, told CNBC’s “Tech Check” on Wednesday that the partnership with Dish will “absolutely” serve as some sort of case study that Amazon can take to other telecom providers to demonstrate that 5G networks can run in clouds, rather than in data centers with a dedicated infrastructure.

That could help Amazon expand its own cloud operations, a major source of revenue that grew sales by nearly 30% in 2020.

Meanwhile, Microsoft, the second-largest cloud infrastructure provider behind Amazon, is also keen to let carriers build 5G networks in its cloud. AT&T uses Microsoft’s Azure cloud and last year Microsoft acquired two companies focused on carriers.

AWS is already working with Verizon, the largest US wireless provider.

– CNBC’s Alex Sherman contributed to this report.

WATCH: Amazon Web Services, Dish partners for cloud-based 5G network

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