Dish Network remains confident it will meet upcoming build out deadlines for its unique 5G network, but just in case it’s raising an additional $2 billion to help facilitate that construction.

The nascent wireless network operator filed paperwork to raise that capital through a senior secured notes offering. Proceeds will be used for the usual “general corporate purposes,” but more specifically “the buildout of wireless infrastructure.”

Dish launched commercial 5G services in mid-June, just hitting a government-mandated deadline tied to some of its spectrum licenses. Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen previously stated that the full 5G network build could run Dish in the neighborhood of $10 billion, which he explained could be spread out until 2025.

The initial service is using a combination of Dish Network’s AWS-4 (2 GHz), Lower 700 MHz E-Block, and AWS H-Block (1.9 GHz) spectrum licenses. That spectrum is supporting the carrier’s 5G service running through its virtualized 5G core.

During the carrier’s latest earnings call, Ergen said the carrier had more than 10,000 towers now constructed with its own network and spectrum reaching more than 35% of the U.S. population. He added that the carrier remains on pace of adding around 1,000 new cell sites per month, which in connection with deploying more of its 600 MHz spectrum resources will help the carrier reach its next build milestone.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires license owners to meet specific coverage build out requirements based on a certain percentage of the U.S. population that those licenses cover. These rules vary based on different spectrum bands but are in place to ensure that a license owner is putting those licenses to work for the common good and not just sitting on those licenses to sell at a later date.

Dish is staring at a 70% population coverage obligation that hits in 2023. This will effectively require Dish to provide service in every U.S. city with a population greater than 500,000 people.

The carrier does have active roaming agreement with both T-Mobile US and AT&T to help support customers when they are not on Dish’s owned network. Ergen said these agreements will allow the carrier to be prudent on expansion beyond its FCC requirements, noting Dish can focus on adding cell sites that are financially advantageous and rely on its roaming partners for those that don’t make financial sense for Dish.

Dish’s network is based fully on the 5G standalone (SA) or new radio (NR) technology that means it does not have any legacy 4G LTE core components to fall back on. This is advantageous in that it allows the carrier to support more of the 5G technology benefits baked into standards, but lacks a fully baked voice transport component.

Dish reiterated its unique network advantage compared to recent reports from its established rivals. This includes T-Mobile US, Verizon, and AT&T all announcing various levels of commercial deployments of their respective 5G standalone (SA) network cores and open RAN components.

Dish EVP and CMO Stephen Bye explained that while other operators are just now starting to dabble with cloud native and open radio access network (RAN) 5G technology, Dish is “already exposing APIs within that platform through the cloud.”

“I think they may put some … paint on the outside of the house, but it’s still fundamentally not a cloud-native 5G network,” Bye said. “We don’t have any of the legacy infrastructure that they have. I’d like to sort of draw an analogy like adding an extension to the house and calling it sort of a 5G network, but … you’re still stuck with the rest of the house. What we have is unique. It is the only cloud-native 5G open network that has been deployed at this scale anywhere in the world. And there are a lot of capabilities that we have with that infrastructure.”

The carrier is relying on dozens of vendors to provide its network components, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cisco, Dell, Nokia, VMware, and Oracle. It added Samsung to the mix earlier this year, though those components won’t start hitting the network until next year.

Ergen also further boasted about Dish Network’s potential in the enterprise-focused private 5G wireless space. Carrier executives had previously hinted that its fully virtualized 5G network will allow it to offer unique services in the market to both retail and enterprise customers that will differentiate it from competitors.

Ergen said that while the concept itself is still new and Dish is still working through its own logistics, the pay off is lucrative. “It’s a long-term customer, you’re going to have virtually no churn in it and it’s big contracts,” he said.

“Our business was designed to be an open wholesale network where if you’re in the private enterprise business and you can think of a need that you have, because we’re software-based and we’re in the cloud, you can add an API, you can write code that can do that for you, and it’s a big differentiator between legacy networks,” Ergen said, adding that “you can argue whether the business is a $30 billion business or $100 billion business, whatever it is, but it’s unquestionable that there’s really only four companies that can participate in a large degree in the private network business that has” access to licensed spectrum.

Bye added that Dish stands alongside its cellular rivals in being unique among any entering the private 5G space in that it controls its own spectrum. This is in comparison to others that are relying on the quasi-licensed Citizen Broadband Radio Spectrum (CBRS) band that is managed by different licensing tiers. This includes tier-one incumbents with “protected status,” including the Department of Defense for use by Navy ship radars and registered fixed satellite receiving stations; a tier two for “priority access licenses” (PAL); and tier three for “general authorized” (GAA) channels.

“We’re running into different players in the space who were offering CBRS solutions, using GAA or WiFi,” Bye said. “And what we’re hearing more and more from customers is that just doesn’t cut the grade. They need to access the licensed spectrum, and it’s not sufficient to have one band. It’s actually very important to have access to a combination of three to five … but also low-band spectrum is a vital ingredient with these networks.”

That sentiment is shared by other licensed spectrum holders.

“We’ll certainly build a CBRS network, but we’re making sure that when we build that CBRS network we’ve got a path, a relatively simple path to add licensed spectrum should they hit what’s needed at a future date,” Gordon Mansfield, VP of mobility and access architecture at AT&T, explained during an interview at this year’s ConnectX event. “There’s a lot of value in private networks, but I think people are much better off having some level of relationship with a carrier that has licensed spectrum.”