Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen laid out three options for the nascent carrier to enter the lucrative private 5G wireless market, including as a wholesale network provider to vendors with already established enterprise deals like Cisco, Dell Technologies and Amazon Web Services (AWS). That option could be the most compelling for Dish Network as it fights to balance its checkbook.

Ergen admitted to investors during the company’s most recent earnings call that it has not “made substantial progress in terms of the enterprise business in terms of announcements, but behind the scenes” the company has outlined a trio of ways to enter the market.

The outspoken executive said the first way would be to build out the required network infrastructure itself and then lease capacity on that network to interested enterprises or vendor partners. He added that “would take capex that obviously is a bit less attractive to us.”

The second “is people just pay for it from the get go, so it’s cash positive from day one,” Ergen quickly said before laying out the third option.

“The third is that some of our partners in our build, whether it be, you know, Cisco or Dell or AWS come to mind where they already have a big enterprise business, that they just add our spectrum into their thinking about how they would design private networks, and at that point we'd be we would be more of a wholesale provider of spectrum,” Ergen said.

That third option echoes what Ergen said last year as a way for Dish Network to target the enterprise space. At that time, Ergen said those vendors “want to move beyond Wi-Fi into more licensed spectrum and more secure spectrum and more control over their spectrum.”

This plays into the notion that licensed spectrum can provide more secure and stable private networks compared to using either unlicensed spectrum with a Wi-Fi architecture or using the quasi-licensed Citizen Broadband Radio Spectrum (CBRS) band that is managed by different licensing tiers.

“Any of those three things are possibilities on how you would go ahead and build an enterprise business,” Ergen said this week of Dish Network’s potential private network options. “It's going to be a huge market for all the players. I just think we're a little bit better positioned because I think the kind of network we have is the kind of network that companies when they really become omniscient about what a private network can do for you and what it should do for you, the architecture of what we have is just … without the legacy … is just better if you're gonna build it new that you should build it right.”

Those three specific vendors have all dipped their toes into the private network space with internal work focused specifically on using Wi-Fi or CBRS spectrum. However, they have also started to partner with some operators in an effort to add licensed spectrum to the mix.

Ergen had previously stated that the private network business could be worth anywhere from $30 billion to $100 billion, and that “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.

That financial opportunity is becoming more important for Dish Network as it starts to more aggressively target the 5G wireless market.

The carrier to this point has been spending billions of dollars to build out its cloud-native 5G network to meet coverage deadlines tied to the $34 billion it has spent on wireless spectrum licenses. Dish is staring at a 70% population coverage obligation that hits in 2023, which will effectively require Dish to provide service in every U.S. city with a population greater than 500,000 people.

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.

Ergen had previously noted that the carrier’s full build could run up to $10 billion, and late last year it was forced to dip into the finance markets at a time when interest rates spiked.

The carrier said it remains on track to hit that 70% coverage requirement by mid-year, at which point it will be able to start curtailing capex spending for a short amount of time until its next build out requirements come up in 2025. That spending lull will be a self-admitted important time for Dish Network to prove it can be a competitive wireless carrier in the market.

“We have a narrow window of opportunity here … to perform and execute and address our capital structure,” Ergen said. “We have to do a lot of things right. We have a small margin of error but it’s all doable.”

Outside of its operational challenges, Dish Network is also coming out of a wide-ranging cyberattack that cost the company $30 million, mainly tied to remediation, additional customer support and consulting and IT costs.

The cyberattack happened earlier this year. CEO Erik Carlson explained that the cyberattack did not access any customer data, but that “certain employee related records and a limited number of other records containing personal information were among the data extracted.”

“We've taken steps to protect the affected records and personal information and we have received confirmation that the extracted data has been deleted,” Carlson said. “But we have no evidence this data has been misused. We have started the process of notifying individuals whose data was extracted.”

Carlson also said Dish has been working with its vendor partners to update its cyber-defenses and security posture, including its endpoint detection response system (EDR).

“I wouldn't say it was record time, but certainly for us I think right up there at best-in-class in how you recover from an incident and a real solid effort in our team,” Ergen said of the cyberattack and response. “It gives you a lot of confidence going forward that your team when under pressure can operate.”

The Dish Network cyberattack came at a similar time to one of several that have hit rival T-Mobile US. That carrier recently admitted to being hit by an “external system breach” that began February 24, was discovered on March 27, but continued until March 30. The breach impacted data from less than 1,000 customers.

However, T-Mobile US reported earlier this year a cyberattack that lasted more than a month and impacted 37 million postpaid and prepaid customers and customers from Google’s Fi mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service that runs through T-Mobile US.

Dish Network's management played down the cyberattack's $30 million financial impact on what was a disappointing fiscal quarter. Dish Network reported a 9% drop in net income for its first fiscal quarter to $3.96 billion, and a 49% year-over-year drop in net income to $223 million.