Dish Network’s 12-year quest to become a player in the U.S. wireless market is now fulfilled — partially at least as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). The company today closed its $1.4 billion purchase of Boost Mobile, gaining more than 9.3 million customers from the divestiture of Sprint’s prepaid business by T-Mobile US.

The framework for the complex, three-party deal that was reached last summer with the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), paving the way for T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint, required T-Mobile to sell Sprint’s prepaid business to allow Dish to become a viable fourth nationwide 5G operator. It also calls for Dish to pay $3.6 billion for Sprint’s 800 MHz spectrum licenses, and gives Dish access to T-Mobile’s network for seven years while it assembles a 5G standalone network.

Dish will continue to use the Boost brand for its newly acquired prepaid MVNO. “Today, we are proud to welcome hundreds of employees, thousands of independent retailers, and millions of customers to the Dish family,” Dish CEO Erik Carlson said in a statement. “This marks an important milestone in Dish’s evolution as a connectivity company. It positions us well as we continue to build out the first virtualized, standalone 5G network in America.”

Dish co-founder and Chairman Charlie Ergen previously said the company will launch 5G service in a single market with a 5G standalone core before the end of this year. He and other executives at the company have been forthright about the company’s desire to emulate Rakuten Mobile’s network infrastructure strategy in building a cloud-native, virtualized open radio access network (RAN).

A trio of vendors already tapped to be involved in Dish’s greenfield 5G network are also working with the Japanese greenfield operator. Fujitsu, a Japan-based technology conglomerate, will provide low- and mid-band O-RAN Alliance compliant radios, and Altiostar and Mavenir will provide open RAN software for the RAN. Other vendors will also provide RAN equipment, a Dish spokesperson told SDxCentral.

Dish hasn’t named a vendor for its 5G standalone core, and its claim to be the first U.S. operator with a 5G standalone network remains unqualified. T-Mobile and AT&T both plan to activate a 5G standalone network core this year, while Verizon has pinned that goal to later this year or 2021.

“The FCC and DoJ have shown continued leadership in advancing the nation’s 5G wireless future, and thanks to their efforts, Dish is able to focus our resources on building the only 5G network in the U.S. based on open RAN architecture, completely from the ground up,” Carlson said. 

T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert called the closing of the divestiture an “important milestone” that fulfills “one of the most significant commitments we made as part of this merger process.” New and existing Boost customers will have full access to T-Mobile’s network via the MVNO agreement through 2027.

T-Mobile and Sprint announced an agreement to merge their respective businesses in April 2018. Following a nearly two-year battle, the companies finally merged in April 2020, a development that created the biggest shakeup to hit the U.S. wireless market in at least 15 years.

Dish’s aspirations for the U.S. wireless market is another legendary saga. The company has directly invested more than $11 billion on wireless spectrum licenses since 2008, and an additional $10 billion in “non-controlling investments” related to wireless spectrum licenses, according to a filing with Securities and Exchange Commission.

That spectrum sat dormant, leading many to call Dish a spectrum squatter, until 2018 when Dish embarked on a plan to deploy a nationwide Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) network that never saw the light of day. It scrapped that effort once the combination of T-Mobile and Sprint created an opening for it to become an MVNO and the FCC eased requirements as part of those negotiations.

Dish ultimately wrote down $253 million during the first quarter of 2020 related to that failed NB-IoT effort, and Ergen said it spent roughly double that before it shifted gears. “Now we’re building a broadband network that will be the envy of the world,” he said at the time. “We are going to build a better network that’s less expensive, and less expensive to operate, and more flexible.”

Dish is expected to name more vendors for its network deployment in the coming months and continues to claim it can build a nationwide network for $10 billion. However, the total cost and funding for that effort is a major concern among analysts and investors, particularly as the decline of Dish’s legacy satellite and over-the-top TV business accelerates. Dish previously said it expects to spend between $250 million and $500 million on its wireless division this year.