Dish Network might actually have a 5G network of its own next year, with a delayed beta network in Las Vegas slated to go live sometime before April Fools' Day 2022.

The aspiring greenfield operator began widespread construction in 35 U.S. markets before the end of the third quarter of 2021 and it's pushed construction activity to 42 markets as of today, Dave Mayo, EVP of network development, said during the earnings call.

The Las Vegas market launch was delayed due to the work required to get Dish's open radio access network (RAN) and core network software working well together with reliable performance, he said. "We're in the beta test mode and we'll progress that over the course of the next 90 days and look forward to launching Vegas sometime in the first quarter of 2022."

All eyes are now on AWS re:Invent, which kicks off in late November in Las Vegas, because Dish co-founder and Chair Charlie Ergen pledged to have the beta service available for developers, analysts, and journalists to test during the event. Dish is housing everything it can in the cloud and, for it, that cloud is entirely Amazon Web Services (AWS).

"People will probably try to get to experience a part of our network then," Ergen said. "We should have been a little faster on rollout in Las Vegas. I mean, I think that's fair. But I think other than that, most everything else we're doing probably better than we anticipated."

The company has repeatedly delayed the beta launch of 5G service in Las Vegas, walking back multiple pledges since last year.

Dish certainly isn't being shy about spending money to prove itself as a wireless network operator. It spent almost $281 million on 5G network property and equipment purchases during the quarter, bringing the total spent on 5G network infrastructure through the first nine months of the year to $527 million.

The company maintains it can build a nationwide 5G network on cloud-native, open RAN architecture with $10 billion in cumulative capex, and says that elevated spending will continue until at least 2025.

"That's what it takes to build a network and we're doing it infinitely less expensive than anybody's ever done it before," Ergen said.

Where's all that money going? The company initiated 300 cell site construction starts last week, and that number will continue to grow for a few months before it stabilizes throughout the balance of 2022, according to Mayo.

Dish has also secured building permits on two thirds of the sites required to meet its June 2022 population coverage requirements set by the Federal Communications Commission, and "started construction on well over 30% of the sites required for 2022," he said.

The 70% population coverage obligation that hits in 2023 will effectively require Dish to provide service in every U.S. city with a population greater than 500,000 people. The 20% coverage milestone Dish faces in seven months will include metropolitan areas with less red tape.

"So, for example, California that's intrinsically more difficult is not high on the list in the 20%," Mayo said. "Although there's some areas in the northeast, it's primarily the middle of the country where colocation is prevalent and we can move very quickly."

The "more difficult areas" will be largely tackled in 2023, but some construction activity in those markets is underway, he added.

Company brass also reiterated a goal to break into the 5G enterprise market, a nascent segment that Ergen expects to benefit all network operators but Dish in particular. "It's going to be a big market. We're well positioned for that because our opinion is that you need to be cloud based and you need to be automated to do it, to slice your network, so we're going to have an advantage there," he said.

Stephen Bye, EVP and chief commercial officer at Dish, said there are capabilities in a cloud-native network that provides the company with an ability to differentiate and deliver more degrees of freedom to enterprise customers.

"There isn't a single application that one could point to and say that that dictates sort of the enterprise opportunity for us. It really depends on the vertical," he said. "You have to have the degrees of freedom within the platform and the architecture to support those different solutions based on what that enterprise need is. So there's no silver bullet and one application isn't going to win the opportunity here. It's the ability to put it all together on a common platform."

Dish reported almost $13.8 million in revenue from its 5G network deployment, but absorbed a total operating income loss of $67 million on those activities during the quarter.