Cisco: DISH and Cisco Partner to Drive Wireless Disruption and Innovation for Enterprises

DISH Wireless and Cisco today announced a multi-layered agreement to accelerate 5G services in the United States. The partnership is designed to enable businesses to capitalize on DISH’s 5G network and application infrastructure to support new hybrid work models.

Together with Cisco, DISH will unlock the value and benefit of 5G for businesses by building the United States’ first smart 5G network. This open and secure network allows DISH to customize solutions and enable enterprise-driven slices of its network to meet the needs of specific industry verticals. Unique to DISH’s network, this customized approach will grant enterprises across industries the access to rapidly reap the full benefits of 5G.

“Cisco and DISH are disrupting the mobile and enterprise markets by launching cloud-powered 5G services in record time through innovative technologies, fostering new application development and improving the overall customer experience,” said Chuck Robbins, Chairman and CEO, Cisco. “Together, we look forward to helping businesses across industries transform their networks to support the evolution of hybrid work models, the transition to Network as a Service (NaaS) offers, and the expansion into new markets including IoT.”

“DISH has compiled an outstanding roster of partners in the wireless industry, and Cisco is a key player helping us launch a customizable, automated, 5G network optimized for enterprise performance,” said Charlie Ergen, Chairman, DISH. “Working with Cisco is central to achieving our goal of delivering a best-in-class experience for enterprises. Our ability to continually drive value and enhance capabilities for our customers is a key differentiator for DISH and positions us to disrupt the industry with more innovation, speed, agility and security.”

The DISH 5G network will be powered by a comprehensive mix of Cisco’s latest cloud networking and automation software, as well as a unique blend of end-to-end lifecycle services from Cisco Customer Experience (CX).

Highlights of the Cisco and DISH agreement include:

Go-to-market strategy: DISH will participate in Cisco’s Reseller and Managed Services Program to deliver private 5G services to the enterprise, and the companies will invest in joint go-to-market plans.
Deployment of an intelligent transport network: Cisco is helping to plan, design and deliver an open, cloud-based network that will predict, self-heal and self-optimize with closed-loop automation for transport network slicing.
Co-innovation on virtual routing: DISH’s 5G network will be powered with fully automated Cisco XRv9K virtualized routers running on AWS, along with virtual Cell Site Routers (vCSR) at the tower. This is a state-of-the-art, fully containerized virtual routing implementation with a purpose-built data plane to unlock the full potential for cloud-native networking.
New operational models: Cisco is helping DISH build out a lean, world-class DevOps organization that drives automation and improves operational efficiency leading to faster time-to-market with new services, speed to revenue and return on investments. Key outcomes are CI/CD testing and zero-touch onboarding to enable DISH to quickly go from development to pre-production, as well as staging and testing directly to production.
World-class technology: Cisco will support DISH with the following: IOS-XR operating system for 5G, backhaul and fronthaul transport via Cisco NCS series routers, segment routing for automated traffic management and network slicing, Nexus 9000 series with an Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) fabric for data center switching, and Cisco Crosswork Network Controller as the transport domain controller including automated service provisioning and assurance.