Interview

Ep 44 – DISH: The Telco Pioneer

June 21, 2022

This week’s guest

Marc Rouanne

Executive Vice President and Chief Network Officer DISH

In 2021, DISH announced that it was rolling out a new, greenfield, 5G network in the United States on AWS—and spending only $10-billion dollars to do it. Skeptics immediately started saying it couldn’t be done, but not me—this was exactly the kind of visionary project I had been dreaming of!

Today’s guest, DISH Wireless Executive Vice President and Chief Network Officer Marc Rouanne, has been a driving force behind making the DISH project a reality. He and his team are setting the new standard for how networks operate. Listen now to hear:

How hyperscaler investments made the project possible [02:36];
What Marc would change about the AWS platform [04:35];
DISH’s experience working with software vendors’ cloud-native solutions [06:01]; and
How building on AWS changed the economics of network operations [07:41]

When I started this podcast two years ago, my vision was to help telco execs redefine the way networks and services are deployed, so having Marc on to talk about this project is a true milestone. Be sure to watch the video of our conversation on the TelcoDR YouTube channel.

Links and Resources

Read DISH’s recent announcement about the launch of its Smart 5G™ Wireless Network to 120 cities, covering 20% of the US population .
Download the TelcoDR case study, 1&1 vs DISH: a tale of two Open RAN networks—or if you’re tight on time, read my blog on the topic.
Watch this interview I did with Ray LeMaistre from TelecomTV about why the DISH project is a game changer for telco.
Read AWS’s official announcement about the DISH-AWS strategic partnership.
Check out this Light Reading article about the DISH network go-live by Mike Dano.
Read about what happened to the mini computer vendors that didn’t see innovation coming until it was too late.
Marc loves to sail, which gave me the idea to put together a Yacht-rock playlist! I had so much fun listening and watching the videos, I tweeted them out!
- Sailing, Christopher Cross
- I Keep Forgettin’, Michael McDonald
- This is It, Kenny Loggins
- You Can Do Magic, America
- Ride Like the Wind, Christopher Cross

Author’s bio

As Executive Vice President and Chief Network Officer for DISH’s wireless business, Marc is responsible for network architecture, RF network and strategy, core network architecture and strategy, cloud and edge strategy, security, transport, 5G lab management and interoperability testing. He brings to DISH more than 20 years of international management experience in the telecommunications industry, having held executive positions in R&D, customer operations and product management in the U.S., France and Finland.