DISH Network Corporation (DISH) Q2 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ:DISH) Q2 2021 earnings call dated Aug. 09, 2021.

Corporate Participants:

Timothy A. Messner — Executive Vice President and General Counsel

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Stephen Bye — Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer

Dave Mayo — Executive Vice President, Network Development

Tom Cullen — Executive Vice President, Corporate Development

W. Erik Carlson — President and Chief Executive Officer

Analysts:

David Barden — Bank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

John Hodulik — UBS — Analyst

Philip Burnett — New Street Research — Analyst

Phil Cusick — JPMorgan — Analyst

Doug Mitchelson — Credit Suisse — Analyst

Brett Feldman — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Craig Moffett — MoffetNathanson — Analyst

Ric Prentiss — Raymond James — Analyst

Walter Piecyk — LightShed Partners — Analyst

Rich Greenfield — LightShed Partners — Analyst

Kannan Venkateshwar — Barclays — Analyst

Michael Rollins — Citi — Analyst

Scott Moritz — Bloomberg — Analyst

Mike Farrell — Multichannel News — Analyst

John Talano — Inside Towers — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Good day and welcome to the DISH Network Corporation Quarter Two 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded.

And at this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Tim Messner. Please go ahead, sir.

Timothy A. Messner — Executive Vice President and General Counsel

Hi, good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us. We’re joined on the call today by Charlie Ergen, our Chairman; Erik Carlson, our CEO; Tom Cullen, our EVP of Corporate Development; Paul Orban, our CFO. And on the wireless side, we’ve got Jeff Blum, our EVP of Regulatory Affairs; Stephen Bye, our Chief Commercial Officer; Dave Mayo, our EVP of Network development.

We’re not going to be making any opening remarks today, but we will start with safe harbors. Statements that we make during this call that are not statements of historical fact, constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from historical results and/or from our forecasts. We see no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to the risks, uncertainties and other factors discussed in our SEC filings. That’s it.

And with that operator, we’ll open it up to questions. And let’s start with the analysts.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Now we’ll take the first question from David Barden of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

David Barden — Bank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

Hey, guys. Good morning or good afternoon. Thanks for doing the call again. I guess a couple of questions if I could. Congratulations on the AT&T Network Services Agreement. Obviously, there is — talk about it. I would love if maybe probably you could give us a little background on how that deal came together? Why it came together? And I think specifically is this a vehicle for DISH to achieve its FCC coverage requirements, specifically, the 70% I think coverage by June 2023? I think the second question I would have is obviously, we’re obviously waiting for the Las Vegas Network launch. I was wondering if you could kind of give us a little bit of a roadmap between now and say maybe first half 2022 what the network build is going to look like and what should we — what we should expect? I guess some of your partners in the infrastructure side have suggested that you’ve been contemplating a broad geographic build and it will be great to get some more color on that? Thank you, guys.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Sure, David. David I’m going to have Dave Mayo talk about your second question on deployment and how that looks and make just an openings and comment and throw it over to Stephen Bye on the AT&T question. But obviously, we’re always looking for ways to improve things for our customers, and it’s no secret that the CDMA shut off — premature shut off from T-Mobile was not helpful to the relationship, so it was an opportunity for one of their competitors to work with us and so that led to discussions that probably otherwise might not have happened, but make no mistake, T-Mobile is still super important to us and we’re happy to have two really good companies that we could — that we can work with. It doesn’t help us in the AT&T or T-Mobile, either one of those agreements do not help us with — do not help us in the CDMA shut off timeline and they don’t — AT&T doesn’t help us in terms of meeting SEC milestones. So, but it does — but I do think the agreement with AT&T is on a big picture certainly, moderately and let AT&T’s briefing themselves, but I view it is as certainly moderately positive for both companies and potentially extremely positive for both companies. And with that, maybe I’ll turn it over to Stephen and maybe give you more color on it.

Stephen Bye — Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer

Yes. So just to add some more color to Charlie’s comments. This is, as you’ve seen a long-term strategic partnership that we have with AT&T. It really — we went into it with sort of a win-win approach for both companies. It certainly creates value for both of us, which we feel is very important as companies but also for our customers. And so one of the things is very important in this relationship is the quality the AT&T network as it relates to supporting our customers and particularly our DISH customers that skew tend — tend to skew more rule, so they have a much better network and the quality of network and reliable network in that — in those markets. It allows us to go beyond our existing footprint that we serve with Boost today to broaden our distribution and address different part of the market, given the quality of the network and the coverage.

I think the other part of the relationship is, beyond being strategic, it is a long-term partnership. And we’ve been working with them on how we manage the customer migration as well as the support for those customers, both on our network as well as the AT&T network. But in addition to that, also with the T-Mobile network. And so it is a good relationship and one that we’re working towards, operationalizing as we go forward. The other thing to add in the relationship with AT&T, is it is a broad roaming agreement, so it does give us in-market roaming in addition to out-of-market roaming for a long time. As you’ve seen, it’s a 10-year agreement. So that’s very important as it helps to support out build, doesn’t remove any of our obligations on the build and so with that I’ll hand it to Dave.

Dave Mayo — Executive Vice President, Network Development

Great. Thanks, Stephen. David, with respect to our build program, you might be aware we’ve implemented a very decentralized approach. We have four regions in 36 markets and the early markets that we’ll be building are substantially all colocations. Hence the activity that you saw in some of the tower company calls this last couple of weeks. In that regard, we’ve signed substantially all the leases that are required to meet our 20% mandate for next June and have received notices to proceed on close to a third of the sites. As we’ve commenced construction on close to 30 markets — 30 geographies within those 36 markets, so in some cases, there may be multiple geographies within a market that we will — that will — that we commenced construction on.

And then as to your Vegas question, we will be substantially complete with the construction activities this next — in the next 60 days, by the end of the third quarter and we’ll — and as we’ve talked about, we will be beta testing customers in the fourth quarter.

David Barden — Bank of America Merrill Lynch — Analyst

Great, thank you guys, so much for the color.

Operator

We’ll now take the next question from John Hodulik at UBS. Please go ahead.

John Hodulik — UBS — Analyst

How quickly will you guys be able to migrate the traffic from the T-Mobile network to the AT&T network? And I guess all new gross adds go out right on to the AT&T network and then as part of the announcement, you talked a little bit about cooperation on the infrastructure side, could you talk about whether AT&T will be helping you guys laid up spectrum. I know they would — the 700 in particular fits well with what they’re doing with their blocks of 700? And then lastly on the Las Vegas launch, just anything you tell us about what that will look like once that network is lit up or you guys have sort of retail pricing plans in the market or were you sort of the establishing a sales force to talk about distribution in the wholesale side and the business side or just sort of what should we expect once that network gets turned on? Thanks.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Yes, this is Charlie. I’ll try to take some of those and maybe somebody else would want to jump in. In terms of transition from AT&T, I mean obviously, AT&T will be our primary partner from a MVNO perspective going forward. But that doesn’t mean that we’re transitioning our customers off of T-Mobile. They again remain an important part of what we’re doing to the extent that they want to be an important part of what we’re doing. So one of the things that we’ll do that relate to Las Vegas is obviously we have to be able to provision on AT&T, so that’s going to take us a bit of time that we hope and maybe somebody else on this call or maybe one of our guys can talk about that and obviously the — some customers will want to move to AT&T because of better network. Some people like the T-Mobile network will be better and they will stay where they are. And then for new customers, big picture, kind of thing is, our customers today and for the most part I think most customers across the United States that we talk to, they really want consistency and coverage as their priority and the speeds on 4G and LTE are normally fast enough for them, and they don’t really see a difference in 5G when 5G pops up on their phones, so their little confused, nobody can charge more for 5G in the United States today. And so obviously for a new set of customers for us, we think the AT&T as a tremendous coverage advantage that we don’t have today although T-Mobile is going to be a fast follower there as they build out rural America for their FCC milestones.

The other part of it is, that the T-Mobile today, probably arguably has an advantage that’s certainly in perception of 5G and probably in 5G build out on their 600-megahertz. And while it doesn’t really show up, there is a particular feature on the customers’ can point to, it’s still from a marketing perspective I think they are considered the leader in 5G and that’s where 5G is important for our customers, that’s going to be important. The key is going to be the 5G development both our own development, which we think we’re doing a little bit differently, but also, as you get the, the big 100-megahertz blocks in C-band or 2.5, the T-Mobile is building out, that’s going to be a real race for those guys and we’ll see who does the best job of building something that can differentiate 5G to consumer, that will be the key. But we’re well positioned with both T-Mobile and AT&T depending on who kind of wins that race, plus what we think that we’re going to do different within 5G and our architecture that might be different than either one of those two. So we’re just well-positioned to get the customer the network that they think is the best coverage and quality and value for them. But AT&T is going to get the — be the primary, going forward.

The — with AT&T in terms of — Stephen touched on it, but there is other things beyond, I think it’s probably moderately positive for both companies, but it could be extremely positive, you mentioned one spectrum we have. We have spectrum, both have mirror images of 700 megahertz or might be some interesting things you could do there and save some — and get scale and save cost if companies are so inclined. We share an interest in the 12-gigahertz spectrum. We have some spectrum that as we build out we’ll lay fallow for a bit until we build it out, and it probably could be put to use sooner rather than later by AT&T. So I think there is a — there is technology of where things are going that our teams have committed to working together on and we were buying other services from AT&T like Backhaul, that we have to buy from somebody and since they are our partner now they get the benefit of the doubt on lot of those deals. So — and we’re both in the video business, and we have common interests there. So you can see this could — this potentially could be a much better deals than the $5 billion that we’re committed to. It may not, the companies may not get along, but I think both parties realize that there are things that we can share that are beneficial to both companies and when we can do that, we will, — I’m sure we’ll remain friend [Indecipherable], we obviously will compete with each other as well.

And then as far as, I forgot the question about Las Vegas.

Timothy A. Messner — Executive Vice President and General Counsel

It’s about distribution.

Dave Mayo — Executive Vice President, Network Development

Distribution.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Oh, distribution.

John Hodulik — UBS — Analyst

Yes just what the service looks like when you guys turn that network on or is it going to be a beta for the rest of the year or do you actually start adding customers to it?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

No, I think we’ll be in beta for a minimum of 90 days. You got to realize what kind of the things that have changed, maybe in the last six months, but we are going to put our network in the cloud, our core in the cloud and start that way. We have a core working today that is not in the cloud. We decided we don’t want to change and we want to put the net start with the core in the cloud, which hasn’t been done by anybody here before. We obviously are doing O-RAN, so our baseband and radio vendors have to make sure those things work together. And so — and now we’re adding AT&T integration to the network that we hadn’t planned on doing in addition to the integration of T-Mobile. So we’ve got a lot of — so we think that’s going to be at least a 90-day kind of beta integration. If things work in the lab today, then when you take them out of the lab and we get them on Dave’s network that will be deployed by end of September. We can light up Vegas in total that is — that goes from lab to reality, in my experiences, things don’t work exactly right at the first month or two, and you’ve got to integrate that. And then we’ll go from there. We will have retail, obviously in Vegas as in other cities it will light up very quickly after Las Vegas. We will have a retail presence and we’ll have offers for consumers that we think will be competitive.

John Hodulik — UBS — Analyst

Got it. Thanks Charlie.

Operator

We’ll now take the next question from Jonathan Chaplin at New Street Research. Please go ahead.

Philip Burnett — New Street Research — Analyst

Hey guys, it’s actually still Phil Burnett for Jonathan. Quick one. Will the end market roaming element of the AT&T deal lead to a more efficient and quicker network build for you guys? I understand that it won’t change the FCC required. But does it change the way you think about the build? Thank you.

Stephen Bye — Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer

Yes. So I’ll start and then I’ll let Dave wrap it up. The end market roaming is important in terms of the customer experience and the ability to manage our customers, but it really doesn’t impact the bill plan that Dave and his team are working on at the end of the day.

Dave Mayo — Executive Vice President, Network Development

Yes, we won’t — we’re not doing anything differently as a consequence of the AT&T deal with respect to the meeting our FCC milestones.

Philip Burnett — New Street Research — Analyst

Got it. Thanks guys.

Operator

We’ll now take the next question from Phil Cusick at JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Phil Cusick — JPMorgan — Analyst

Hi guys, thanks. Charlie, you alluded to this with the AT&T comments, but any updated thoughts on the DBS merger, now the DirecTV separated? Does that separation change anything and what’s lost as time passes. And then just quickly as well, what’s the exposure on the CDMA shutdown still? Thank you.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

In terms of DirecTV and DISH, I mean obviously, I’ve said it the last year, I think that those two companies go together, that’s inevitable. Really, if there is another party involved in terms of TPG, so whether that’s positive or negative, I don’t know, but from a regulatory point of view, obviously it is less and less reality to objections to it, because obviously the — hundreds of billions of dollars of broadband deployment and continued competition from the programmers themselves in the marketplace. So I think that’s just — we’ll just have to wait and see whether there is a desire on their base part to do that but I think it’s a timing issue more than anything else.

In terms of — I think the question was CDMA shut off. Like I said earlier this year that that was — that that’s kind of a false, T-Mobile had Andrew talk to regulators in California that they would be a minimum of three years. I think that’s kind of — I think it’s a false artificial deadline to turn it off in January this year. We do that as a very anticompetitive move, because that’s a situation where the people that we pay, that our partners from MVNO are actually obviously challenging — outwardly challenging to get our customers and that was a convenient way to do it. You may notice that they’ve got — and I think they’re kind of smoked out now. All right. They have extraordinary offer in the marketplace for free upgrade to a 5G phone and 50% off for service for two years, extraordinary offer. So that’s obviously aimed at customers to upgrade to their network. And I think that’s not — it’s — the bottom line is they are really sole [Phonetic], what I call sole winners. It’s hard to be a good winner sometime. And they get $70 million of synergy. The government $70 billion of synergy and the government allowed them to have and now they want $71 billion by getting some customers that we already paid them for. So, you’ve all met that guy in grade-school, one who bragged about himself and bragged how good he was in spite of the ball in front of you and that sometimes it takes a bit of maturity to be a good winner and they’re kind of — they are a sole winner and so it’s — but it’s good.

On the other hand, the fact that a consumer could upgrade that may not be good for Boost, but at least the customer, our main objective with addition Boost is to make sure customers don’t lose their service and to extent that the customer upgrades, that’s and doesn’t lose our service, I’d much rather have that than the customer lose a service. So I think there — I think that we expect that they’ll continue that promotion through January 1. I think they probably — they’ve been in the business. They went on TV and their CEO went on TV and said that nobody would be impacted, that everybody was going to be upgraded by January 1 and I expect that they’re going to continue that promotion, they’re going to upgrade everybody by January 1 and if they do that, then there is probably no controversy other than competition. But we’ll have to wait and see how things go.

Phil Cusick — JPMorgan — Analyst

How many customers do you still have who’d exposed to that CDMA shutdown Charlie?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Well, I think our last disclosure was the majority of our customers at quarter — was that a quarter ago, majority of our customers that we are making — we are taking all reasonable efforts to migrate customers and we’ve made good progress on that. So that people don’t suffer from a pre-merger shut down and I think that the number is now, smaller. But I would say this that our projection show a material amount of customers on January 1 will still have CDMA phones and will lose their service. And again this is the most economically challenged group in America, Boost is not — these aren’t the customers that have bank accounts and high paying jobs and these are people that are challenged, and so economically challenged. So I think it’s even more important that these people don’t lose their service.

Phil Cusick — JPMorgan — Analyst

Thanks, Charlie.

Operator

We’ll now take the next question from Doug Mitchelson of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Doug Mitchelson — Credit Suisse — Analyst

Thanks so much. A couple of short-ones and then one for Charlie. In terms of the NSA and AT&T requesting to use portions of the DISH spectrum, would AT&T be able to use that DISH spectrum to serve their own customers in addition to serving DISH customers. The reason I ask is the language in the 10-Q, wasn’t quite clear since it noted AT&T would be able to deploy the spectrum to support DISH customers. So that’s the first quick one.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Yes, I’m going to let Stephen answer that.

Stephen Bye — Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer

Yes. So Doug, the — basically AT&T can deploy that spectrum for not just our customers but for all customers on their network. And part of the reason we looked at that was, as we load up capacity on their network is just making sure that our customer experience and their customer experiences continue to be market leading.

Doug Mitchelson — Credit Suisse — Analyst

Okay, that’s clear. And then given the Las Vegas wireless network coverage you are building, would you anticipate — what would you anticipate would be customer usage in the Las Vegas area on the DISH Network versus needing to roam on AT&T or T-Mobile?

Stephen Bye — Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer

Yes. So the majority of the usage will be on our network, complemented by the coverage and the network that we have access to with AT&T.

Doug Mitchelson — Credit Suisse — Analyst

Okay, thanks. And then, Charlie. I just hoping to engage you on longer term capital needs, maybe this won’t go anywhere, but you’ve talked in the past about achieving 0-RAN and now I guess cloud core, proof of concept as a driver of cheaper access to capital for DISH. At this point, are you contemplating a wireless strategy that’s aggressive enough that you think you will need, I’ll say capital, I know you’ve talked about self-funding most or all of this sort of phase one initial build, but I imagine you’ve got multiple scenarios where you could be a lot more aggressive with spectrum and customer acquisition and pace of build and other things to go after wireless either quickly or you could go after wireless at a pace that you could afford with just internal capital. Any thoughts on accessing capital in the future post Las Vegas?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Well I mean I think historically, we’ve accessed the capital markets over four-year history. So I don’t — and obviously we have obligations we need to pay back. So we continue to — as always, we’re opportunistic in the capital markets, if there is a reasonable ways to raise capital and we plan our business accordingly and we’ve been pretty innovative and obviously we’ve never had the kind of capital that some of our competitors do, and so we’ve had to be more innovative and I think that we’re comfortable in that space. But we have the capital to — I think Dave sleeps at night knowing that he has the capital available to meet his deployment guidelines for now and obviously Erik is running the business in a positive cash flow manner. So — but if there is opportunity out there with partners or with the markets themselves, we obviously look to take advantage of those things.

Doug Mitchelson — Credit Suisse — Analyst

Maybe I can try it this way Charlie, is there a line of sight on this network will take four to five years to build, and it will be in a pretty good place. It’s going to take 10 years, 15 years. Is there sort of a sense of time to get — stay in this business and get it running, the way that you like?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Well, I mean, I think we’re less than two years away from critical, what I would call critical mass. We’re going to cover 70% of the country for the next two years of the population and that’s critical mass. We’re — that’s enough critical mass. That’s on par with where Sprint was. And I think they had 50 or 60 million customers. So — and we’re going have a better network than they had. We’re going have a differentiated network and better roaming than Sprint had. So this is on a five-year project. This is I think obviously a first milestone of 20%. I think you’ll have a pretty good feel and you’ll be able to — we’ll be able to start helping you develop models of where this goes. But clearly, the 70% milestone will be enough to compete at a very high level in the marketplace both for consumers, but that may be for our — in our case, more importantly for enterprise business.

Doug Mitchelson — Credit Suisse — Analyst

All right. Thank you. I’m looking forward to that Las Vegas pricing that will certainly help with the model. Thank you.

Operator

We’ll now take the next question from Brett Feldman. Please go ahead.

Brett Feldman — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Thanks. It’s actually a follow-up to exactly what you were talking about. For a while you have flagged the enterprise space as a key opportunity for the advanced capabilities of the network you’re building. You’ve talked about network slicing and maybe private networks. Typically in the enterprise market, particularly when you’re deploying infrastructure in response to a customer win, it’s not uncommon for those enterprise customers to help fund the deployment of that infrastructure to large upfront payments. Are you contemplating that that is a part of how you’re going to fund the business going forward meaning as you think about that $10 billion budget, you outlined. Is it possible that some of that could be financed by enterprise customers? And then in the flip side of the question would be, if that’s not the case, how are you thinking about pricing your services in the enterprise space, particularly when you’re deploying network in response to contract wins? Thank you.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

I’m going to turn it over to Steve and other than say that the — that I think there is a lot of models in enterprise business and you can imagine enterprise customers who want to slice of the network and they want to certain level of quality and they wanted to happen in the geographic region that we haven’t build out, they weren’t built out. You can certainly — your scenario certainly plausible or you can imagine, just straight business deals where people pay by the drink or pay by the gig and — but I’ll let — I think the broader answer is, I’ll let Stephen answer it really why the architecture that we’re building is so enticing as customers and why it differentiates maybe from what they can get with the incumbents?

Stephen Bye — Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer

Yes. So adding to Charlie’s comments, we’re seeing significant traction and interest today in private networks and private 5G networks and the architecture that we’re deploying really enables a level of control in a much deeper level of security that allows the enterprise to utilize that network for their own business operations. So we’re seeing significant interest there. We’ve been responding to multiple RFPs, RFIs. We’re working on proof of concepts right now and we’re partnering with a number of different SIs as we bring the services to market. And so there are different business models depending on the customer, depending on the geography, and the good thing about these private networks that we’re working on is they’re not constrained by the geography of building our macro network. So we’re able to — customers in different geographies within that environment. And then the other thing which is also important to highlight, it’s across all verticals. There isn’t a specific vertical that has an interest in this. We’re seeing interest across every vertical and every industrial segment and we are very well positioned to take the architecture that we’re deploying being cloud native but also the open architecture and the ability to do slicing, it is distinctively unique compared to what the other operators have in the market today. It’s not to say that they can’t get there in the future, but we clearly have an advantage today that we’re taking advantage of.

I think it’s also important that to add that even in the DISH business today, we do a great business in serving hospitality. And so we’re able to partner with the systems integrators we have within that business to augment what we’re doing on the video side. And so that’s really a terrific model where we can integrate kind of the capabilities and the assets that we have across the whole company to serve other verticals as well. Some people may not have on the radar screen today.

Brett Feldman — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

We’ll now take the next question from Craig Moffett. Please go ahead.

Craig Moffett — MoffetNathanson — Analyst

Yes, hi. Thank you. Let’s stay with the same topic, if we could Charlie. The enterprise market today is mostly national sales for devices that really aren’t dissimilar from the consumer market. But I think what you’re describing is quite different. Can you talk about some of the particular opportunities if not by verticals then by applications that you see in the enterprise market that you can uniquely serve and how large you think they are as businesses and which ones in particular you envision being regional rather than national sales? Because I think a lot depends I guess on whether companies are interested in buying services that are really on a much more localized or regional basis wirelessly than they are today.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Yes. So and Stephen may jump in here, but they clearly are national enterprise areas where we wouldn’t be competitive today, but there is — but even with the national companies there’s much — there is very much of it that’s localized. So you can imagine, hospitality industry where that you’re hospitality is still localized. But in the hospitality industry, you’re going to differentiate yourself from your customer service, because that’s the hospitality industry and you want to — you can do that in a market-by-market basis. You can imagine, things like mining right, that aren’t — that any private networks and they probably have to get built, those are probably not in anybody’s footprint today on the other extreme.

So there’s just a lot of different areas there and I would contend, Craig that the profitability on a per-bit — on a per-dollar capex and a per-gig basis is going to be much higher in the enterprise business and we are the consumer business is — the consumer business is quite competitive. And with three big players and us entering the marketplace. So — and so it’s quite competitive. Enterprise business, each company is going to have different needs. In some cases, we won’t be able to fulfill those needs, one of the other three carriers will be able to do it. But in many cases we’re the only guys than can really in the foreseeable future fit their needs, and that’s going to be a good business for us and those are long-term contracts. They are long-term sales process. So from a revenue perspective, you’re not looking for that to be big revenue item next year, but peripherally, we just know by the interest that there’s never a conversation with the company at high levels where they don’t want what we’re building. I guess that’s that way I’d say it.

We may not be the right company for, it may be one of our competitors that is better suited. But they want where things are going. And you just can’t get there with legacy networks, because you have to automate. And to automate, you have to be in the cloud. And we’re going to be there and then O-RAN, nobody wants to build last centuries network, they want to build the 21st century network and that’s what we’re building. And so that’s where people are going to spend their money. From an enterprise perspective, we don’t want to go.

Craig Moffett — MoffetNathanson — Analyst

And if I could just — sorry, I was going to ask — if I could ask a quick follow-up, do you envision bringing those same capabilities to wholesale markets for being a network provider for other MVNOs and are there any limitations under the AT&T agreement in you doing that?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

There is no limitation in AT&T agreement. I mean you could imagine that if another network provider let’s take AT&T since obviously we have a long-term relationship now, and they wanted to wholesale from our network, because they had an enterprise customer and we had maybe some architecture that helped them get there, that’s an interesting conversation to have as we both would win. And again, I’ve said it for two years now, we’re interested in working with those companies. And what we — we define a partner working with companies who want to help our company get better and we’re going to in return, they should expect that we’re going to help their company get better. And that’s not always the way business works right? So some companies, it’s a zero-sum game. Where I win and only if I win and you lose am I willing to do a deal. And I understand that I brought 30 years ago that probably sounded like me, but I’m kindler and gentler now as people, I believe I’m more experienced than more material, let’s put it that way. I think — I just think that particularly in capital-intensive industries, I think that where people can — where people decide that they could take the approach, we’re a more partnership approach. So I think that’s a competitive — potentially competitive advantage. I’m sorry, we’re so conceptual Craig at this point, but that’s — all those concepts, turning to real business models that ultimately you can see the cash flow generation in the future. But strategically, we’re kind of — my job strategically is to make sure that the concepts can then turn into that.

Craig Moffett — MoffetNathanson — Analyst

That’s really helpful. Thanks, Charlie.

Operator

We’ll now take the next question from Ric Prentiss, Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Ric Prentiss — Raymond James — Analyst

Thanks. A couple of follow-up questions. Obviously a lot of discussion on the MVNO agreement. To provide the best network to your customers, could it makes sense to do other network sharing agreements with people that have that better networks in rural America and maybe AT&T or T-Mobile have i.e., maybe a US Cellular relationship, does that make sense maybe?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

The answer is yes. We are not — would we be prevented from doing some of US Cellular for AT&T Group?

Stephen Bye — Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer

No. No, we’re not prevented. And in fact we’ve talked to a number of regional and rural operators about how do we do things. To Charlie’s point earlier about partnership. How do you do it in a capital-efficient way both parties benefit. So we’ve had a number of those conversations.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

It certainly…

Ric Prentiss — Raymond James — Analyst

Makes sense.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

So you can imagine that part of our rural strategy would be work with those people that are already in rural America. Now, AT&T as much as geographies they cover, which is a lot, they still don’t cover — they are still rural carriers and including US Cellular, that cover areas that AT&T does not or T-Mobile does not.

Ric Prentiss — Raymond James — Analyst

Makes sense. Second question. You mentioned on Vegas days busier work there. The consumer beta trial, how should we think about why not a wholesale enterprise beta trial or is that something that would also be occurring in the fall winter timeframe?

Stephen Bye — Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer

Yes, we are in active discussions on enterprise and wholesale. Not all wholesale is national and a lot of business services are local. And so we are actively pursuing a number of opportunities, not necessarily just in Las Vegas, either for that matter.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

But I would say, the bar is a little bit higher. The bar is a little bit higher in enterprise business in terms of quality and we’re going to walk before we run. So I wouldn’t expect that enterprise happens and just so you know enterprises of 2022 got to think, as we got to get Vegas right first.

Ric Prentiss — Raymond James — Analyst

It might make sense to show enterprise what you’re doing in Vegas, so they can really see what the natural photography looks like.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

We’ll definitely do that as well. Everybody in this call will probably be a consumer like John [Phonetic]. You will get a phone and I know you’ll do two 2 things. You’ll measure speed and you’ll see if you drop any calls. All right, you will check coverage and you will check your speed, right.

Ric Prentiss — Raymond James — Analyst

Lastly and last one from me is, you guys have done a bunch of tuck-in acquisitions. Are there other opportunities out there to kind of add scale to the business and related shown in Dallas, wireless sale with T-Mobile close. Do those Boost customers come on to the plate for you guys if you wanted them?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

We always look for — we always look for any kind of acquisition that makes our company better or any sale that we can sell that is more beneficial to somebody else than us. So we always look at that. And then Shenandoah [Phonetic], you want to take that one, Tom, because you know more better than I do.

Tom Cullen — Executive Vice President, Corporate Development

Yes, the Shenandoah customers were purchased by T-Mobile.

Ric Prentiss — Raymond James — Analyst

Okay. Very good. Thanks, guys.

Tom Cullen — Executive Vice President, Corporate Development

We own the brand. Yes, they are operating under a reverse TSA, similar to the transition services agreement that we operate with T-Mobile on. So they are supporting the Boost customers — we’re supporting the Boost customers on behalf of T-Mobile in that region.

Ric Prentiss — Raymond James — Analyst

So, we shouldn’t expect maybe a sale of that to you guys.

Tom Cullen — Executive Vice President, Corporate Development

Nothing to report there.

Ric Prentiss — Raymond James — Analyst

Okay, thanks guys. Stay well.

Operator

We’ll now take the next question from Walt Piecyk at LightShed. Please go ahead.

Walter Piecyk — LightShed Partners — Analyst

Thanks. Hi, Charlie. Your 10-K has the letter that the DOJ sent you guys in early July. I’m just curious if there’s been any follow-up dialog with the DOJ and the FCC and similarly, with Verizon I think also may have interest in setting up an MVNO with you guys.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Well, again the conversations that we have with regulators, absent publicly disclosed, like we did because this material to our business. We’re going to stay confidential. So but I think it’s, we take regulators and regulation seriously right. So you can read the letter from the DOJ and obviously we’re going to continue to take all reasonable steps to mitigate the expected harm from the CDMA shut down, but we’re not able to do everything and we do think it’s an issue and obviously the regulators are paying attention to it. So I think that’s probably but what they should be doing and I think we all knew when we did the T-Mobile — T-Mobile, Sprint, we all knew the conditions that were going to be part of the — part of that agreement. We just all have to live up to. And I forgot the other part of your question was…

Walter Piecyk — LightShed Partners — Analyst

The other part was basically Verizon. Have you spoke — because, and by the way, T-Mobile on their call claimed that you’re only paying them less than $2 billion. So whether it’s Verizon or AT&T just kind of A, you know Verizon. And then, B, like how much of the $2 billion do you think remains after two years?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Yes. I won’t get into those details. Well — but look we are a large [Indecipherable] and if Verizon is successful in TracFone, the acquisition TracFone was the largest guys out there and it is disappointing, this is personal. But we — when T-Mobile’s largest customer for the last year. Not named T-Mobile right. And I don’t know that have been treated like the largest customer let’s put it that way.

Walter Piecyk — LightShed Partners — Analyst

Rich is chomping a bit to ask about Sinclair. But let me just get one more spectrum one in. The — any agreement you have with AT&T is this going to be in the form of a lease or you just going to basically give them the spectrum to make their network work better, because I think that band 66 stuff or Verizon, at least as shown in the past can be flipped on within a matter of days. So how do we conceptualize AT&T using that spectrum. Is it a lease agreement, is it for free. And how does that work?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Well, I think first of all, any — I think they’d be interested in, they’d only be interested in spectrum that they could utilize pretty quickly. In another words, I have the equipment ready to do it and then like any partnership it would get to be mutually beneficial to the companies. And so far the relationship with AT&T, we’ve been able to work through those issues.

Walter Piecyk — LightShed Partners — Analyst

Got it. Rich, you want to hop on.

Rich Greenfield — LightShed Partners — Analyst

Yes. Thanks, Walt. So, Charlie, Tom, I guess when you dropped Sinclair’s RSN, you basically said that just sort of given how long they’ve been gone it sort of felt permanent. From what the press release — Sinclair just put out a press release saying that they expect their TV stations to get dropped due to a retrans impass in a week. I guess, it feels like they’re trying to tie RSN carriage to retransmission consent, which I don’t think is allowed. I’d be curious like don’t they have to treat these separately. I mean it seems sort of crazy for your customers who don’t even have the RSN, this isn’t an RSN renewal. It seems like to be forced as part of a retrans renewal to take on channel that cost an extra $4 to $6 a month seems pretty crazy for DISH without a lot of upside. Could you just give us some sense of like how these — whether this is being tied, whether it can be tied and what your recourse is?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Well, that’s a loaded question. First of all, I’m disappointed that they put a press release out that they expected the network to come down since I think we up to August 16. So, and obviously many, many negotiations come down to the wire. So we’re still going to bargain in good faith and hope that disciplined that they’ve seem to come to conclusions, channels are coming down at this point. But the good news for our customers are they have other ways to get their channels. First of all, they watch them less, the networks less and they have other ways to get those networks that they didn’t — that they haven’t had all those ways in the past. And so, but we’re empathetic to Sinclair because they are having to compete against their own content providers and we’ve had a long-term relationship with Sinclair and it’s been good. And we’ve been able to work through the issues at least to stop as this one over the years.

The regional sports question, realize that Sinclair didn’t own the regional sports networks. When those networks came up for renewal, by the time Sinclair owned it was able to negotiate in their part, we got our customers they wanted regional sports had left and so there was no way that in fairness to our customers we could tax them in a basic package and tax customers who — almost nobody was left, they want regional sports was left on our network, they’ve gone to somewhere else to get them. So I think there is innovative ways to reinvigorate the regional sports networks, Sinclair themselves have talked about it in a direct to consumer product. So I think there’s other ways to do that and we’ll continue to work with Sinclair to the extent that they want to try to work with us in a win-win situation, but if not, they’ll — I don’t — I’m not going to speak to other legalities and regulations, Sinclair is pretty savvy about those things and so they’ll work their way through that, but my expectation and hope would be, that ultimately the companies find a way to resolve all the issues of concern to both parties, and if not, and we go our separate ways. We will work to mitigate that for our customers.

Rich Greenfield — LightShed Partners — Analyst

And just to be clear, Charlie, when you say work to mitigate those issues or get to a mutually satisfactory. You’re talking about a deal for the TV stations, not to carry RSN. Is it that just to be clear?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Well, I mean our focus — we don’t have any customers calling us on RSN’s today to the extent the local channels were to go down. We would have more than one customer call us the next day and say where is my local channel in this particular market. So our focus is on making sure that that our customers aren’t just in franchise for the local channel. If there is some opportunity on regional sports it make sense for us and Sinclair. We’re not — we’re happy to talk about anything that’s creative and doesn’t harm our customers, but we’re not interested in taxing our customers when they don’t watch the channel. That doesn’t make any sense. And our customers will understand that and if we would lose some customers if the networks go down and some customers just blocks the networks. You may want to jump in on this Erik, but we’ve been through this before. The impact of local channels used to be devastating. It’s still pretty bad but not the same and there is other alternatives.

W. Erik Carlson — President and Chief Executive Officer

Rich, as you know, I mean this is Erik. But as you know, I mean obviously viewership on broadcast is declining. I mean we just ended the Olympics. And I think you’ve done decent reporting on viewership on Olympics. And I think Charlie’s point on us being sympathetic to some of these folks is true. I mean, there are also in competition with their big owners. I think NBC announced that they’re moving — football game to Peacock the home opener right. So I mean, whether it’s award shows or whether it’s sports or whether it’s big tune in events like the Olympics, I mean you’re seeing viewership decline. And so the local broadcast do become less important for our customers. And as you know, Rich, I mean there’s other ways to get to get the networks, right, whether, I mean, we’ve obviously helped our customers with either offer antennas or new technologies like low cast or technologies like CBS All Access, which is now Paramount or Peacock, right. So it just, it kind of depends on the customers’ viewership habits and some of those are changing.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

And you know…

Rich Greenfield — LightShed Partners — Analyst

Thanks very much.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

I missed it. Customers figured out — if they get different franchise they’ll leave the networks that’s why Netflix has viewership and Prime has viewership and Disney has viewership, because they get taken down and customers get frustrated. And then as things get online, they learn how to — they know how to stay with it. And then the piracy is a huge problem with online. There is, not a network you can’t get online if your obviously young people already know how to get it if they want to watch it. So it’s not always the most rational thing to take a network down from a no matter — forget going down is not good for anybody, but we’ll see what happens.

Operator

We’ll now take the next question from Kannan Venkateshwar of Barclays. Please go ahead.

Kannan Venkateshwar — Barclays — Analyst

Thank you. So tell you on the wireless front, I mean one part of it is the network build out deadlines which obviously are cast in stone in some ways, but the rest of it is the organization build out, with respect to scaling the service and telecom organizations that obviously, significantly bigger than where you are in terms of number of people, and so on. So could you help us think through how the scaling of the rest of the wireless organization is going? And if you basically plan to pivot some of the resources away from the DBS business, the wireless business, and how long does it take to scale that whole thing up in terms of people? And secondly on the Spac [Phonetic] front would be great if you could give us some kind of an update on the thought process there. It’s been a while since we heard from you on that. Thanks.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I won’t take the Spac question on here, but the Netflix have fraction of blockbuster employees. That network out. I mean we’ve built the — we’ve — we had a good base of engineering already at DISH and obviously we had lot of talented individual, some of which are on this call, some of which are not on this call. So we feel and the set of executives who are working where things are going not where it’s been in the past. So I think there is plenty of resources out there and for what we need do in wireless and I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time and Erik is able to run DISH and displaying in a highly efficient manner, as well as we’re going to retail wireless and I don’t see a conflict there. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s always hard to find good people and it’s probably a little tougher in this environment today with unemployment being low, but when you’re building the future, people with ambition and people who are curious, that’s where they want to go and we’re fine. This is a great place to come work and help us do something and we’re finding a good flow of people.

So, operator, we have time for one more analyst call, before we take a few press calls.

Operator

Thank you. We’ll now take the next question from Michael Rollins of Citi. Please go ahead.

Michael Rollins — Citi — Analyst

Thanks, and good afternoon. Just two questions if I could. First, curious how you see the opportunities to leverage your 5G network for fixed wireless broadband services all time? And how you view the potential funding for broadband in the proposed infrastructure bill as an opportunity in which DISH may want to participate? And then just separately a question on Sling. It returned to positive growth in the quarter. What are your learnings on the customer interest to migrate from legacy video platforms to live streaming platforms and just curious for your latest views on the opportunities to move a larger portion of your historic DISH video base to your streaming Sling service?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

I’ll let Eric take the Sling question. I think fixed wireless, I think is a place where the wireless industry can go. And Verizon and T-Mobile have already gone there, maybe AT&T some as well. But certainly, T-Mobile and Verizon have gone there. And so I think that’s as they light up more of their spectrum, they are certainly places that we can go there and obviously I do think you bring up a good point. I think that all of this in the connectivity business are going to have to look and see what subsidy of the government infrastructure, where the government wants to go and whether your particular company or whether strategically fit into that and whether that’s good business for you. So obviously we continue — we will look at that, but I think that’s — I think the infrastructure, the amount of infrastructure that the government is talking about is probably a positive for all connectivity companies and certainly potentially for Americans that don’t have service today. With that, I’ll give to you and Sling.

W. Erik Carlson — President and Chief Executive Officer

Michael, maybe just a few points on your questions there. I mean, one is, the traditional DISH TV satellite business, as you know for some time, we’ve really been pointing our efforts towards both acquiring and retaining those profitable customers that are in a more rural geography. And our strategy has been working well for us. And so as the opportunity presents itself, as broadband continues to densify obviously Sling can be an opportunity for those customers that want to cut the cord there and maybe have a couple of SVOD services along with a service like Sling which can be very complementary to obviously a Netflix or Peacock etc.

The Sling side, there is a couple of things we’ve been talking about over the past few quarters. One is there is a touch of seasonality obviously to the OTT business is, it is a low barrier of entry and it’s easy to cancel. But with that said, we also put the onus on ourselves to create a better customer experience and in Q2 you’ve seen us deploy now kind of some new technology and a new app to most of the Amazon base and about half the Roku base now. So you’re seeing us provide a better customer experience. We’re seeing obviously better key metrics that you would follow associated with kind of customer engagement. We’re seeing those all improve. And so we’re optimistic heading into football, you know about our ability to deliver a better customer experience. And then obviously you had a couple of tune in events like either Euro 2020 or NBA, which obviously helps on the Sling numbers in Q2.

Michael Rollins — Citi — Analyst

Thank you.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

All right, operator now we’ll take questions from the press. I’m not sure how many are in queue.

Operator

Thank you. We’ll now take questions from the media. [Operator Instructions] And our first question from the media will be from Scott Moritz at Bloomberg. Please go ahead.

Scott Moritz — Bloomberg — Analyst

Great. Thanks. Charlie, on the 5G launch in Vegas, I’m trying to get understanding of how that is going to work? You are calling it a 90 day venue I believe. What’s the — whose coming on to it? Is it going to be Boost customers or these new customers? And if it’s a new customer, is this a new consumer plan?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Yes, so the beta test will be — we have something called Project Genesis where people are signing up today to be online to be beta customers. So it will come from, it may be, some of our employees. But it will be random in terms of — it’s basically set for people to give us feedback. We expect that network is not going to work perfectly. So we’re looking for people to give us feedback and add improvement, we will find areas we have to tune the network, for example. So we need to know location and service and so we’ll just have people that — our regular customers who are using it that are willing to give us feedback. And so that’s how we’ll start. And we’ve been through that with — we’ve rolled out high definition television or DVRs or any kind of or any kind of new service. That’s the approach that we’ve taken and it works quite well. And then it allows us to move pretty quickly to improve our network, because it’s not going to be perfect, the first day.

Scott Moritz — Bloomberg — Analyst

So it’s the 90-day beta launching in September, I believe you said. And after that 90 days, it becomes a full-fledged product, which is probably early next year?

W. Erik Carlson — President and Chief Executive Officer

I mean I think the way I’d say it is, if our normal expectation would be that, yes, we turn into a full-fledged product early next year, right, and is commercialized, but we have to see what — how our beta goes, right. So I’m going to beta test now, for service of a different sort then I think about nine months in the beta. So it depends on — we don’t think that’s where we are. But we have to get more data on the beta to know when we roll that. We want to roll — we get a first impression, and we want it to be a good first impression. Obviously we have — we do — and as soon as — everything we learn in Vegas goes directly into the other network, so we can line up it the same time. So the bottom line is that it’s going to be a minimum 90 days, and if we do our jobs correctly and our vendors do our jobs correctly, then we’re going to be ready for prime time at the first of the year.

Scott Moritz — Bloomberg — Analyst

Great, thanks.

Operator

We’ll now take the next question from Mike Farrell of Multichannel News. Please go ahead.

Mike Farrell — Multichannel News — Analyst

Hi guys, just a couple of quick things about Sinclair. Just wondering if there is any way you can kind of comment on what you might think is the kind of sticking point in this whole thing. I mean is it beyond just the — there is asking for too much money is regarding fees and there have been a lot of talk before I mean — because you haven’t had the sensor through your four years that you were at a competitive advantage here and that maybe you guys would have been looking to tier those channels and maybe they’re pushing back on that. And I mean you probably won’t be able to talk too much directly about that for this contract. But is tiering something that you’re looking at when you do RSN negotiations going forward?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

Yes, I mean at the end of the day, it’s about money, it’s about economics, but that hasn’t changed. It hasn’t changed in any programming negotiation that I’ve ever been involved in, right. And one thing that we do differently as we have fewer metrics, and we know what the cost to the viewer is and how — and we have a — we have knowledge in how the customer values a channel. And if you get real-time viewing data as we have for the last seven or eight years, you can be pretty, pretty precise on what the channel is worth and that’s the metric we use. If you’re on the other side of it, most programmers just have a budget and they have a number they gave Wall Street or whatever it is and they just say here’s a number we want. And sometimes those are pretty ballpark.

W. Erik Carlson — President and Chief Executive Officer

But obviously the specific commercial terms of any negotiation aren’t something we’re going to talk about publicly. Operator, we have time for one more from the media.

Operator

Thank you. We’ll take our final media question from John Talano at Inside Towers. Please go ahead.

John Talano — Inside Towers — Analyst

Thanks for taking my call. This is the first time I’ve been on your call. Inside Towers if you’re familiar is a daily newsletter that covers the wireless infrastructure business. And up to now we really haven’t covered DISH, but once you decided to build your own network then we took an interest. But let me ask a broad question that doesn’t necessarily apply to DISH, but I think has implications across the industry for all the planning and studying you’ve done in building the network, do you think it’s feasible that a carrier does not have to own its own infrastructure, aside from say spectrum and software?

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

I mean TracFone proved they didn’t have own anything. They have very successful business, They bought for billions of dollars or had billions of dollars mark cap. They were very successful with no infrastructure. So — and when you start looking at — I think the world will change. I think the kind of architecture we are using the fact that technologies in terms of cloud and 0-RAN and virtualization are going to change things and we have — we’re open minded about it, I don’t think — I think we’re open minded about the fact that things could change, maybe even a way that we can’t predict today or maybe in a way that’s not even beneficial to us, but our bet and our gut and everything we know that it’s changing, we’re helping change it. And when you help change it, when you are part of the future then you usually win. It’s a people who fight the future that that usually have problem and we’re embracing the future and we think that gives us a competitive advantage.

John Talano — Inside Towers — Analyst

Great. Thanks very much.

Charlie Ergen — Co-founder and Chairman of the Board

All right, thank you operator, and thanks, everyone. Talk to you again next quarter.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]