Sprint, Dish Network to Test Fixed Wireless

Sprint and Dish Network will develop and deploy a fixed wireless broadband service, on a trial basis, in Corpus Christi, Texas, available in the middle of 2014. 

The service will initially be available in limited areas of Corpus Christi with a plan to expand into additional markets in the future.

The irony here is that the frequencies used originally were used for fixed wireless (educational TV), before those frequencies were viewed as potential ways to provide fixed local access service. In testing the concept again, Sprint and Dish Network are revisiting a concept that about the turn of the century was viewed as a way to compete, using a facilities approach, with wired access networks.

Depending on a customer’s location, DISH will install either a ruggedized outdoor router or an indoor solution to deliver the best possible broadband service to that site. Both solutions will feature built-in high-gain antennas to receive the 4G TDD-LTE signal on Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum.

Dish Network already owns 40 MHz of assets in the 2 GHz range.