TORONTO and ENGLEWOOD, Colo. – Established U.S. satellite TV company and new American wireless competitor Dish Network announced Monday it has chosen Toronto’s Tucows as a technology partner to build its retail wireless business and purchased MVNO Ting Mobile from the Canadian company.
“With a history of digital innovation, Tucows has made the strategic decision to offer mobile services enabler (MSE) solutions, beginning with Dish. As part of this agreement, Dish has also acquired Ting Mobile assets, including customer relationships,” explains the press release.
Ting is a mobile virtual network operator running on the T-Mobile network and according to this Tucows 2020 investors’ presentation, it has close to 272,000 wireless customers in the U.S. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Dish made its big wireless splash in July with the US$1.4 billion purchase of Boost Mobile and its 9 million U.S. subscribers. As one of the conditions of the Sprint/T-Mobile merger, Sprint had to sell flanker brand Boost. Another condition means Boost has access to the new T-Mobile network for at least seven years. According to reports, the company will also build its own 5G network based on Open-RAN architecture.
Effective August 1, 2020, most Ting Mobile customers across the U.S. became customers of Dish. These customers will continue to use their current phones and wireless plans.
Tucows will now focus on growing its MSE business, delivering a wide range of functions including billing, activation, provisioning, and funnel marketing to mobile providers, adds the release. Tucows provides enablement platforms in domain registration and fiber-to-the-home and Dish is now the first Tucows mobile technology customer.
“Dish has acquired a well-loved mobile brand, a loyal customer base and a proven platform. Tucows will now refocus our mobile business on building and maintaining platforms that simplify complex systems while still maintaining strong, consistent cash flows. Ting Mobile customers will surely reap the rewards of a better cost structure, and the U.S. mobile industry has an aggressive competitor in Dish, a company well-positioned to disrupt the industry,” said Tucows CEO Elliot Noss, in the release.
“Dish has big plans in mobile as they launch the first virtualized, standalone 5G network in the U.S.,” said Tucows chief product officer Justin Reilly in a blog post. “As more people discover Ting Mobile, you can say you were here first.
“We built a solid technical foundation for Ting Mobile that makes everything from integrating with mobile networks, checking and activating phones and provisioning service look simple. In addition to its other useful tricks, this platform also puts the right information about a customer account at our customer support team’s fingertips, right when it’s needed. This has allowed us to change what people expect of their phone company and their phone company’s customer service,” added Reilly.
“The platform is staying right where it is, and we get to continue our work to make it an even better foundation on which to build. Under Dish, Ting Mobile will continue to benefit from that platform. Later, other MVNOs will have the benefit of this platform too.”
