Dish blasts T-Mobile for plans to shut down network Dish's customers still use

Dish Network sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, complaining that T-Mobile — its partner for wireless services — is rushing to shut down a network still used by millions of Dish's Boost Mobile customers. T-Mobile's purchase of Sprint was only allowed after it agreed to sell a chunk of assets to Dish, including its Boost prepaid business. Dish is highly reliant on T-Mobile for network services as it builds out its own 5G network over the next several years.

Dish's letter to the FCC addresses a range of concerns, but the largest issue relates to the shutdown of the code-division multiple access (CDMA) network that had previously been used by Sprint and is still used by the majority of Dish's 9 million Boost Mobile subscribers. As part of the Boost sale to Dish, T-Mobile agreed to provide network services, but didn't commit to operating the CDMA service (Sprint's legacy network) for a particular length of time. Dish had expected that T-Mobile would eventually look to shut down that network in three to five years, apparently. But Sprint said late in 2020 that it would look to shut it down far earlier, on Jan. 1, 2022.