T-Mobile Closing Old CDMA Network May Not Hurt Dish: Analyst

Bernstein’s Peter Supino questioned Dish Network complaints that T-Mobile closing its CDMA network hurts competition (see 2104140036). “The incremental cost to migrate Dish's customers to a more advanced network is not high,” he told investors Monday. Prepaid churn is high, “so a significant amount of the base will have an opportunity to update their phones,” he said: “Customer phones need to be upgraded to use Dish's standalone 5G network anyway.” But “millions of Boost customers, the majority of whom are underserved and face income challenges, are at risk of being impacted,” said a Dish spokesperson. “This issue is not just about devices, which are in limited supply due to global chip shortages and LG's exit from the market, or cost. As T-Mobile well knows, technology migrations take time.”