Dish Network, rather like its Open RAN counterpart Rakuten Mobile in Japan, symbolizes the gulf that can exist between vision and reality. Dish is building one of the most cloud-native and multivendor mobile networks ever seen, and is pursuing a creative monetization strategy focused on new-style dynamic wholesale services enabled by network slicing. But in reality, its first 5G services have been conventional, expanding the low-cost consumer offerings of its multiple MVNO subsidiaries, and it has been running into a succession of financial challenges. Some of these are the result of the decline in its core business in satellite pay-TV, and others can be blamed on the speed with which it is being forced, by the FCC, to roll out…