One of the biggest challenges when designing a mobile network from scratch is how to access passive infrastructure that will support the new 5G architectures, and the dense projected footprint, at affordable cost. Dish will need a wide variety of cell sites to support its schemes for a national network with sufficient capacity and density to differentiate it in terms of enterprise use cases and consumer quality of experience (QoE). Its new agreement with tower operator Crown Castle is a step in the right direction, though it is still unclear how much further Dish will need to go in terms of passive or active network sharing. Chairman Charlie Ergen said, in the 4G days, that building a network would not…