Dish Network continues to be weighed down by loss of subscribers in its core pay TV business, raising fresh doubts about its ability to finance its ambitious 5G business plan. This year has seen many changes of direction and personnel in the wireless business, as well as Dish’s ailing satellite TV operations, but the would-be challenger MNO continues to innovate in terms of its network architecture. However, the risk – as for the other Open RAN innovator, Rakuten Mobile – is that Dish becomes a very valuable case study in how to deploy new architectures and leverage the cloud, but finds its funding and its competitive position inadequate to deliver commercial success. At least Rakuten Mobile’s parent has a strong…