Jan. 11—CHEYENNE — DISH Wireless will invest a $50 million federal grant into its Cheyenne campus to establish the Open RAN Center for Integration and Deployment (ORCID) in Wyoming.

The center will allow vendors from across the nation and world to test and validate their Open RAN solutions in the Cheyenne facility against a commercial-grade network.

Announced Thursday, the award comes from the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to DISH, a subsidiary of EchoStar. To date, it is the largest award under the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund.

“This is exciting news that highlights how Wyoming’s economy is growing and diversifying,” Gov. Mark Gordon said in a news release. “The DISH and NTIA project will have a ripple effect on economic development, and this can build on our efforts to expand high-speed broadband around the state and bring in more technology jobs.”

DISH came to Cheyenne in 1994 and currently hosts a satellite uplink facility and data center in the Cheyenne Business Parkway, employing 78 people.

Mayor Patrick Collins told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle that he had not yet heard of the award for DISH, but said it seems like good news for the capital city.

“That’s an important employer in the tech sector here in Cheyenne,” he said. “I’m really excited to hear that kind of investment is going in and making sure that great company stays here.”

Open RAN is a nonproprietary version of the Radio Access Network (RAN) system that allows interoperation between cellular network equipment provided by different vendors, according to Cisco. This disrupts the established practice of using single-vendor RANs, possibly offering more market competition and customer choice, lower equipment costs because there is less equipment needed and potential for improved network performance.

ORCID’s purpose in Cheyenne is to allow participants to test and evaluate individual or multiple network elements to ensure Open RAN interoperability, performance and security from domestic and international vendors. This will contribute to the development, deployment and adoption of the new era of RAN technologies.

The following are highlights of ORCID, per a DISH news release:

— ORCID will combine both lab and field testing and evaluation activities. ORCID will be able to test elements brought by any qualified vendor against DISH’s live, complete and commercial-grade Open RAN stack.

— ORCID will use DISH’s spectrum holdings, a combination of low-, mid- and high-band frequencies, enabling field testing and evaluation.

— ORCID will evaluate Open RAN elements through mixing and matching with those of other vendors, rather than validating a single vendor’s stack. DISH’s experience in a multi-vendor environment will give ORCID unique insights about the integration of Open RAN into brownfield networks.

— ORCID’s multi-tenant lab and field testing will occur in DISH’s secure Cheyenne facility, which is already compliant with stringent security protocols in light of its satellite functions.

Company officials didn’t return calls from the WTE seeking additional comment Thursday.

Noah Zahn is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle’s local government/business reporter. He can be reached at 307-633-3128 or nzahn@wyomingnews.com. Follow him on X @NoahZahnn.