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Google Confirms Intent To Bid for 700MHz Spectrum
narramissic writes "Today Google put an end to the 'will they or won't they' debate with the announcement that the company intends to join in the bidding for 700MHz wireless spectrum in late January. 'We believe it's important to put our money where our principles are,' Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman and CEO, said in a statement. 'Consumers deserve more competition and innovation than they have in today's wireless world. No matter which bidder ultimately prevails, the real winners of this auction are American consumers who likely will see more choices than ever before in how they access the Internet.'"
...put an end to the 'will they or won't they' debate...
I never saw any sound evidence put forth that they wouldn't bid on this spectrum. As far as I was concerned this was a sure thing. Here's to hoping they win the auction!
I got a catholic block.
Strike while the iron is hot.
Google is on fire now, and as far as the market is concerned, can do no wrong. There will not be any future time where Google will be able to put together the sort of money needed to make these types of investments.
But that doesn't mean they will succeed in their wireless plans. As cool as they are, the wireless spectrum is a well established area with not only wireless carriers already bumping against each other for more elbow room but also broadcast radio and television conglomerates. Google can't play David successfully forever. They may have done a great job on the web where they led the technology, but here they will be following and a look at their online office suite, it is clear that they are poor followers.
It honestly depends on your definition of good and evil. They are a corporation founded upon bringing information to you be it ads or otherwise. They make their money off of insane amounts of ad revenue so in that sense they're "bad," but at the same time, they do make very sure to only bring things to you that you may be interested in and this careful filtering is "good."
It really just comes down to viewpoint. If you like finding things for yourself and don't want anyone telling you anything about where and how to spend your money then google is "evil." If you like having them point out deals and lead you to companies that are selling what you want (similar to an errand boy doing some of your shopping and looking around for you) then they're "good."
The only potentially frightening thing about google is the power they have if some of their information gets into the wrong hands (i.e. Government Subpoena).
The original generic sig.
The key here is that they have got the wireless companies where they want them even if they don't win the auction. If the other companies knew that Google was not going to bid on it then they would just wait for it expired and be put up without the requirements. Now Google assures themselves an open network even if they don't win because the other companies have to follow the requirements.
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
This isn't really about winning contracts, this is an auction, just as it was for PCS and AWS. PCS was an unmitigated disaster precisely because the entire thing was "highest bidder wins". Swathes of spectrum were unused as they were owned by speculators, and no operators were ever able, in practice, to purchase spectrum in every market. The notion that the intent was to create usable mobile phone networks was simply not considered by the FCC, who were only interested in raising a huge amount of money, and used "free market" justifications for the ensuing chaos.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Seriously, you're going to try to reduce Google to this level?
First and foremost, they provide you with the best search results, and have done so for years, for free.
They provide an outstanding email system, with now 5GB of free space and growing, for free.
They provide one of the most amazing mapping systems ever, continually adding new, cutting edge features, for free, both on the web, on your phone and in Google Earth.
They provide office collaboration online apps in Google Docs (which I use almost every day with friends spread out across the globe), for free.
They provide a really great photo organizing software (Picasa) and even some space on their site to upload pictures to, for free.
They provide a place to share gigabytes of video with everyone on earth in Google Video and YouTube, for free.
And we're merely scratching the surface.
And you're going to try and reduce them to the level of "Madison Avenue hucksters"?
Oh, that's right, they developed a cutting edge advertising system that provides context-sensitive, extremely-low-key advertisements in an un-annoying way, and a backend system that allows any size company to competitively bid for ad placement in this system at a reasonable rate.
You're right, Google sucks, man! Fight the power!
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
The good news is that Google will make all cellphones better if they get into the race. The reason? Openness. From the beginning of time it seems the US carriers have locked down there phones so you can't do things like load MP3 songs and java applets to them without buying them online. They have the java networking locked down so you cannot connect to everything or use regular sockets (IE not web).
Right now companies like Verizon are panicking and racing to open there networks (IE http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=2552), if google gets spectrum it will be good for all because google will have lots of cool applications and programs on there phones, and the other carriers to even compete will have to open up there phones for development to everyone.
Also the 700mhz spectrum is a great place to be for a new network as you can get better coverage and need less cell density when your starting out.
-M
Right, like Google is going to pay 4.7 billion just to be nice and give free access to all. I don't think so. There must be some business model behind their decision. This is Google, they may not be evil, but they are still a business, and need to make money.
Judging buy their current model (Transparency for end users, but get lots of income from companies that advertise through them) I would pose the option that what they are making is ad based. Otherwise, they would have to charge the consumers, which would be a radical change to their normal business model.
As for the power limitation, I doubt that will be raised. Several reasons include:
1) Crazy / Paranoid people who make the law think that powerful wireless signals can and will melt your brain, and must be reduced.
2) Security: If someone finds an exploit and acts as a host / connection node, if they choose to exploit it for illegitimate reasons (eg: stealing passwords, credit cards, etc.), then the less area they can cover with their signal, the better. This of course can have problems if there is a mesh model in place, which would route other connections nodes to his client. Also, you don't want your data to be transmitted further than needed.(eg: If your using WEP, you don't want your signal covering 3 blocks, because it would be an invitation for people to join your network.)
3) Battery life: Whether Google plans to release a phone network (OHA) or a computer network, both laptops and cell phones run on batteries.
4) While High-Powered solutions are great if you are an isolated client, lots of interference and wireless noise is created when you have many high-powered clients in too close an area.