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Apple and Google Are Telecom's Newest Stars
In looking back at 2007, CNet views the smash entrance of Google and Apple onto the telecom stage as a major formative factor for 2008's tech scene. Google in particular is going to be a huge factor in the much-anticipated wireless auction. "Google was instrumental in getting the FCC to adopt auction rules that would ultimately give consumers more choice in the devices they use on these new networks. And in November, Google CEO Eric Schmidt committed the company to bidding in the auction, promising to spend at least $4.6 billion on licenses. Exactly what Google plans to do with the spectrum if it wins licenses is still unknown. But its participation raises the stakes, especially for traditional telephony players."
With the entrenched backbone providers in the US not wanting to go with non-biased access to their networks, Google just pulled one of the biggest bluffs in telecom history. If they do win, then they control a massive portion of the spectrum that could be used for a national network. On the other hand, if they lose, they have to rules changed to favor consumers and suddenly have been a legit threat in the wireless space. What happens when Google activates all the dark fiber they've been buying up? Suddenly, the telecom industry doesn't look so happy after all.
While it's unclear what it is that Google would like to do with the spectrum, what IS clear, is that it's likely to be advantageous to the consumer. Why, you ask? Because under the current system, a state-sanctioned oligopoly of companies have instituted a system of high prices and low quality of service, that is probably unsurpassed in any other industrialized nation. They have built their closed networks taxpayer subsidies, and are now in a position where they have repeatedly refused to upgrade their infrastructure or invest in any real upgrades, and would rather sit on their pile of gold and slowly reduce the quality of service as their customer base and demands expand. It's short-sighted, and harmful to virtually everyone. Entry of a new player will give the market a long-needed shakeup.
for google to do would be wifi internet and cellphone technology, not much else you can do with it unless they want to use some of it for inhouse two way radio, but two way radio would have no payoff so wifi & cellphone would make it worthwhile...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Those words are not the same.
oh apple.... where would I be without you 3
I <3 you apple
This is what we know about Google so far.
They..
-bought lots of dark-fiber (is it still dark?)
-have portable data centers (you can disprove this with facts all you want, but I think they got the idea from Die Hard4)
-want to buy an extremely usefull chunk of the radio spectrum (that can handle high-bandwidth data)
Looks like a game of chess to me. All pawns are in place, just waiting for the Queen.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
google is going to attack the telecom industry much like it has successfully wrestled away power from all the other sectors it has targetted. and it will probably use the same strategy.
internet search used to be dominated by yahoo, microsoft and aol. google stepped in to offer a better, faster, simpler and cleaner solution.
email used to be dominated by yahoo and hotmail. google stepped in to offer massive amounts of storage space, aesthetics and ease-of-use.
access to global imaging was essentially non-existant for the typical person. google stepped in and brought google maps/earth with street level routing and images, and made it fun.
google's latest release in the mobile operating system market displays their plan to undermine Microsoft's existing Windows Mobile while MS sits on its butt not innovating. Sun/Java's new mobile platform has had no advertising, and the rest of the market is too busy competing between nokia/symbian, ericsson and the rest (i.e. motorola, etc). google's strategy, once again, involves bringing a new, better product to market and providing massive incentives to use it (in this case, being free and open).
their plans for the wireless spectrum can't be much different. a fiber backbone with wireless internet cloaking major cities, additional infrastructure for their mobile phone system which may eventually branch out to include massively subsidized Google-branded phones and internet devices....with the aspirations to entirely undermine the existing telecos and crappy mobile phone technology that is available in the US now.
As much as I like Google and want them to win the 700MHz auction and open a new platform for us to develop mobile applications that are 'really' useful, I won't call them a player in the telecom scene just because they are bidding in the auction. When they win the auction and provide the infrastructure (Alone or with partners), only then will they really be a player in the telecom field. We just have to wait and watch.
Do I understand this correctly? Google is the media darling for saying they will be in an auction next year and they are rumored to be making a phone? How does this make them a darling? I thought they just made new and innovative ways for me to be innundated by advertisements.
In a nutshell, the modern cellphone corporation's business model is meant to screw over it's users as best as possible while looking SLIGHTLY better than the competiting cellphone corporation.
To describe what I mean in a more rational sense: The current cellphone corporation is trying to maximize ARPU. For those who aren't in the know ARPU stands for "Average Revenue Per User". All the cellphone corporations even go so far as to have entire HUGE conferences that focus ENTIRELY on ARPU (or what I refer to as "screwing over it's users as best as possible"). See David Pogue's article that claims United States cellphone corporations are calcified, http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/are-us-cellphone-carriers-calcified/ .
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The thing that pisses me off most about the cellphone carriers is that they design all cellphones to make you use their proprietary services... or more technically, cellphone hardware is merely a tool that is leveraged to maximize ARPU.
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Once cellphones become generic TCP / IP traffic riding on some standardized physical layer... that is when we will see innovation. If you were wondering what Google is trying to do... they are trying to achieve some sort of all TCP / IP wireless schema. That makes me very excited because it will mean your phone bill will disappear ( almost completely ) and you will only pay for some sort of internet service.
Whoever came up with that damned myminicity concept should be tarred and feathered, boiled in oil and drawn and quartered. Then maybe some torture would be in order.
I wish there was a way to feed them negative clicks and wipe out their populations.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
BUT DUNT FARGOT, TEH GOOGEL IS TEH DUNT BE TEH EVEL, SOES WE NOES DEY BE TEH NOT EVEL WIT ALL TEH STUFF TEHY GOTS!!1!!1!!
Dey not teh MiKKKr0$$$loth, hoo be teh EVEL!!11!!1 Soes teh Googel kant be teh evel, cuz tehy not be teh MiKKKr0$$$loth!11!!1!!!!1!!!1!!1!!!!1one
No Doubt! software development