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Google a "Happy Loser" In Spectrum Auction

Large cell service providers won almost all of the licenses in the recently concluded FCC spectrum auction. Google didn't get any and won't be entering the wireless business. Verizon Wireless was the big winner, laying out $9.4 billion for enough regional licenses in the "C" block to stitch together nationwide coverage, except for Alaska. On this spectrum Verizon will have to allow subscribers to use any compatible wireless device and run any software application they want. AT&T paid $6.6 billion, Qualcomm picked up a few licenses, and Paul Allen's Vulcan Spectrum LLC won a pair of licenses in the "A" block. One analyst called Google a "happy loser" because it got the openness it had pushed for. The AP's coverage does some more of the numbers.

8 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Android by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    yes they can.

    "Oh sorry, internet acccess requires our patented "poopboost" technology. and we are not ready to license it yet. it's only available on verizon licensed phones."

    You bet your arse they will do everything they can to lock you into their crap-phones with everything disabled. They will find a loophole, they hate the customer that much
    .

  2. Except Alaska... by ActionDesignStudios · · Score: 5, Funny

    Except Alaska. Except Alaska. Everything is except Alaska! I say we secede and form our own country of Alaskanistan!

  3. Re:Call me ignorant by Dun+Malg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How is this "open access" thing going to work? What's open about it anyway? It'll be open in approximately the same sense that AT&T and TMobile's GSM networks are open. I have an HTC TYTN II that works with my AT&T SIM card, despite the fact that the Taiwanese firmware in my TYTN II is not crippled like the AT&T firmware in the TILT. Contrast that with Verizon's network, where you cannot use a phone without their royal seal of approval, a 1 hour wait at a Verizon store to have it registered in their system, and when that's all said and done, you have a horribly crippled phone that requires you to use their for-a-fee wireless data transfer to load on a ringtone or pull off a photo. My phone, I just plug in a USB cable and transfer files through the windows file explorer.
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    If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  4. AT&T kicked Verizon's butt by andrews · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't know why everyone is saying Verizon is the big winner. AT&T won the vast majority of the B block which, paired with the 12MHz they bought from Aloha, gives them 24 MHz for less than Verizon paid for 20 MHz.

    And there are no open network requirements on AT&T's spectrum.

    Sounds like AT&T came out on top of this deal.

  5. Re:Android by hunterx11 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The point is that customers should be patrons of businesses, not enemies. We are not merely talking about companies charging higher prices for more services: we are talking about companies going out of their way to expend a positive amount of effort to make their service worse for customers so that they can charge a higher price for doing less to make their service purposely bad. This sort of market-driven antagonism is "amoral" on the part of firms in the sense that a sociopathic killer is amoral compared to a killer who commits a crime of passion.

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    English is easier said than done.
  6. Re:Where's the money? by C0rinthian · · Score: 5, Informative

    440Hz is A.

  7. Corporate Culture by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 5, Insightful

    feel however you want, but hate implies an active dislike which cannot be the case with corporations (they are just legal entities). The people in charge of them might not like you, but they are other people, not "the corporation".

    While I understand your point and agree with to a certain point, my experience has been that corporations or their divisions or other business entities develop a corporate culture that is more than the sum of its parts. Individually, the people in it can be quite nice away from the office, but when they are in the workplace, they become part of the entity. A couple I have seen (and thank all gods never worked for) were run like Nazi concentration camps. They hated everybody, and the places were run on total fear. More commonly, you do see businesses that have a culture of looking at their customers as victims to be abused. You can go to work in such a place as the nicest guy in the world, but if you stay long enough, the hive mind will take you over, and you'll start abusing grandmothers. Fortunately, most of us will quit such a place before we're too badly damaged.

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    Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
  8. Re:Android by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    > If they were dumb enough to do that, then they would be forced to license the patent, or loose the spectrum.

    Or in some strange parallel universe, they might just go right on doing business without any consequences to them whatsoever. Thank god we don't live there and companies are actually held accountable, eh?