Google Ends Silence On C Block Auction

Phurge found a post on the Google Policy Blog in which they lift the cone of silence that had been imposed by regulation over the recently concluded FCC spectrum auction. As some had speculated, Google was in it mainly to force some openness into the wireless industry. "Based on the way that the bidding played out, our participation in the auction helped ensure that the C Block met the reserve price. In fact, in ten of the bidding rounds we actually raised our own bid — even though no one was bidding against us — to ensure aggressive bidding on the C Block. In turn, that helped increase the revenues raised for the US Treasury, while making sure that the openness conditions would be applied to the ultimate licensee."

Comments

Smart Move?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they artificially bumped up the price to make AT&T and Verizon have to pay more?

Very nice!

Re:Smart Move?

[hey!]

Well, I don't know a lot about the details, but it sounds like the idea is to make the wireless companies bid for the spectrum under the current conditions of sale.

I'm guessing (without reading TFA of course) that the scenario went like this. If the reserve price hadn't been met, then the carriers could say, "obviously this spectrum has no market value unless it is for creating a closed network." Then the FCC would declare the auction void and conduct a new auction under conditions more favorable to the carriers and less favorable to the public.

Is stopping that scenario evil? Well, if Google had won, they'd have to put their money where their mouth was and become a wireless carrier themselves. They were hoping the industry would rather let their customers choose the hardware they wanted to use in this spectrum rather than to invite Google in as a competitor.

So it's a win all around. Google keeps the spectrum open for its servies and for its android partners; users get more choice in hardware and services, and the current providers don't have to worry about Google doing to them what they'd planned to do to Google. It's not as lucrative for the carriers as they hoped, but that's what competition is for. They'll make at least a normal profit, but not as much more as they'd have liked, and the public gets better services.

Android phones coming this year

[BadAnalogyGuy]

The real take away from this press release is that Google is expecting that the first phones based on Android will be released later this year. That is good news for those who are interested in open platforms and enjoy hacking. link

I wonder how happy Verizon's stockholders are going to be when they find out that Google was bidding up the price for essentially no reason at all and Verizon jumped in on top of that. not too bad, it seems

Re:Android phones coming this year

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you hack his mom? She's an open system!

Re:Android phones coming this year

[Z34107]

"Hack" in the common parlance is pretty much "to break (into) something." People who insist on other definitions of hack generally push the word "crack/cracker" to refer to this type of black-hat activity.

"Hack" in the classic MIT parlance was a nifty programming trick, or maybe just something really clever. Some people refer to awesome pranks as "hacks" (a compliment to the prankster), although normally it refers to some particularly elegant algorithm or code block.

"Hack" as referring to bad code, as in "hack-job" or "I hacked it together in three hours" is generally called a "kludge" (KLOOJ) by these people.

Maybe someone who actually went-slash-goes there could help out my amateur etymology.

So how does this work?

[Van Cutter Romney]

From TFA:
"As you probably know by now, Google didn't pick up any spectrum licenses in the auction. Nonetheless, partly as a result of our bidding, consumers soon should have new freedom to get the most out of their mobile phones and other wireless devices."

also,

"But it was clear, then and now, that Verizon Wireless ultimately was motivated to bid higher (and had far more financial incentive to gain the licenses)."

Now, if they pushed Verizon to bid higher to win the contract won't they just charge the end users more?

Implicitly

[Rydia]

Slashdot believes whatever google says; all other corporations lying scum.

Film at 11.

Wow... is there no good that Google can't do?

[strangeattraction]

Helping pay off the National Debt. What will they take credit for next?

eBay

[HaeMaker]

Don't you get banned from eBay for doing that?

I'll believe it when...

[icejai]

... the winning company actually *implements* the "intended" level of openness and has it in their terms-of-use section in their contracts.

A popular thing for telecoms to do these days seems to be re-interpreting words in contracts. "Unlimited access" is re-interpreted to mean "Unlimited connection time", even though there are at most 744 hours per month. "Unlimited internet service" is re-interpreted to mean "unlimited, as long as you don't transfer more than XXGB a month". I don't even want to get into what Comcast redefined to get their computer-impersonating policies to fly. Companies are redefining words like it's going out of fashion.

Google may be cheering and patting each other on back for a job well done, but to be honest, I don't think they've achieved anything they've set out to do. All they've done is get the FCC to say "Oh yeah, and the network must be open to other devices", while everyone nods "M-hm, oh yes of course" while looking at their toes.

Going so far as telling everyone how clever they were the first opportunity allowed seems a bit premature. The network's not up, the company's services aren't for sale, the consumer-end terms-of-use contracts aren't drafted, so what exactly are they cheering about when they got a telecom company to say "Okay, we'll 'allow' 'open' 'devices' and 'open' 'applications'"?

Re:Google you just did evil

[Shishak]

But ultimately the winners are going to have to make their money back by sticking it to the consumer. The bidding system is basically a government tax on something that's free, the airways. So the revenues Google so kindly helped raise for the Feds are ultimately gonna be paid for by the end user. Are you naive enough to believe that if Verizon Wireless paid less for the license they would drop the price to the consumer? The consumer will be charged, and will pay what the market will bear based on competition. This is not related to the license cost. If Verizon paid too much for the license and they can't make a return on their investment while still being competitive in the market then that is their problem. What Google did was feint competition to keep everyone honest with their bids.

Re:Interesting

[Snowmit]

But they DID want something. There were certain openness requirements that would only happen if the bidding moved past the $4.6 billion threshold.

In effect Google was saying "we want the block to pass the $4.6 billion mark so badly that we'll pay it ourselves if we need to"

Once bidding had passed that mark, they didn't really care if they or someone else footed the final bill. The thing they wanted had come true.