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Google Plans Major Play In Wireless Partnering With Sprint and T-Mobile
MojoKid writes There's a new report suggesting Google is partnering with select wireless carriers to sell its own branded wireless voice and data plans directly to consumers. According to sources and the "three people with knowledge of the plans," Google will tap into networks belonging to Sprint and T-Mobile for its new service, buying wholesale access to mobile voice and data in order to make itself a virtual network operator. That might sound disappointing on the surface. Had Google struck a deal with Verizon and AT&T, or even just Verizon, the deal could potentially have more critical mass, with great coverage backed by a company like Google and its services. The former might be a winning combination but at least this is a start. The project will be known as "Nova," which is reportedly being led by Google's Nick Fox, a longtime executive with the company. Apparently Fox has been overseeing this for some time now, and it seems likely a launch will take place this year.
Look for a trade - Google finances the expansion of their networks (both in terms of coverage and capacity) in return for a good deal on wireless services.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Maybe. The devil is in the details, and I'm looking forward to learning more about it. But Google has a shitload of money and they blow way too much on useless crap that no one wants like Google Glass and autonomous cars. They're launching fiber now here in Austin, giving Time Warner and AT&T some much-needed competition. Backing underdogs like Spring and T-Mobile makes me think Google may end up owning both. One thing Google does well is networking.
However, there is one caveat: will Google be sniffing all the traffic it sees on these newly-acquired traffic just to harvest it and sell to advertisers. THAT's where I draw the line. My ISP has only ONE JOB: connect me to the web without getting in the way. That's what I pay for and that's what I currently get.
They may be afraid of being made irrelevant by a deal like this, but they're much more afraid of being made irrelevant by a deal with their competitors. Imagine how different the market would be today if the original exclusive iPhone contract had been with someone other than AT&T.
Besides, one likely end scenario if this goes huge is that Google buys their partners.
If they want to let people bring their existing phones, supporting both networks greatly increases their audience. It can also make a big difference in coverage if you can roam across to one of the big networks.
This seems like particularly alarming news for Ting, which currently runs over Sprint's network, and is apparently getting ready to add T-Mobile.
Do you really want to give Google yet more access to your personal information / habits?
Based on all the wonderful services they provide for me with that information (like Google Now, automatic traffic notifications based on my traveled routes,etc), and the fact that I haven't seen any actual bad things from it, yes, yes I do.
There is a company called Ting and they already do this same thing with the same carriers.
It's Sprint and T-Mobile working with them: the distant third and fourth place competitors in a four-horse market. Any disruption in the market will hit the bigger two competitors—AT&T and Verizon—significantly harder, and with this deal, the bottom two have positioned themselves to gain from AT&T and Verizon's loss, even if that gain isn't as significant as it would be if they outright won those customers directly. Even the simple act of getting those customers away from AT&T and Verizon is a big win, since it means AT&T and Verizon would have lost the incumbent's advantage when those customers' contracts are up and they're looking around at their options.
Exactly. All that infrastructure build-out costs lots of money. You need subscribers to pay the rent on the cell site, you need coverage (cell sites) to get customers. It takes a lot of cash to bootstrap that. Coverage pulls in customers -- I'm a past T-Mobile customer -- their plans are much more subscriber friendly that the other guys, but darn I need coverage in a couple of their holes. I'm just one data point, but I'm sure others make the same decision.
Right now the cellular phone industry (at least in the U.S.) is highly vertically integrated. A single company owns the service, owns the towers, owns the POTS connections, and sells the phones. This has resulted in people begrudgingly subscribing with a provider not because they like their phone selection or service plans, but because they have the best network. Or subscribing with another provider because they have an exclusive on a phone. etc.
IMHO this vertical integration is a tremendous impediment to market forces trying to improve price and quality, and needs to be split up. You should be able to buy the phone from anyone. Get your service subscription from anyone. They should be able to contract with individual tower owners to create a network. And connect to the POTS independent of everything else I've just listed. This would make competition orthogonal within each of these layers. The best phones would sell the most independent of other factors. The company with the best plans and prices would get the most subscribers independent of phone selection or tower buildout. Tower networks providing the best coverage would be available to all service providers willing to pay. And POTS interconnects would, like it has for VoIP, be driven down to the cheapest cost for reasonable quality.
The MVNOs were one step in this direction. They partially decouple the service provider and tower networks. I've often wondered why an MVNO doesn't contract with multiple tower owners, which is what Google is doing if it's in talks with both Sprint and T-Mobile (most newer CDMA phones work on both CDMA and GSM networks). The Google Nexus phones (and to a lesser extent the iPhones) are another step in this direction - the same Nexus phone works on all carriers. It's not locked to a specific carrier if you don't buy it from the carrier.
I don't see this as any different than any other MVNO deal. All four major carriers already have a number of deals with fifth-party carriers (e.g. TracFone, Cricket, StraightTalk, Republic Wireless, etc). and if Google wants to get into the MVNO business, then it makes perfect sense to sell to them. Why? Because if they don't buy from you, then they'll just buy from someone else.
MVNO deals produce less revenue per minute or megabyte than retail sales, it is true, but they also take a slice of the risk of dealing with retail customers off of the network owner and put it onto the MVNO. Think of it as bundling in reverse.
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I have the exact same problem. I can get good prices from Sprint or T-Mobile and great prices from MVNOs that operate on the Sprint or T-Mobile networks, but in my particularly corner of American suburb hell the reception sucks on either carrier. So I'm stuck paying Verizon or AT&T more than twice as much money for the same data phone plan I could get from Ting.com (shameless plug) because Verizon and AT&T know they offer a better product.
I'm really hoping Google's investment in T-Mobile and Sprint narrows the wireless service gap, because having four more or less equal choices for wireless quality would probably send prices way down.