Google may get its open-access wishes after all; will bid in 700MHz auction

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Google may get its open-access wishes after all; will bid in 700MHz auction
By Nate Anderson | Published: November 16, 2007 - 10:35AM CT
The search giant has just announced its plans to enter the 700MHz spectrum auction in January, potentially paving the way for a transformation of the US wireless space.

In a statement, a Google spokesperson told Ars, "Our goal is to make sure that American consumers have more choices in an open and competitive wireless world. FCC rules require us to reveal our plans by December 3, and we fully intend to do so. In the meantime, we are making all the necessary preparations to become an applicant to bid in the auction."

Coupled with the company's recent launch of Android and formation of the Open Handset Alliance, the announcement is certain to ignite a new round of frenzied speculation about just what, exactly, the Big G would do with a nationwide swath of 700MHz spectrum.

Conventional wisdom has had it that Google has no interest in actually becoming a network provider, what with all the hassles from those grubby customers who can't make feature X work on Y handset. And then there's billing and engineering and marketing and local storefronts and all the rest of it that makes up a modern wireless carrier's operations.

But if Google is truly serious about the four open access provisions it pushed at the FCC earlier this year, that may not be the company's plan at all. One of those provisions would have forced any winning bidder on the spectrum to lease network access at wholesale rates to others, thus paving the way for a host of innovative wireless providers who could not afford to build a national infrastructure themselves. The FCC rejected that provision, but there's nothing keeping Google from supporting the idea itself.

The company may well may be planning to drop $10 billion on the physical infrastructure and network engineering, but leave customer-facing services and applications up to others who lease bandwidth from the network. This could pave the way for a wireless broadband boom (which would be good for Google), but it could also ensure that the company has a network not at the mercy of the wireless carriers. With that sort of competition, the traditional wireless companies may be forced to (partially) release the stranglehold they have on other applications and devices on their own networks.

In the Open Handset Alliance, Google already has the support of numerous handset makers, all of whom have pledged to produce phones running some version of Android. Imagine the developer's playground this ecosystem could turn out to be: open-source phone OS, support from handset vendors whose feature sets can no longer be dictated by wireless operators, and an open network that will allow any application from any device. Can you say, "Disruptive?"

Whether this will be the route Google goes remains unclear. Certainly, the company wants to get its search tools and apps available on as many cell phones as possible, and to do that in the short term, it will certainly need the help of existing carriers. Throwing up direct competition to those carriers is probably not a great way to accomplish that goal, though Apple has shown that when tech behemoths say "jump!," telcos can be made to ask "how high?"