GeekSpeaker

Recently Google told the FCC that it would bid a minimum of 4.6 billion dollars on the new 700-MHz band spectrum that will be enabled in 2009 after the old analog TV signals are no longer used. This is a huge spectrum for the same reason it was originally proposed. Any carrier would only now need to build mini towers and then they could blanket entire cities with high speed broadband. Depending on how many people were included and how much of a pipe was fed into the tower, user’s will start seeing broadband speeds closer to what Verizon FIOS is seeing as well as the ability to roam while surfing. It’s the best spectrum for wireless voice, data and everything else.

Google won back the hearts of many people including myself by asking the honorable seats of the FCC to make rules of openness to those who purchased parts of the spectrum. It also made many enemies with companies like Verizon, AT&T and other wireless carriers.

If the US government is most concerned with looking out with the people of this nation, then they will agree to Google’s rules, because they would benefit every single person in the unite states with any interest in phone services and the Internet.  But the FCC usually sides with anything AT&T asks.

Robert notes that Google was foolish for this, but speculates they might pull the majority of their assets to make it happen by outbidding the larger companies. I only hope Google can pull it off.

Is Google on Crack? — Robert X. Cringely      Pulpit Feed    Pulpit Audio Podcast

This is all the highest of theater. Chairman Martin’s proposed auction rules won’t actually go very far toward opening up the network. And the opposition then grudging acceptance of first AT&T and then Verizon to Martin’s proposal is playacting that has more to do with Google than with the FCC chairman. The major wireless carriers have no desire at all to open up this network or any other. The bogeyman here is Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which is currently restricted from most U.S. mobile networks because, well, nobody can really figure out why. Since most mobile users aren’t paying separately for long-distance anyway and most U.S. mobile users can’t even make international calls because of high toll fraud, VoIP just burns up minutes and would seem to threaten nobody. Still, the carriers hate and fear VoIP, so they put together this drama of supposed openness in order to make sure that true openness can’t happen.

Could this be the end of Google? Is their stock price the highest it will ever be? I doubt it, if their strategy pays off, Google is concentrating on the long term and if you own the spectrum then you will have the cards in your hands for decade after decade after decade. Google’s rules would also allow new ISP’s to crop up and it could actually forever change the Internet in interesting new ways. New interactive services would span the land and if the FCC doesn’t go along with this it will mark a long term failure of the FCC to make broadband happen in the USA. I think President Bush should step in to deliver his promise of broadband, these ISP/Wireless carriers have wasted precious American tax-payers dollars in order to spread broadband and they never delvered anything worth discussing but a whole lot of whining.

We need a grassroots movement to make Google’s vision a reality. Remember, they could bid on the entire spectrum but they would have to lease out at wholesale of what they paid.

Here is some more from the Robert’s article.

I have thought long and hard and I can see only two ways this could have come about. The first possibility is that Google has begun believing its own press releases, which is not a good idea for any company. Google is an arrogant and geeky company with leaders who have isolated themselves to the extent that they may no longer be in touch with reality. So much success so quick may have convinced them they are smarter than they actually are. It happens a lot. It could be happening here.

That’s the most likely and saddest possibility, but it also means that if Google blows it, well then Google deserved to blow it. There is, however, an alternative motivation here beyond simple megalomania and corporate self-delusion: Google may actually be playing a game of poker.

This could be a fake, a head feint on Google’s part. By attempting to set these conditions on any eventual auction winner, Google is tacitly telling the mobile carriers that it really doesn’t intend to bid or doesn’t intend to bid above the $4.6 billion threshold. Emboldened by this the telcos, who are also arrogant and have a kind of reptilian craftiness, may decide to save their resources and only bid, say, $10 billion. But what if Google bids $20 billion? Well then it’s a whole new ballgame.

I hope that is Google’s plan, but I fear that it isn’t.