Google Phone

What Google wants, Google gets. It’s that simple. Federal regulators pulled the rug out from under Verizon and AT&T by requiring that the winner of the upcoming 700-megahertz auction provide an open source standard that could work with any devices and applications. This came nearly a week after Google said it would bid $4.6 billion on a scheduled airwave auction to dish out former analog UHF TV spectrum to emergency services groups and wireless service providers.

The agency approved rules for an auction of broadcast spectrum that its chairman, Kevin J. Martin, said would promote new consumer services. The rules will let customers use any phone and software they want on networks using about one-third of the spectrum to be auctioned.

To refresh your memory, the key reason why Google is so keen on the newly available spectrum is because it is the last piece of beach front property where the frequencies can travel at a greater distance as well as going through walls.

“The 700 MHz auction may well be the FCC’s most important wireless-related action for many years, because it could lead to the introduction of new facilities-based providers of broadband services, wielding new business models,” Google attorney Richard Whitt wrote in a letter earlier this month to the FCC.

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Google’s head of special initiatives, Chris Sacca, recently took the time to outline some of the company’s intentions with the FCC auction.  In an interview with CNET, he paints a picture of an institution appalled by the “reprehensible” lack of open access to all the riches of the internet.

“We have fought hard on a number of fronts to make the Internet as available as possible to the largest number of people as possible. Right now, the Internet is not available in too many places. And it’s still too expensive for most folks”

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With FCC Chairman Kevin Martin stunning telcos and analysts alike earlier this month with a surprise suggested shift of policy toward favouring the “open access” standards demanded by potential investor Google, rival bidders in the war for the valuable 700MHz band that’ll be freed up from the analogue-digital TV switchover are beginning to stake their ground.  After previous fighting words from the CTIA - calling it a “scheme to have the auction rigged” - Verizon have wheeled out their CEO to discretely threaten to reign in the company purse:

“We have made our position clear about the FCC not putting any unnecessary restrictions on any of these blocks … What we need to do now is see what the rules say and then develop a bidding strategy accordingly” Verizon Communications Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ivan Seidenberg

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