FCC: Google allowed to become “Google Wireless”
Written by admin on January 15th, 2008 in Gadgets and Devices.
The FCC has cleared Google along with 214 other companies to go ahead and participate in the 700 Mhz spectrum auction. Over 50 companies and individuals have been rejected by the FCC as not meeting their standards. The auction will take place 1/24 with a minimum starting bid of $4.6 Billion.
You may recall Google proposed their bid to the FCC with 4 caveats. The FCC accepted just one, saying that the spectrum must be open to all mobile devices (keeping the interpretation of that precariously vague). Google chose to stay in the game anyhow.
Many analysts have pointed out Google has no clear intentions of starting a national telecom or buying one and becoming one. From my vantage point, Google is in the information business. The powers that be: AT&T and Verizon, love to limit access to information be it in ridiculous convoluted menu trees on devices or disabling hardware that allows us to access this data freely or speedily.
Should the minimum bid not be reached in this blind auction, Google’s caveat would probably be jettisoned in a rule-loosening attempt to cash in on the spectrum. Then it becomes business as usual for the telecoms.
Either way, the spectrum won’t be available until early 2009 as it is currently in use for analog television.
Read [Fortune]
Tags: pvp, gaming, speakers, tech
