Google's plan to become your phone company Google hopes to become your next cell phone operator by using license-free spectrum to offer cheaper internet access. The internet giant is readying to take on cell giants AT&T and Verizon with a team of wireless executives focused on gaining access to unused spectra and using new technologies to make fast data sharing …
I guess one would need to figure out how much of the spectrum bill is a part of every users' cell bill.. if the difference isn't all that much, is it worth it to need two phones or a dual SIM phone. I would think a dual SIM phone would need two RX/TX systems and antennas for the different frequency ranges.
"All of those sums will eventually find their way back to consumers through their cell phone bills."
Sorry, but the costs of buying the bandwidth in a govt. auction are called sunk costs, and are fixed. Companies (want to) produce at profit maximising levels, i.e. where marginal cost = marginal revenue. Fixed costs play no part in determining where this level is and hence the amount the phone company pays has absolutely no bearing on the ultimate cost to the consumer.
Which isn't to say a company splurging their money on a license won't likely provide a worse service, money is in limited supply and money spent on licence means money not spent elsewhere (or given back to shareholders).
So, and this is not a criticism of Google per se, once they’ve cherry-picked the high density areas with attractive bundles covering several devices and offering internet, IPTV and telephony, if this really does well it could drive out the current incumbents providing mobile telephony and data in urban and suburban areas as the profitability of GSM networks collapses.
In theory we could eventually see the provision of traditional mobiles becoming as expensively prohibitive as decent broadband currently is out in the sticks, with a probable reduction in the number of providers, competition, etc.
The one comfort I could take from that is that it might stuff the deployment of smart meters where I live as that seems to be GSM dependent under current plans.
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