Hot off the heels of news about the FCC’s decision to uphold net neutrality has been Google‘s announcement that it will launch its own mobile network in the U.S. Is this new for Google, or just an extension of a very old strategy?
“The U.S. has below-average mobile broadband speed and availability.”
No one will accuse Google of being unwilling to try new things. The search engine giant has had its fingers in many pies for a while now, seemingly less interested in a specific business model than in trying to make the present into the sci-fi future we’ve always dreamed of. From self-driving cars to camera glasses that automatically cause class panic and riots in San Francisco, Google has had a variety of successes and failures along its more experimental projects. The Google X labs are notoriously shrouded in secrecy, and it is always difficult to understand what, if anything, is being developed there at any given time.
This may be why many groups are so excited about Google‘s new wireless service. Wired’s piece on the topic, “How Google‘s New Wireless Service Will Change The Internet,” is about as full of praise for this network as anyone has ever been for an infrastructure project. The assumption inherent in many of these articles is that Google‘s service will somehow be better, more reliable, or cheaper than many of its competitors. Why do they believe this? Because that is exactly the kind of business model that Google has been building on for years.
Ever since Google got big through selling advertisements on its search engines, it has been looking for ways to extend the reach of its service. This has primarily been through creating more opportunities for people to get on the Internet. Google Fiber and its recent forays into the RDU industrial triangle are good examples of how Google wishes to extend its profits – not through fighting in the marketplace, but by enlarging it.
Will anything actually change?
While it’s wonderful that Google has such a strong track record, it’s more important to understand whether or not anything will change. It’s important to note, here, that the U.S. has below-average mobile broadband speed and availability. Not only are we as a country far behind technology leaders like Japan, we are also far surpassed by many European countries.
Google‘s senior vice-president, Sundar Pichai, said in a statement recently, “We have always tried to push the boundaries of what next. It is a project we are doing. We don’t intend to be a network operator at scale … We will do it at a small enough scale and hopefully people see what we are doing and carrier partners, if they think ideas are good, can adopt them.”
Wireless networks can be faster with new initiatives
This leads many to hope that what Google will be trying to do is simply offer a very powerful, clean-cut service to a small sample of American consumers that will lead to better competition in the rest of the industry. While this is great news for Google, it is also a huge opportunity for any companies that work in the mobile or eCommerce sectors. Mobile phones become, obviously, more useful when they are connected to a faster Internet. Similarly, eCommerce is taking an increasingly cell-phone based direction, which means it would benefit just as much from a rise in carrier speeds.
Any organization that is interested in technology developments, wearables or mobile technologies should carefully monitor how Google‘s new wireless network rolls out. Because it is likely that there will be great developments over the next couple of years as a direct result of this new initiative.
