
It's Friday, November 16, 2007, and welcome back to Good Day, BWIA, a light
compendium of news, items of interest, irreverent commentary, and occasional light analysis relating to Broadband
Wireless Internet Access (including WiMAX, public access Wi-Fi, etc.).
Google's $4.6B burning a hole in its pocket Google's pledge to bid at least $4.6B in the upcoming US 700 MHz spectrum auctions is much in the news this morning. At their current valuation of around $622/share, that pledge increasingly looks like a just good business to follow through on. But I, like a lot of knowledgeable observers of the wireless industry view the... (what can only be described as, to us) hysteria about the 700 MHz auctions as, at best, misguided, and at worst, totally clueless. Here's just one daunting factoid... it will be expensive to deploy a nationwide 700 MHz network because a significant part of the necessary tower and rooftop infrastructure simply isn't adequate for the much larger antennas that will be needed for 700 MHz. Much of the current tower and rooftop infrastructure is set up for 1.9 GHz used for wireless telephony; 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz antennas are even smaller. The recently-auctioned Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) band at 1.7 GHz / 2.1 GHz - close enough that the antennas are the same approximate form factor as those for 1.9 GHz. Those are "bolt-on" additions to towers and rooftops. 700 MHz antennas- think reengineering the tower or rooftop to insure that it's adequate for the increased wind load. For those that think I'm being a bit too alarmist given that legacy Nextel and commercial and public safety two-way radio operate at spectral neighbor 800 MHz... think about it. What's being proposed for 700 MHz are high-bandwidth, intensive-use applications. That means there's going to have to be pretty intense sectorization to insure adequate spectral reuse.
700 MHz definitely isn't the be-all-and-end-all in Broadband Wireless Internet Access. It simply makes more sense for Google to buy Clearwire and Sprint's 2.5 GHz spectrum and get on with building out a nationwide Mobile WiMAX network on 2.5 GHz. Google has the cash to easily handle the purchases and support building such a new network, Mobile WiMAX technology and systems are mature enough for there to be systems and expertise available off-the-shelf, and the 2.5 GHz spectrum is "virgin-enough" to support a new, truly-built-for-Internet Broadband Wireless Internet Access network. Here's something to think about... much of the investment in building a wireless network has been in the infrastructure... not just the systems on rooftops and towers, but the switching and backhaul. Imagine if Google did build a Mobile WiMAX network as described above. It already has all the back-end infrastructure it needs! The "Googleplex" has enough raw, distributed computing power to handle the two core functions of a network - billing, and switching/routing. Not to mention incredible content generation. It has an email system in GMail, it has news in Google News, it has a billing / payment system in place, it already does VOIP in Google Chat; it even now has interoperability with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) from its acquisition of GrandCentral.
Unfortunately, and I say this with a heavy heart, while Google could really ignite competitive Broadband Internet Access in the US with the wireless strategy outlined above (remember, it's one of the chief proponents of Network Neutrality...), despite its awesome capabilities, Google hasn't exhibited much cluefulness in any of its wireless strategy to date. Like with the compromises Apple had to make for the iPhone to be minimally acceptable to wireless telephony carriers, trying to effect change by working "within the system" of wireless telephony will be, at best, half-measures. It's a real shame that Google isn't listening to ideas such as outlined above, at least at the executive level that can implement real change.