will google build a WiMax with the 700MHze?

Who do they use for backhaul, Covad?

The "C" block has a reserve in excess of $4.5 Billion and Google estimate it would take $12 Billion and 3years to build a 700Mhz network.

Even though Google have "Loads of Money" they will expect a return on their investment. Perhaps Cringely is correct:- "First let?s start by looking at the infrastructure Google has already built or committed to building ? the largest fiber backbone in the world and the largest and most widely distributed data center build-out in the world. Both are FAR in excess of Google?s current or even future requirements UNLESS they are also intended to work with a massive

700-MHz wireless network.

Imagine a hybrid wireless broadband mesh network using 700-MHz connections for backhaul and some truly mobile links and WiFi for local service. Google has enough experience with WiFi in Mountain View to know that it isn?t, by itself, a good solution for wide area networks. The key failing of metro WiFi networks is backhaul to the Internet backbone. But if Google used its 700 MHz band for that AND implemented it as a true mesh network, there would easily be enough capacity to serve almost any size network given a suitable number of backbone connections.

You can find my old column about just such a network in this week?s links.

Google has experience, too, with hybrid wireless networks. Every Google employee has the chance to take a company bus to work and every Google bus has an EVDO-to-WiFi bridge so Googlers can surf the net on their way to work.

It would be really cool if this Google hybrid network was truly flat and could be maintained entirely within a single address space like, for example, the 76 billion billion billion IPv6 addresses Google already owns. The sudden existence of a massive IPv6 network would throw other ISPs into a tizzy and quickly drag the rest of the net into the 21st century, something else I could see as a Google ambition.

Finally, what links all of this together is something else I wrote about long ago ? the Google Cube. This is an access device that contains

700-MHz and WiFi radios, a tiny Linux or Linux-likeserver, and a few gigs of flash RAM memory cache. It?s these Google Cubes that will mesh together, acting as both WiFi access points and 700 MHz mesh backhaul devices. Throw in some local caching, video preloading, and truly local DNS service and suddenly you have a pretty substantial network infrastructure that is not only massive and self-healing, IT IS ENTIRELY PAID FOR BY CUSTOMERS. All Google needs to provide are several thousand points-of-presence (cell towers) to connect the local mesh to the Internet backbone.

Google couldn?t do this with WiFi alone, but with 700-MHz meshing and backhaul they could make it work fairly easily and the entire network could be deployed in a couple months.

For those who can?t think past search, imagine this also as Google?s key to dominating local- and location-based search.

Forget about net neutrality and forget about making nice-nice with broadband ISPs OR phone companies. Google would overnight become the largest U.S. ISP with direct and very high-performance access to its customers, including those using the new Google Phone or any other phone that supports WiFi connections, like the iPhone and many others. Google becomes the biggest and lowest-cost ISP and potentially the biggest and lowest-cost mobile phone company in the bargain.

Heck of a deal."

So, to reiterate, who do they use for backhaul, Covad?

If they build their own fibre backbone why would they need Covad? Does Covad own a lot of unused fibre that Google may be prepared to lease from them?

Why build, as opposed to partner with Covad's "nationwide footprint"?

Why be a partner when you can have full control?

Point taken, since, at this point at least, money is no object.

It's all hypothetical and only one persons opinion so we wont know until the winners of the bids are announced. We will then have to wait and see what they do with it or whether they will just on them for a while. They are a very mixed bag of bidders:-

List:-

Try again It's all hypothetical and only one persons opinion so we wont know until the winners of the bids are announced. We will then have to wait and see what they do with them or whether they will just sit on them for a while. They are a very mixed bag of bidders:-

FCC List:-

Lots of if's . It would cost them billions to do. Nothing is "free"

dragon hath wroth:

Free VoIP? Sure, just tolerate a few advertisements: "We interrupt this phone call for brief message from our sponsor..." I can't wait.

Sure. Given enough time, money, investors, infrastructure, political pull, subsidies, and eventually a bail-out, such things as free service are possible.

They have lots of options. Including building one.

I've read the Cringeley bit. It smacks of "wow, that'd be cool" race-to-the-bottom-ism. Dunno how they'd possible reap cashflow except by opeering it cheaply then using diffserv to garner revenue.

Seems iffy. He has no apparent concept of what "being a mobile phone provider" really entails. Nothing like pumping billions into an already overserved market...

-- Les Cargill

"Citiwide change bank. We just make change."

-- Les Cargill

They won't win. They probably aren't even trying to win, and probably have no plans for the unlikely event they do won.

Google and others have asked the FCC to require that this spectrum be open--that is, whoever wins has to allow consumers to use devices from any manufacturer on it, rather than locking it. The FCC has said they will require that if the bids reach at least $4.6 billion.

The expectation of most analyst is that this is what Google is bidding, and that the other bidders know that, and will bid more. Basically, Google is simply making sure that it goes for more than $4.6 billion, so that it will be open.