Unhappy with stagnant innovation, Google will become a cellphone carrier
During a keynote address at the 2015 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, Google executive Sundar Pichai announced that the company is planning to offer wireless phone service in the US.
Google鈥檚 entry into the smart phone arena was its Android operating system, and it later got involved with hardware by designing the Nexus line of phones. Now, Mr. Pichai says, Google believes offering its own wireless service will allow it to reach more customers.
Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile don鈥檛 have much to worry about for the foreseeable future: Google鈥檚 service will be very small in scale at first. Pichai says Google will reveal details about the wireless network in the next several months. But Google鈥檚 service will probably be limited to a handful of geographic areas, much like its home fiber Internet service.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 intend to be a network operator at scale,鈥� Pichai told the crowd at MWC.
The company won鈥檛 be building its own cell towers or running its own wires 鈥� instead, Google will become what鈥檚 called an Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), which is a company that buys network infrastructure and resells it to consumers at a discounted price. Boost Mobile, Cricket Wireless, and TracFone are MVNOs, and soon Google could be one as well.
Google has spoken with AT&T and Verizon about its plans, Pichai says. He noted that those two carriers, along with Sprint and T-Mobile, are what allow Android phones to connect with online services most of the time, and that Google isn鈥檛 looking to alienate other carriers. When asked whether Google was going to exert pressure on other companies to lower the cost of wireless access, Pichai answered only that Google was trying to 鈥渟how innovations.鈥�
One nifty feature Google is working on is automatic call reconnection. If you or the person on the other end drop a phone call, Google鈥檚 network would automatically try to reestablish the connection (assuming one of you hasn鈥檛 traveled out of reception range). Pichai didn鈥檛 say what other technical innovations Google is working on, but promised that more details would be released in the coming months.
Pichai also mentioned that Google has been working on Android Pay, a mobile payment service that will compete with Apple Pay and the upcoming Samsung Pay service. Android Pay will be a software layer built in to Android that allows services such as Google Wallet to be used more easily. That way, a user can tap their smart phone on a sensor to pay for something, rather than having to pull out and swipe a credit card.
