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Businesses Wireless Networking Hardware

Google, Sprint, Others to Build Wireless Data Network 65

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the fast-buildout dept.
Nerdposeur writes "Google has announced that it will partner with several other companies to build a high-speed mobile data network. In a separate but related deal, Google will also become the default search provider for Sprint, including having one-click search access and Google Maps pre-installed on some Sprint phones. 'The consortium includes a disparate group of partners: Sprint Nextel, Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner and Clearwire. The partners have put the value of the deal at $14.5 billion, a figure that includes radio spectrum and equipment provided by Sprint Nextel and Clearwire, and $3.2 billion from the others involved. They expect the network, which will provide the next generation of high-speed Internet access for cellphone users, to be built in as little as two years, but there is no timetable on when it will be available to users and the price is not determined. The partners are seeking to beat Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless to the market.'"
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Google, Sprint, Others to Build Wireless Data Network More

Google, Sprint, Others to Build Wireless Data Network

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  • The better deal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ethanol-fueled ( 1125189 ) * on Friday May 09, 2008 @03:35PM (#23354958) Homepage Journal
    As long as they don't have mysterious "fiber splices" into a sealed room, I'm in. Ma Bell's mobile broadband service sucks. If these folks set up a reliable connection and don't get greedy then they will win.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If they weren't greedy they wouldn't be investing.
      • While it's true that the lion's share of investors do it to get rich, don't discount the tiny minority that do because they think it's a great idea.

        Of course, the former investor type call the latter "suckers"...
    • As long as they don't have mysterious "fiber splices" into a sealed room, I'm in.

      Use SSH, VPH, and other encrypted protocols to landline sites and bounce off proxies to anonymizer networks.

      Geez. This is WIRELESS. NSA, FBI, SVR, MSS, Mosssad, Mafia, RIAA, etc. don't NEED splices - they can tap it from satellites or stations on the ground. (The only thing the "sealed room" option does is make it cheaper, easier, and guarantee full coverage.)
      • How do you know that they don't already have the keys to the aforementioned protocols? The next war will be economic...or just an excuse to infringe on civil liberties. Your choice :)
        • How do you know that they don't already have the keys to the aforementioned protocols?

          This is spy stuff. You don't know. You just do the best you can with the technology available to you.

          In this case you use the best encryption methods and protocols available in the public literature and hope that the open technologies' ability to obscure is keeping enough ahead of the investigative, intelligence, and criminal organizations' ability to crack. (Or at least slowing them down and raising the cost enough tha

        • Re:The better deal (Score:5, Insightful)

          by blhack ( 921171 ) on Friday May 09, 2008 @04:09PM (#23355376)

          How do you know that they don't already have the keys to the aforementioned protocols?
          Because they're the same protocols and encryption suites used by the NSA (who develops a lot of them). Whenever they find a big or vuln. in an encryption they always release the fix for it.

          The NSA has an interest in strong security too. If there is ANY loophole in the encryption (even one that the tin-foil hat crowd thinks they put there) it would be exploitable by the enemy as well.

          HOnestly, if the NSA wants to sniff your communications, it would be a lot easier for them to just break into your house and install a sniffer inline between your keyboard and your puter. No I am not talking about the hardware keyloggers you see online for $50.
          • if the NSA wants to sniff your communications, it would be a lot easier for them to just break into your house

            Yup. It's easier to set up a way to detect interception than to completely prevent it. And, this is not Bruno or even just a well-funded adversary. This is the government. If they want it, they get it. Unless he has an equivalently powerful government and standing army hidden in his closet?
        • What do you mean "next war"? It's already started...
      • If they don't NEED splices, then why do they implement them?

        Simple... the law of physics apply even here on earth.

        Take the tinfoil off your head and remember that physics drive implementation decisions, THEN cost.
    • In 2006 I got sick of contract lock-in and went to Virgin Mobile - phones that're cheap & easy to replace, no contract, and my usage fees total maybe twelve bucks a month. Uses the Sprint network, so coverage is not and never has been a problem.

      If Sprint and Google can whizbang something together that whiffs of open construction and come up with a mini PCIe card that'll fit in my Asus EEE's spare slot, and price it reasonably with similar coverage, I'd happily sign away a two-year fraction of my monthl
    • We've had that with most ISPs since 1996 when Bill Clinton rubber stamped the Carnivore and Magic Lantern projects.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tancred ( 3904 )
      If there's network neutrality, will it matter? Just encrypt everything.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kRutOn ( 28796 )

      As long as they don't have mysterious "fiber splices" into a sealed room, I'm in. Ma Bell's mobile broadband service sucks. If these folks set up a reliable connection and don't get greedy then they will win.

      Whoops, all telecommunications providers already have mysterious splices in a sealed room. CALEA was designed to let law enforcement tap telecommunications equipment easily. Sprint is a telecommunications carrier and therefore must comply with CALEA.

      Oh, also, it's possible for data networks to carry VoIP and IM conversations, so they have access to those as well. In fact, the FCC issued a ruling in 2005 expanding the reach of CALEA over Internet broadband providers.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicatio [wikipedia.org]

  • What is their masterplan? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 09, 2008 @03:38PM (#23354992)
    It does give food for thought, google have some much resources, and apparently a finger in every pie, but have stated little publicly about what their eventual goal is.
    They seem to be moving into telecommunications, as well as data warehousing, on-line information storage, retrieval, and personal communications...
    Does it make anyone else wonder whether we heading towards a future where there's only one communications company?

    • Re:What is their masterplan? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Friday May 09, 2008 @03:50PM (#23355166) Homepage Journal
      People have been saying that Google is the new Microsoft for some time. Most everyone else pooh-pooh's them because Google has been the darling of the tech community for years now. I'm old enough to remember when the tech community loved Microsoft too.

      Google will do what any publically held company does. They will grow and grow and take over as much as they can until something or someone stops them. That's not as alarmist as it might sound, it's just how things work.

      One company owning all of our data scares me a LOT more than one company providing all of our software.

      • Re:What is their masterplan? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DamonHD ( 794830 ) <d@hd.org> on Friday May 09, 2008 @04:28PM (#23355562) Homepage
        Uh, I don't ever remember M$ being that favourite child. My one and only communication with Mr Gates was 20-odd years ago (by telex) to ask him to force his UK office to honour its bloody contract with us. Which he did, very quickly, all credit to him.

        Also, the most expensive (and pretty much the most crap) technical manual I ever had to buy was a £100 ($200 today) book from M$ in the same sort of epoch, so maybe £300/$600 today.

        No, M$ was never ever as highly regarded as G still generally is, tin-foil-hat wearers et al aside. And G sets out to do good whereas M$ never gave a rat's arse if the alternative was more $$$.

        A perfectly legitimate way to behave for a company, but G is trying not to be in that mold IMHO. They do have duties to shareholders of course, and other than Google.org, they're not a philanthropy.

        Partial disclaimer: I use Google (and Microsoft) products, and know people at Google.

        Rgds

        Damon
      • Yeah, I've always loved stealing Microsoft software.

      • One company owning all of our data scares me a LOT more than one company providing all of our software.
        All your data are belong to US Government.
         
        Funny? Insightful?
        You decide.
    • The plan is simple, get more people using the internet more, same as android. If your not online they cant sell you ads.
      They dont really have their finger in that many pies just lots of different mechanism to sell you ads.
      At the point where setting up a new market becomes more rewarding than competing in existing ones that's what they do.

  • Have to make the market - lot of risk. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mediocubano ( 801656 ) on Friday May 09, 2008 @03:40PM (#23355026)
    Sprint has the spectrum, they paid for it a long time ago. Now that Nextel isn't generating as much free cash they don't have the money to build the network, so that is where the outside investors come in.

    The tightening credit market has not helped either.

    You have to spend money to make money. There are already a lot of last-mile data solutions out there, so someone has to spend a lot of money get the ball rolling. Have to make the market in this case.

  • Rats... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MsGeek ( 162936 ) on Friday May 09, 2008 @03:42PM (#23355056) Homepage Journal
    ...looks like the Android train has left the station, with only Sprint aboard. So much for T-Mobile offering Android and Google stuff. This also means I'm going to have to ditch my GSM phone too. Dammit Sprint!!

    • Re:Rats... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gat0r30y ( 957941 ) on Friday May 09, 2008 @03:47PM (#23355112) Homepage Journal
      What makes you think that the phone is the primary market for this - intel makes the WiMax chips, they are part of this too. I bet we start to see peripherals for laptops and desktops to get this into the home as well as mobile. hell, get some of these in your car / navigation device - its broadband access to your music on the road. Put em anywhere you want broadband access - the infrastructure is expensive but the chips aren't.

      • Re:Rats... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Friday May 09, 2008 @04:03PM (#23355330) Homepage

        I agree. If I had to chose one specific strategic reason for this I'd say it's to keep things open for Google.

        Microsoft has MSN which they like to try to push (quietly so as not to upset the DOJ). If AT&T, Comcast, Verison, Sprint, T-Mobile, or others decided to start giving preference to their own search (this includes site-finder like stuff) or net neutrality falters (so Google services are reduced unless someone pays extra) then Google could be in for a world of hurt. By the time the mandatory court case got far (at least far enough for an injunction) this could have become quite bad for Google.

        Should the court not grant such an injunction, take a long time to grant it, or the ISPs did it sneakily enough Google could suffer some real harm by the time things got "fixed".

        Google wants more people on the 'net. There is no question about that. This also serves branding ("I get my internet from Google", "Google lowered my broadband prices"). But it promises Google that even if net neutrality is denied by the supreme court, they have a possibly big partner that they can try to prevent from pushing stuff like that on them.

        This is at minimum (and skeptically) a preventative measure. In the short term I think the other benefits will be better, but this is a safe play for Google.

        • Microsoft has MSN which they like to try to push
          Dude, where have you been, MSN was like soooo last year. Its Windows Live now. Of course, by the time you read this post, it'll have been rebranded to something else again.
      • I think you've nailed it. The phone market is huge, but it's also looking somewhat saturated. New customer acquisition costs are large and competition is fierce. Thin margins could get even thinner.

        The potential market for non-phone devices is enormous. Sprint and Amazon have shown how well it can work with the wireless connection on the Kindle. Start setting up deals like this everywhere and suddenly Sprint might have a chance to survive and prosper big time.

        The phone companies hate the idea of just sellin
    • The best things in life always come with TDMA access isn't it?

      Otherwise, I for one welcome our newly-instated Supernet overlords!! If Wi-Fi extends to at least full North-American and Western European coverage, say goodbye to all that POTS/cellphone junk. It's VoIP-ing all the way baby!, unless it gets banned on a massive scale due to lost telco profits. It's been known to happen in Guyana and Ethiopia...and Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Oman...and China. Oh, and Brazil.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by blhack ( 921171 )

        unless it gets banned on a massive scale due to lost telco profits.

        I know this might not be a popular opinion around here, but if the telcos want to be jackasses about their network....isn't it sortof their right to be (assuming the own it)? Granted some of the networks have been built with taxpayer money, but the routers all belong to the telco. I don't like the fact that they do things like throttle bittorrent or try to kill off streaming Video, but it is (at least in theory) a free market.

        • their network


          I'm talking nationwide VoIP blocking at the IX-es. That includes business/corporate users.
          If my ISP corked the respective ports, I would SO go ninja on them - my current TOS specify "no closed ports".
    • So, are we gonna see something like an "Emergence" of "A Fistful of Datas"?, or some sort of new Vertiform City? They may want to think twice about opening that box..., hehehe.. .MAKE IT SO, Nrs. One...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by maggard ( 5579 )

      Nothing of the sort.

      T-Mo has publicly said they want to be the first out with Android. That fits in with their usual strategy - first with Windows Mobile 6, first with new Blackberry models & OS's, first with new HTC models, etc.

      Android is still half-baked - witness the software you can download and install already. So there's no platform yet to ship, and won't be for a few more months. No platform no train to board.

      Furthermore it'll be years before any WiMax deployment can match any of the Big-4 (Ver

  • This is also poised against Apple & Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)

    by postbigbang ( 761081 ) on Friday May 09, 2008 @03:59PM (#23355280)
    Google maps as defaults on Sprint Phones. Who's ox is gored by this one?

    Apple, who doesn't have any one in particular for GPS and mapping, and their 'business partner' AT&T.

    Microsoft, whose strategy is clear as mud, and can't seem to get mobile working very well at all.

    T-Mobile/DT, who doesn't partner and eschews WiMax altogether.

    Verizon, who is more proprietary than any of the aforementioned, in my personal experience.

    Nice move Sprint. Too bad WiMax has proven so difficult and expensive to deploy.

  • Sprint's Network (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TimeSpeak ( 873865 ) on Friday May 09, 2008 @04:32PM (#23355606) Journal
    Nextel/Sprint had an inferior cell tower technology and was forced to place the towers at a closer proximity than most other carriers. This turned out to be a big bonus for the new spectrum... Closer towers=faster more reliable speeds. The other carriers are going to have to play catch-up on the technologies or invest a lot more on towers....

    • Nextel/Sprint had an inferior cell tower technology and was forced to place the towers at a closer proximity than most other carriers.
      It's not inferior technology; more of being designed to work that way. The design allows for very simple capacity and coverage enhancements (however, applicable to CDMA, not iDEN).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by moosesocks ( 264553 )
      Huh? That's just plain wrong.

      Sprint/Nextel use CDMA, just like Verizon, Alltel, and a few smaller companies do.

      CDMA actually allows for a considerably larger cell size, whereas GSM is restricted to a "hard limit" of 35km. This is often touted as the reason why CDMA saw successful adoption in rural areas in the US, while GSM took a while to catch up, while densely-populated, developed areas stuck to GSM.

      Nextel/Sprint may have placed their towers closer together for some other reason, although they actually

    • This is a misunderstanding. All other things being equal (given the same power output, antennas, etc.), carriers using a lower radio frequency will need fewer cells to cover the same area. Lower frequencies can travel through denser materials without loss of signal; ultra-low frequencies can travel through solid rock, for instance, while certain high-end frequences have trouble passing through raindrops.

      At the same time, higher frequencies are better for high-speed data because they can carry more bits:

  • Sprint Nextel, Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner and Clearwire.

    I give the probability of fair pricing to the consumer coming out at 2%.

    I give the probability of anything actually getting built beyond a pilot in the next 10 years at 5%.

    I give the probability that these jokers can actually work together at 2%.

    • I give the probability of fair pricing to the consumer coming out at 2%.

      I give the probability of anything actually getting built beyond a pilot in the next 10 years at 5%.

      I give the probability that these jokers can actually work together at 2%.

      I'd say you're being awfully generous with those numbers. This just sounds like one big clusterfuck to me. At some point along the line, one or more of these companies is going to decide that some part of the plan works against their own business interests

  • Ive been a sprint customer for the last 6 years. Their phones(if you get the right ones, ie sanyo) are unmatched in quality and durability. Their service people usually know what they are doing, and if they do make a mistake, they trip all over themselves trying to make it up to you.

    Ive been using google apps on my sanyo phone for a while, but it will finally be nice to see sprint support them, even ship them on the phones.
  • Google being this ingrained is not good. Is the wireless data going to become like Gmail or Google web accelerator where they read/analyze your private information to more effectively inundate you with advertising? I really hope that when/if it truely becomes illegal for carriers to tamper with the data that it also becomes illegal for them to access it as well.

    We're always looking for ways to work with carriers, device manufacturers, software providers, and others to help you get the information and content you need, whenever and wherever you need it.

    Unfortunately, too often these companies decide they know what I NEED better than I do. The more centralized this becomes, the more difficult it i

  • Google seems to have an extra ! somewhere in their motto interpreter lately.

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