Is more of less, more than less?
Google and Cablevision announced Monday their separate but equally radical plans to shake up the mobile carrier field. Google loves shaking things up; Cablevision is a cable company holding New York City ransom, ensures the Knicks lose, and can be applauded for doing something better.
Google's plan is to become a super MVNO - a reseller of mobile network services. The novelty in their approach is the partnership with two carriers - T-Mobile and Sprint, while plain-jane MVNOs only partner with a single carrier. As usual with Google, there is a rather significant technical hurdle here as the two carriers rely on different underlying network technologies (GSM and CDMA), but hardware can probably overcome anything with enough money thrown in for good measure.
The challenge will be to see whether cobbling two networks together will actually manage to provide coverage as good as AT&T's or Verizon. If you're not from the US, you probably forgot the notion of 'no coverage'. Visiting rural Poland in 2005, miles away from humanity, I had full blown coverage. In the US, miles away from humanity, you are miles away from a network, normally. But I digress. T-Mo and Sprint are behind the other major carriers partly, if not mainly, because of weak networks. T-Mobile has notoriously spotty coverage. Sprint has notoriously spotty customer service and their coverage could be better. T-Mobile is in the midst of a price-driven onslaught that did shake the industry and reduced prices, supposedly, but ended up driving the other carriers to remove the beloved-to-customer and expensive device subsidy (want an iPhone for $200? now you pay $40 on top of your service just because of that 'discount'...). It will upon Google to do several things besides bat its wondrous techy eyelashes at the world:
Be cheap - folks don't leave their carrier for fun. You need to motivate them.
Good enough coverage to some, if not most - make sure coverage is at least as good as Sprint and T-Mobile separately. Which works for folks in urban areas, at least. That will help the service's reputation, at least.
Customer service - Google is not amazing with this. People will need to talk to someone when they have trouble. Can we say retail locations or possibly, ganging up with the generally smarmy reseller crowd?
Interesting devices - They will likely NOT offer an iPhone. That's fine. Google will need to offer that is appealing enough, cheap enough and can do the network hopping trick between GSM and CDMA without losing a beat.
Make money - Google can swallow some cost if they can build in valuable tracking data (anonymous, of course!) that will help them push ever more relevant, ever more location-specific ads to you. Profitability on top of that will be just nice. And necessary.
Differentiated services tightrope - can Google dole out newer, more interesting services without the shackles of limitations (if they exist) imposed by the carriers? Can something on the phone be better than on, say, an iPhone from Verizon? Maybe a reborn Google Wallet-y something?
In summary - interesting idea. Not really certain it will work, but if it makes cell service cheaper in the US, all the more better. And cell service in the US is quite more expensive than anywhere else with the small caveat that technology here is apparently a bit ahead of said rest of world.
Cablevision's idea is to roll out WiFi-driven mobile device service across its coverage area (namely NYC area and a couple of fly-overish states) and its WiFi hotspot network 'nationwide'. As the Wall Street Journal mentions, this WiFi mobile phone thing was done before by small companies like Republic Wireless. These companies are WiFi first but can go (MVNO-style) on a cellular network (Sprint or T-Mobile, of course). And they DO love you on WiFi most, naturally.
What Cablevision CAN offer that small players cannot is big WiFi coverage. I mean if you are in NYC, you are very much close to some location serviced by Cablevision. If they are cutesy (or bold) like Comcast, they may even implant a public WiFi hotspot in residential routers, increasing their reach even further. And again, they can always peer with Starbucks or Boingo and voila - nationwide WiFi!
Again, if you think of NYC, it is a bit less crazy than it sounds: you have Cablevision service at home - your smartphone will work great. You walk on the street, your phone may work just fine or better, if Cablevision adds a couple hundred hotspots in major areas. Many people live in NYC, and if cheap enough - and that's the main goal here, cheap - it may work. An upper service tier will offer wider mobile service, again, peering with a Sprint or a T-Mobile.
Will people bite? will there be enough of a device selection to make it appealing? do they even need a device selection if they offer dirt cheap mobile service?
Will Verizon and AT&T care?
Not really. They will sit back and watch. Smile, nod, stay more expensive. These are customers that they are not really keen on so, let Cablevision have them. Sprint and T-Mobile on the other hand will care - as they rely on prepaid customers more and getting a chunk of that market bitten off by a cable company, no less, will hurt.
