Guess who’s coming to (mobile’s) dinner?

One of the worst-kept secrets in Washington this week has nothing to do with which media outlet will land the biggest celebrity at this weekend’s White House Correspondents Dinner.  Instead, it was Wednesday’s news that Google officially is entering the wireless service fray. 

While the initial impact will be limited—the service is by invitation only and oddly is restricted to just one (non-iPhone) device—the perennial innovator’s leap into the mobile scrum is generating excitement. 

{mosads}The primary attraction of Google Fi is the offer to consumers that they pay only for the wireless data they use.  Idea-wise, Google is hardly first to the party. Republic Wireless has had a similar offer since 2011. And competitors across the board have consistently sought new ways to differentiate their services, as data rollover plans and other tantalizing offers continually emerge.   

Google’s mobile debut comes at a time when the wireless landscape is roiling with change—fueled both by rapid innovation and intensive, market- and consumer-led competition. Today’s diverse fray is not unlike the sea-change in the entertainment business as mapped by Saturday night’s seating-chart—boasting stars from network stalwart’s like Modern Family, Scandal and Madam Secretary, but also from fast-emerging disruptors like Netflix and YouTube. 

Google Fi also faces significant challenges. For example, a close look at the new service’s coverage map reveals that it shares the Achilles heel of its network partners Sprint and T-Mobile—a lack of any real presence or interest in rural America. While AT&T and Verizon have spent billions of dollars deploying 4G service across the nation, a recent Mobile Future analysis of spectrum deployment in rural America found that despite holding substantial spectrum across the five most rural states in the contiguous U.S., neither T-Mobile nor Sprint offered their own wireless service in more than 75 percent of those rural counties. 

It’s a purposeful, profit-driven decision, as made clear by T-Mobile CEO John Legere who, in touting the Google deal, took care to point out that his company’s resale partners “all share a common denominator: they all target a unique customer set with a specialized value proposition.” 

That said, the increasingly dynamic competition that defines the U.S. wireless marketplace has always been a good thing for consumers and our economy.  And, all Americans enjoy the fruits of these rivalries: Leading-edge network infrastructure and investment that is the envy of the world.  The largest 4G population on earth.  At least 40 different wireless providers offering 4G LTE service.  Voice, texting and data plans as low as $35/month.  And, now data rollovers and refunds.  It is time the FCC itself states the obvious and recognizes what hundreds of millions of mobile consumers have already figured out: the U.S. wireless marketplace is as competitive as any sector of our economy and getting more so by the day.   

For more than two decades, the ongoing whirlwind of wireless advances has been powered by American innovation and its reception by consumers in the marketplace. Until the recent net neutrality order, government has long deserved credit for maintaining both the discipline and humility needed to remain largely in the background—allowing mobile’s rapid emergence and transformation of virtually every aspect of our lives. To continue this trajectory, we must reject calls for a more heavy-handed approach that would hamper future progress and investment.  

With so much in constant flux, it is a fool’s errand for policymakers to try to predict or shape the technology future. One need only look at the recent AWS-3 spectrum auctions where DISH—a company that offers no wireless service and has no wireless customers —emerged with a significant block of spectrum, purchased at a $3 billion government discount, allowing it to pole vault over T-Mobile in the rankings of the nation’s top holders of commercial spectrum. 

To be fair to the FCC, I’m not sure anyone outside the DISH auction war room saw the AWS-3 outcome coming.  And, Chairman Tom Wheeler is hard at work to avoid similar future results. The stakes are high as he and his team strive to hold the broadcast incentive auction in early 2016.  It is essential that the FCC not pre-judge who, where and how competition emerges, or give unfair and anti-competitive legs-up to any competitor, regardless of how loud or ingratiating their pleas. 

The lesson innovation delivers—over and over again—is that we just don’t know where that next disruption will come from.  Boundaries are shifting across the wireless ecosystem.  

As the spotlight shifts to the Washington Hilton for the weekend, it’s a good time to welcome Google Fi to the wireless party. Whether it is a flash in the pan or lasting presence only time—and hopefully consumer choice—will tell.  Today’s competitive wireless marketplace is one party government shouldn’t crash—or all mobile consumers are in for the hangover.

Spalter is Mobile Future chair, a technology executive and former senior federal government national security official. He leads a coalition of technology companies/stakeholders dedicated to increasing investment and innovation in the burgeoning U.S. wireless sector.