Google’s plan for an open wireless Internet: ‘Crazy like a fox’?

Google, the analyst and other industry sources said, might have made the seeming wireless concession because it already feels confident Verizon cannot go too far in flouting openness standards for wireless customers. Google helped secure openness rules from the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) two years ago that will govern Verizon’s most advanced wireless offerings as it begins operating a 4G network. 

Verizon secured the spectrum it will use in its LTE network through the 700 MHz spectrum auction two years ago in a nearly $10 billion purchase. As a condition for bidding on the spectrum, Verizon had to agree to allow consumers to use any device and any lawful application on its mobile network. Those rules were imposed after Google plied the FCC to make openness a priority in the auction.

At the time, Verizon called open access mandates the “imposition of regulatory judgments and intervention in the markets” but eventually bid on the spectrum anyway. 

The goals of the open access standards, secured two years ago, mirror those of rules Google and Verizon proposed for wireline networks on Monday. The open-access standards might also thwart some of the doomsday scenarios for the mobile Internet that some net-neutrality advocates have described as a possible result of a wireless exemption to net-neutrality rules.

Not all carriers will be subject to the same open-access mandates that Verizon must comply with as a result of the auction, so the open-access standards are unlikely to appease net-neutrality proponents who point to the remaining potential for AT&T and other carriers to discriminate among traffic. 

But Verizon’s offerings, as the country’s largest wireless provider, could go a long way in shaping what consumers expect from the mobile Internet, forcing other companies to adopt openness standards because consumers will eventually demand it, one argument goes. Some analysts said Google likely had that possible trend in mind when it agreed to the wireless exemption.