Google’s Sundar Pichai has essentially confirmed reports that the company will become a wireless provider of sorts in “the coming months.” During his appearance at Mobile World Congress today, Pichai acknowledged that Google is working with “existing partners” to create its own MVNO, but stopped short of confirming that Sprint and T-Mobile are those partnering networks, as has been rumored. But he did reveal that Google has been in contact with Verizon Wireless and AT&T about its plans – likely to head off any potential ugly conflict between Mountain View and the largest, most powerful providers in the United States. “Carriers in the US are what powers most of our Android phones, and that model works really well for us,” he said.
Additionally, The Verge has an interesting article about just how far along Google’s Project Loon is.
Wouldn’t be surprised if this was some google value added thing ala Walmart’s family talk on T-Mobile.
Also, I just got a ZTE Zmax and am very happy with it (well except that there is no root for it yet). Wifi calling is a huge win for me which didn’t work out of the box probably due to trasnfering from an older sim card to a new one and something getting bodged up but after a pleasant chat with Jason A. on tmobile’s live chat it works just fine
(took 15min to fix the REG90 error including rebooting the phone)
Also take note! The ZTE Zmax is $191 tax and all from walmart and it works fine with my plain t-mobile prepaid plan (It isn’t locked to work only with family talk).
Edited 2015-03-03 05:05 UTC
That would ease they work and prevent them from using huge resources to decrypt the communications, hence lessen their ecological footprint.
Go green, go NSA…
Should … launch their own mobile network?
Or deploy their own balloons?
And … what makes you think they didn’t do this in the 90’s ….
In terms of objectives, capabilities and trustworthiness… is there really much difference between Google and the NSA?
Yes.
Thanks for your deep insight into why these two ever expanding, privacy invading and data hoarding leviathans aren’t in any way similar. I suppose the NSA never sent 360° surveillance vehicles down every street while hacking wifi networks and keeping the data even after a court ordered them to destroy it.
Edited 2015-03-03 17:04 UTC
That’s for the consumers’ benefit, the greater good…
I’m sick of crap being on my phone I don’t want to have on my phone. I paid $650 for it and its mine it shouldn’t be up to people like Samsung or Verizon what I have or don’t have installed on it.
Lately I’ve been getting a popup warning me to agree to the terms of the enhanced Verizon Retail Experience program or something. Apparently the program informs me of great deals when I am in the proximity of a Verizon store.
My options are “agree” or “not now” but sadly “leave me alone and stop asking me such nonsense” is not one of the options so I get the popup again every week or so trying to subdue me into letting Verizon do even more marketing to me on my device.
I’m extremely sick of bundled crap on my phone too. Every time I use my phone as a hotspot the Verizon software is there nagging me to get me to use their hotspot software instead of FoxFi for an additional $10/month or something stupid.
It’s time to start treating phones more like PC’s. They have to be decoupled from the grip of service providers.
Even if manufacturers are still left with the power to bundle junk people have more control over which manufacturer they buy a phone from every 2 years and a bad reputation could drive people to a manufacturer with a better reputation in short time.
Vote with your wallet. There are enough carriers in the US where you can choose one that won’t penalize you for buying a phone they can’t control.
Can’t control? Sounds like they’ve got pretty good control over it to me. Remember, paying full price does not mean being free from the carrier if you purchase it from said carrier and with some phones, you have no choice with our CDMA carriers as they’re not sold through any other outlets.
As for enough carriers, well that depends on where you live. You can’t tell someone to vote with their wallet if they only have one realistic option, and there are a lot of places where Verizon is the only option you have for any real quality of service. If you’re lucky enough to live in an area covered by more than one provider, great. Many are not, and you take what the regional monopoly will give you or you do without service. Thanks a lot, FCC.
I don’t mean to be rude, but that is very much not true. There are a number of unlocked CDMA phones out there for purchase that work on version and or sprint.