Comments on: Google-Dish: Perfect match or disaster in the making?

By: Buckus Toothnail

Buckus Toothnail — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 22:22:37 +0000

I hope Google does it resulting in slashed rates for all.

By: Adam

Adam — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 12:27:28 +0000

“but neither Google nor Dish bring expertise and infrastructure”.
The expertise is not a problem, that can be bought. Realistically, the telco vendors they would be engaging with for this LTE network infra would be Ericsson, NSN, ALU. Those same vendors also offer Managed Services to provide full end-to-end Plan, Build, Run activities on the infra, for either their own kit or other vendors. Google would be able to buy that capability from day one, with the vendors responsible for the greenfield network deployment to accelerate the TTM for Google, as well as the ongoing network operations once the service is launched, leaving Google to focus on the customer facing aspects of the business.

Furthermore, there would still be some mobile network expertise floating around in Google from their Motorola acquisition, so they would not be starting from zero anyway.

By: rkr

rkr — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 07:06:29 +0000

BrianB said it right. The next $60B market is TV advertisement. You need a reasonable bandwidth 2-way channel for directing Ads to your screen. Free LTE (Fixed) in return for targeted Ads. Makes sense. Maybe even free Satellite TV.

By: okkent

okkent — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 05:34:23 +0000

I don’t like dish. I don’t like the delivery of Dish and million points of failure.

By: eideard

eideard — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:20:16 +0000

DISH is wandering trying to sell the whole company, right now. That even includes the competitor that has been kicking it’s butt for months – DirecTV.

By: tcsac

tcsac — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 21:30:20 +0000

Google doesn’t have the expertise in infrastructure? Uhh, what? Have you heard of this little acquisition they made called Motorola? Google likely has as much if not more expertise than any of the big carriers. If you’re talking physically putting up towers, VZW and AT&T subcontract nearly all of their towers. If you’re talking backbone, google would again run circles around both.

By: TechNut

TechNut — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:25:24 +0000

Tmobile seems the logical choice, considering the close relationship they’ve had on the Android front. Either that or they will do what Richard Branson did, and just make their own carrier. That’s something I would welcome, personally.

By: BrianB

BrianB — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:08:36 +0000

As an arm chair CEO, I could see Google buying Dish to help with their Google Fiber initiative. Google Fiber will take time to build out, but with Dish customers, Google could start having benefits immediately with an established large customer base as Google Fiber grows over time. I see the spectrum as being something they would partner with Sprint or T-Mo to deploy a network in exchange for shared access.

For Google the final frontier is TV advertising and they have only been receiving push back on that front. You either need to be a content distributor, or a cable/satelite provider to be influential. Google Fiber is a start, but perhaps Dish is a stepping stone into the TV advertising market.

By: jjj

jjj — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:08:00 +0000

When carriers charge money for a few GB/month,when they try to kill net neutrality,companies like Google, Amazon , Apple, Facebook and even some of the chipmakers are forced to think about ways to eliminate those carriers.They are just keeping the industry hostage,putting the breaks on innovation and growth in the space.
But Google can’t do it the same way carriers do it.not the infrastructure nor the business model,it’s just not worth it.So they are most likely just probing,for now,trying to find a feasible way to have a go at it.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 17:06:10 +0000

People laughed at google when they said they were going into the isp business and looked how that worked out,1 bg/s connections for $30.

I think building a lte network from scratch has it’s advantages, one of which is no legacy cost. The big for (especially verizion) spend big bucks to maintain their 1,2 and 3g networks. A new carrier will have none of those cost so maybe they’ll be able to provide cheaper service.