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Jason Prescott, CEO, JP Communications
It's been predicted for some time that wireless carriers would be reduced to being simply the pipeline, and Google's entrance into the spectrum market proves it true. Content is finally king in the mobile world, and providers of such valued information and entertainment will now take the lead in the next generation of wireless development. The actual delivery of such services will be reduced to commodities in the near future.
The recent iPhone launch is just the start of it all. More opportunities for niche and vertical market content providers in the wireless world will soon emerge. We've seen the same phenomenon occur in the internet search market, where companies have found lucrative opportunities by focusing on one industry or topic. In reality, Google's entrance into the wireless spectrum license game is the natural evolution of this industry, and I, for one, am happy to see its arrival.
Vidya Lakshmipathy, analyst, customer experience, Forrester Research
From what I understand of the FCC's current decision, the upcoming auction stands to have very little effect on the face of interactive. First off, the FCC ruling was essentially a mixed bag with only two out of four of Google's requested rules being approved.
I think it's a great win for consumers that the approved rules would require unlocked phones and applications. This definitely could open up both the device market and the application market to allow users to purchase a device of their liking that is not tied to a particular network and give them more freedom to move between networks if necessary. It potentially could change the current model in the United States, where users typically purchase handsets that are subsidized by carriers but only work with that carrier's network. It also opens up the application market for developers to reach a wider audience and not have to design applications specifically for certain networks.
I think, unfortunately, that much of the difficulty for developers also comes with different technologies (XHTML, Java, Flash, et cetera), handsets, browsers, et cetera, that all make developing for a wide array of devices costly and time consuming. And this, unfortunately, will not change.
Secondly, none of these changes stand to happen any time soon and even when they do, it remains to be seen how they will be policed. None of the rules created apply to existing wireless services, so when consumers do see a change, it won't be for five to seven years or more depending on the build-out requirements that the FCC has in place. There is little incentive for today's wireless carriers to use this newly available spectrum to create a third pipe because eventually it will end up competing with the other broadband services they offer. This ties in with the fact that the FCC declined to require that the winning bidder resell spectrum. This again is unfortunate for the face of interactive media because competition and smaller players in this space would have really spurred a lot of innovation, new ideas for content, services and for the design of those services.
I think, for the most part, the auction will signal business as usual for the wireless companies and leave end users with very little innovation in the interactive media space. This is unfortunate because the wireless space really does have a lot of players that could potentially make innovative impact on the market.
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