After reading AT&T's response on Friday that implored Google to just enter the new wireless spectrum bidding under the current rules and let the consumer decide who has the best service/offering under those telco-stacked constraints, I can unequivocally state without even seeing Google's offering that it will be far superior to anything the telcos have. What do I base this on? Google's entire history of putting the user 1st, and every telco's entire history of putting the customer last. I've worked at telecom companies since 1992, companies engaged in everything from payphone billing to cellular service to wireless equipment manufacturing, for several of the largest companies in the industry. Customers aren't customers, they're "subs"; billing mistakes are not corrected unless they have to be; quality of service is not as good as it can be - it's only as good as it has to be. And the only thing that keeps them from charging more is a competitor or competitors that prevent them from doing so. Google? Free. They don't ever offer anything until they figure out a way to offer it for free, except for advertising, in which case you pay no more than the minimum going rate as set by the market, not by a "board" or "regulators" or long-term contract with penalties. When you set your bid for pay per click, it's the amount you would pay no more than, but if it's higher than the present rate, your bid will automatically be reduced to charge you as little as possible. Would that ever happen with telcos? Ever? Imagine saying "I'll pay $45 per month for wireless service, but if other people are only paying $41, I'd like to only be charged $41." You can't imagine that, because it's simply unimaginable. Can you see Google offering that? Of course you can, because it's what they already do for almost all of their revenue. Which is why, depending on how hard Eric Schmidt at Google wants to push this and how deep in the back pocket of the telcos the FCC board really is, we could be staring at nothing less than the beginning of the end of customer exploitation by wireless carriers as we know it.
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