Google bids on 700MHz "C" Block

FRIDAY'S Wall Street Journal was scribbling about ex-Novell and now Google boss Eric Schmidt checking the company bank balance on December 3rd. That is the deadline for declaring an intent to bid in the FCC 700MHz auction for January 2008.

Google bought the #1 femtocell developer in July. As our Scribbler wrote then: "Ubiquisys's Zonegate femtocell plugs into DSL and then provides access to WiFi, Ethernet, ordinary telephones, and USB. But the most important thing is that it also acts as a local 3G base station."

The WSJ says that Google has erected femtocell towers on campus and is running about with prototype handsets, probably from hardware partner HTC Corp. of Taiwan, which has Android software running on them. That's purely speculation by the WSJ writer, because they didn't have any photos of those femtocells, nor of any handsets.

WSJ didn't say anything about Android's man in charge, Silicon Valley veteran Andy Rubin. The San Jose Mercury News fills the gap left by WSJ with an interesting article about him.

Saturday two weeks ago, this Scribbler was looking for new femtocells at the Google HQ campus. As you can see, the parking lot was empty. But there are NO tall iron fences around Google's buildings like we found on the same Saturday at AMD's HQ in Sunnyvale.

We did find one radio antenna attached to a bicycle. Could this be part of their new femtocell network? Is it properly tuned for 700MHz radio reception?

So will Eric Schmidt open up Google's coffers early next year? The speculation by pundits in the know (Whose track record is poor at best – Ed.) is that Google will toss in nearly $5 billion US Greenbacks for the 700MHz "C" block. INQminds’ Mageeky says it may take a bigger number the way the USD is sliding downhill from the British Pound Sterling.

Google would lose a lot of hard earned goodwill in Washington DC if it doesn’t open up its coffers. Why? The FCC modified some of its ground rules for the auction to placate Google, much to the consternation of incumbent mobile carriers like AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon.

For that one-time turn-over of cash to the FCC, Google will have to build a data and audio network. There is another large chunk of change to put out on the table, most pundits say in the $3 billion to $4 billion range. However, fanboys on Wall Street are always looking for the next big cash cow. So, they could just toss in piles of wonga for a part of Google Network's action.

Then, we have Craig McCaw and Clearwire which we reported on a bit ago. McCaw desperately needs a new dance partner. Clearwire has a partially installed RF coverage map for some of the USA. Clearwire could just be the backhaul partner Google needs for its femtocells. That joint venture would speed the ramp up of Google's ideas.

Another option for Google would be to lease the "C" block to somebody like, maybe, Sprint. The major problem with Sprint is that it lost over 340,000 customers last quarter along with several billions in wonga. (Now that’s real money – Ed.) Sprint still says it is "committed" to the WiMax data network project.

Another minor issue is: what would happen to Intel's spring 2008 laptops if they were all geared up for WiMax - and the new RF game in town is Google with 700MHz?

Best mark December 3rd on your calendar so stay tuned for the rest of the story. µ