Google’s D.C Wonk lawyer speaks

JOHN ORAM'S PIECE, here, was enough to kick me out of my self-enforced exile after my run-in with steroids. (Honestly, I was taking them for poison ivy).

Last week, this reporter saw Rick Whitt, Google’s "Washington Telecom and Media Counsel" – i.e. the outfit's D.C. lawyer - speak and he made it clear the company was almost certain to bid in the on 700MHz spectrum in the January 2008 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) auctions for the “upper” C block; the lower C block has already been sold off.

Speaking on a wonky panel before a group of telecommunications professionals in Northern Virginia, Whitt said, in the sort of carefully couched language you’d expected from a lawyer, Google was "probably…more likely than not" going to participate in the 700MHz auctions. The company is entertaining "numerous" proposals from potential consortium partners and has assembled a team of " Economists, game theorists, and outside council" to work through all of its potential options. You don’t hear AT&T and Verizon bragging about their economists and game theorists, but both cellular companies have them tucked away on retainer somewhere.

Why consortium partners? While Google has said it will pony up to $.4.6 billion in cash for the C block, all indications are the spectrum may attract higher bids than that. Further, Google ain’t no cellular company, but would be more than happy to team with a cellular company or some other wild card to build out a wireless network. Sprint likes open-ness, and if the company wasn’t up to its eyeballs in Wall Street headaches it would be a great partner.

Cable companies are the wild card in all of this and right now I wouldn’t put it past Amazon or another dot.com monster to jump to supply a minority stake in the bidding. Marketing shills pump up the "triple" and "quadruple" play, with mobile being a big piece of future revenues, but cable companies don’t really have much of a mobile offering. Meanwhile, AT&T and Verizon slowly encroach upon cable’s TV and Internet offerings here in the U.S., so the cable guys have to do something.

Interestingly, Whitt also indicated Google hadn’t ruled out bidding on the “D” block 700MHz spectrum either. The “D” block spectrum has some serious handcuffs: a winning bidder would have to build a national wireless network with a chunk of spectrum set aside for public safety use AND build it to heavy-duty coverage and redundancy specs. Of course, Whitt is a lawyer, so…

Finally, CTIA, the association representing cellular companies, was more than happy to show that, yes, they wanted to share the spotlight, er love, with Google. CTIA’s VP of Regulatory Affairs made sure that everyone knew that the organisation looked forward to the day when "Google joins CTIA" at least twice during the conference. Amazing what offering to bid $4.6 billion in wireless will get you. µ