Photo credit: CNET
Google's Android & Chrome boss, Sundar Pichai held a talk at Mobile World Congress today. During his discussion he shared that Google will indeed become a mobile carrier. The service is tentatively called "Nova" that will be an MVNO (mobile virtual network operation).
He shared that Google's intention isn't to be a big competitor to Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint. Instead, he likened the Nova service to Google's Nexus line. The intention is to help guide the industry by establishing some benchmarks that Google would like to see the other carriers adopt. He included the example of carriers adapting the ability for Wi-Fi signals to automatically pick up phone calls when the carriers' own networks drop them.
He explained, “We want to experiment along those lines. We don’t intend to be a network operator at scale. We are actually working with carrier partners. Will announce something in the coming months.” He also added that Google wants to bridge the gap between mobile networks and Wi-Fi perhaps by leveraging their own Fiber network.
It will be interesting to see what kind of example Google can set in this arena. It's a tough hill to climb, but if they can execute the way they are with Google Fiber, it could be a great thing for the whole industry.
