According to reports from both Businessweek and The Wall Street Journal, Google has reached a deal with Sprint to lease capacity on its network, then run its own wireless service for customers as a MVNO. As reported yesterday, Google was also looking to use T-Mobile’s network for its service, but that has yet to be substantiated.
It is stated that Google does intend to launch its wireless service later this year, which could be highly disruptive to the existing wireless industry leaders. According to sources, Masayoshi Son, the president of SoftBank Corp. who bought Sprint in 2013, played a large role in facilitating the agreement between Google and Sprint.
With this new information, we can almost get a sense for what Google will offer potential customers. As a MVNO, they will have the hardware (handsets) to sell to users, and now with deals reportedly being struck with US carriers, they will also have the ability to offer wireless data at a reasonable price to anyone willing to make the switch.
With talks of the service launching this year, it’s likely we will know more details soon enough.
Via: Businessweek | The Wall Street Journal
This post was last modified on April 13, 2015 3:45 pm