So, the real question is, what about that? Google doesn’t own a wireless network… there are four of them that more or less cover the USA: Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile… and that’s very much “more or less”.

Google is a partner in Clear, the company donig WiMax nationally (includes Sprint, Comcast, Intel, and a few others). They’re now delivering spotty but high speed coverage in five or so cities. That’s not a general answer, either.

They could hook up with a mobile carrier and pay the connection fees themselves. But why would any mobile carrier help them advance the inevitable move to an all-IP network… not as long as they’re still nickel, dime, and dollaring you for voice and text minutes. That’s prime real-estate… a 1200 minute monthly phone plan is only going to run you about 100MB of total potential data traffic. This pretty much proves that any “unlimited” plan could easily move voice to data, only, that would take money out of the wireless companies pockets and boost their 3G traffic.

They really don’t want that to happen until 4G… particularly if they have spotty 3G coverage (Verizon is universal 3G, though it’s slower than AT&T’s best verison, and like anyone else, you’ll get bumped to EDGE if you’re too far away or there’s too much other 3G traffic). AT&T is about 20% 3G, but roughly the same 2G coverage. Sprint has less overall coverage, and T-Mobile less still, with a small percentage of that being 3G.

And boy am I glad that I let my Verizon contract run out earlier this year. I let it lapse and went with a month-to-month plan.

I need a new phone. Hello, Google!

Valkyrie Ice, the thought of Google putting the wireless phone companies out of business at the expense of business (via advert dollars) blows my mind with excitement.

If some bright designers got together, built a wireless system that not only connects to any available network but to any other nearby available wireless device, be it smartphone, laptop, desktop or whatever, using it as a ad hoc network connection and potential routing hub, it seems like it should be quite possible to build a nationwide network that has absolutely no dependence on the telco’s good graces to connect, enabling smartphones to bypass the cell tower grid and get reception anywhere by simply connecting to the nearest other device like the internet does.

With the increasing number of smartphones, netbooks, and the upcoming tablets available, most cities should be saturated with enough potential nodes to provide a connection anywhere within it, regardless of whether there is a tower nearby or not. Especially bad reception cities like San Francisco would benefit enormously from such a system, no?

And you could basically tell the telco’s to shove it.