Google announced this week that it is experimenting with offering wireless services with results of its MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) becoming apparent in the coming months. The initiative is built on the Android ecosystem. Ingrid Lunden at TechCrunch quotes Google’s SVP of products, Sundar Pichai as saying, “We have always tried to push the boundary with the innovations in hardware and software. 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. [We] will announce something in the coming months.”
Alistair Barr and Ryan Knutson in The Wall Street Journal say the service could begin by the end of the month, but there is a catch—the service will only work with the latest Nexus 6 smartphone, designed by Google and manufactured by Lenovo’s Mobile Mobility unit (formerly owned by Google).
You can read their complete article here (subscription required). The gist is that the service will leverage Sprint and T-Mobile cellular signals and any available Wi-Fi signals. Only the Nexus 6 has the chops to select the best available signal for the app the mobile user is running.
In a related item, the WSJ’s Ryan Knutson went 30 days without a mobile carrier—relying on Wi-Fi only for his mobile voice and data communications needs. He describes the experience in a video here.
