So a lot of articles have been talking about the new Google router and how it's been engineered to be this unifying smart home device. It's undoubtedly going to serve that purpose but I see a larger, more long term goal for having these routers set up in people's homes. I think they're selling these to get people to buy into their GoogleFi network.
If you're not familiar with the GoogleFi network, it's basically meant to be a Google's carrier service. It's designed to allow customers on the plan to use regular cell towers in addition to "open and friendly WiFi networks". Doing this will let you avoid cell data usage.
So maybe the connection between the two is coincidental and maybe Google isn't even really considering this. Maybe their focus is just on the smart home. Except for one thing, a little over a year ago, Google bought a company focused on doing exactly what I'm talking about. The article focuses on Google's fiber service and extending those routers to behave in exactly the manner I described. Well, if your routers are only in a few small markets, why not just build the routers and let them be available to customers in every market with broadband? You end up with a great deal more coverage and a much larger pool of WiFi routers that are friendly to your cell phones.
I don't know exactly how they could pull off convincing people to let them use their bandwidth over WiFi for use by the general public. I'm guessing that it wouldn't take much to do that, maybe through a rewards program or discounting the GoogleFi cell service even further.
This is obviously all just a theory and I haven't asked for clarification or details from Google because I don't think they'd share their business strategy with me anyway. Regardless, I find the OnHub's focus on a large number of antennas and spectrum dominance to be fairly convincing evidence of this type of plan.
Thanks for reading.
Submitted September 01, 2015 at 07:26AM by Tripleberst http://ift.tt/1ifgNMT
