What I don't get is, what's in this for Sprint and T-Mobile? Currently a user of their network is a customer they "own" -- they deal with that customer directly. Now they have Google sitting between them and the user, which effectively commoditizes their service; Google could switch them out for another network down the road without the user ever knowing or caring. That's great for Google, and probably also great for the user, but not so great for the individual cell providers.
Presumably Google is paying them something to compensate for that, but it still seems dumb -- accepting a little money today at the cost of cutting your own throat in the long term. But then there aren't many providers in the US that aren't dumb, so maybe the long-term threat has just been completely missed by them? Who knows...
Presumably Google is paying them something to compensate for that, but it still seems dumb -- accepting a little money today at the cost of cutting your own throat in the long term. But then there aren't many providers in the US that aren't dumb, so maybe the long-term threat has just been completely missed by them? Who knows...