Google Telecom: Chief Evangelist/Tease Dishes Spectrum Speculation

With Google all hot and heavy for the wireless spectrum auction of 2008, and barrels of cash to play with, some speculation about the company’s future has moved into the area of telecom. No one at Google will come out and say “Yes, we plan to buy up the wireless spectrum and quickly deploy free GooglePhones to take over the phone business” but AT&T and Verizon have been watching Google very closely.

Now in a Seattle Times interview with Google Vice President & Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, commonly known as one of the founding fathers of the Internet, we get another read-between-the-lines hint that the company is hungry to get into telecom. When asked about a possible telecom move from Google if the company wins the wireless spectrum in ‘08, Cerf coyly replied:

“I think we'd like to have multiple business models to choose among in any case... If we were to, for example, win the 22 MHz capacity or something like that on a national scale, then the biggest challenge there would be to figure out the most effective way to make use of that capacity. Are there third party arrangements we should consider, is there a wholesale model, do we actually run the service, do we cooperate with someone else [making] joint investments in infrastructure? All of those are questions that have got be answered.”

You can read more of Cerf’s teasing here… I’ll go ahead and put my bet on the board: Yes, in five years Google will be known as major telco. It might sound crazy now, but a few years ago who could predicted Google StreetView?