Event Recap: Larry Page talks Wireless at “Google Unwired”

The power of Twitter (when it is up) is amazing.  The other day I saw an update from my friend Chris Parandian of MobileDiner about a new America Foundation event with Larry Page of Google, who was coming to town to talk wireless spectrum stuff.

I decided to go and sit in, it is not every day you can hear one of the Google founders talk.  It was a really interesting talk as Larry delved into a lot of issues to include:  internet openess, the amount of open wireless spectrum not being utilized, Google’s recent bid on a block of spectrum which Verizon ended up winning, and even touched on the Microsoft/Yahoo dealings.  He talked for about an hour and then took audience questions.

Some of the topics that he spoke on that interested me were their recent bid on that highly sought after 700Mhz block of spectrum.  More and more it seemed that it was simply a way for Google to force the closed carriers to open up and in the end they got their way.  While Verizon won the bid, the Google bid had many stipulations put onto the winner, to include openness.  Larry kept reiterating, “We would have found something to do with all that spectrum.”  Leading me to believe that they never truly wanted it in the first place.  But good for them for forcing the issue.  It is a bit daunting when someone says that the $4.6 billion bid they had to put up was not that big of a deal …..

Something else that I thought was conceptually a pretty revolutionary idea by Larry, was a suggestion to totally revamp the spectrum bidding process.  As it is right now, companies that get these spectrums, do so for a very very lenghty amount of time.  Larry stated that spectrum should be auctioned off, almost down to the minute, as carriers had the need.  Almost a stock exchange for spectrum.  It was fascinating.  Below is a full video of his talk, it is almost an hour long so sit back and enjoy.