What is next for the US wireless market?

Here are three major trends that will shape the US wireless market over the coming 12-24 months.

Dish eager to extract value from spectrum holdings concocts elaborate plan to buy Sprint

Dish Network Corp. recently launched an unsolicited bid for Sprint in the midst of the Sprint - Softbank merger. At the same time, Verizon declared that they would be interested in purchasing spectrum from Clearwire that would become part of the Sprint - Softbank merger.

Both of these offers are unlikely to prevail and it is very unclear wether they would deliver any benefits beyond Dish and Verizon. 

Justice Department nails it with FCC filing about spectrum auctions

The US Department of Justice recently filed a brief with the FCC commenting on upcoming rules for spectrum auctions. The brief outlines reasons for why ensuring low frequency spectrum access to smaller carriers (in this case Sprint and T-Mobile) would be good for the competitiveness of the US wireless market and by extension, the American consumer and society at large. 

AT&T immediately matches Google Fiber offering in Austin

It took only moments for AT&T to react to the Google announcement that they were deploying Google Fiber in the Austin, TX market. Consumers, apparently competition works after all! This is what you can look forward to in the coming markets Google enters. 

Who are the winners and losers when carriers kick the contract habit?

T-mobile recently announced that they would drop the prevailing practice of signing up customers for two year contracts and instead let all customers go month-to-month. This, combined with a decision to stop subsidizing handsets is a first among the major US carriers.

Let us take a look at who stands to gain from a change like this.

Verizon denies any joint Vodafone takeover bid madness

Verizon Wireless today went out of their way to deny any involvement in a speculated joint AT&T/Verizon takeover bid for global wireless operator Vodafone. While the speculated plan had some interesting features to it, I think it is very unlikely to happen, at least in the configuration that was suggested.

While the plan would have solved three major problems in one sweep, it would also have created a major strategic headache for Verizon.

Google kills off Google Reader, what is next?

Google announced yesterday that they will sunset their Google Reader application together with several other applications and APIs in what they brand as a "spring cleaning". This is not the first time Google decides to trim their application portfolio. Does anyone remember Google Wave?

I think the push-back might be much stronger this time. Google Wave was a very experimental platform which never saw its usage case validated beyond a very small core of dedicated users and some of its innovations were supposedly put to use in other applications such as Google Docs and Google+. Google Reader on the other hand has been a very reliable and loved RSS-reader with a significant user base as well as platform for many third party Readers and Apps.