Google and Apple have pushed us closer to a world in which we’re freed from the tyranny of wireless carriers. Declan Ganley wants to take us all the way there.
With its latest Android phones, Google is offering a wireless service, dubbed Project Fi, that automatically switches between Sprint and T-Mobile, depending upon whose signal is strongest. In every new iPad, Apple now offers a SIM card that lets you try various providers—including Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T—before choosing one. In some cases, you can just as easily drop one carrier for another.
Wielding the power that comes with building the world’s most popular phones, Google and Apple are moving us toward a world where we can move seamlessly between carriers from month to month, day to day, even moment to moment.
As a consumer, you want this. You don’t want a single carrier maintaining an inordinate level of control over the networks you use and how much you pay. You want a market with unfettered competition, where you can jump from carrier to carrier as need be. And that’s what Ganley is trying to build.
Ganley is the CEO of Rivada Networks. On its webpage, Rivada describes itself as a company that designs “public safety” wireless networks—communications systems that police, firefighters and other first responders can use in an emergency. But its mission is larger than that. In tackling public safety networks, the company has created technology that lets companies freely bid on available wireless infrastructure, and it hopes to bring this to the wireless networks the rest of us use.
In other words, it wants to create a truly free market for wireless service, one in which companies like Apple and Google bid for the use of services from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and beyond.
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