Google is staunchly denying a New York Post report that it’s in talks with Dish Network to form another major U.S. wireless carrier.
“These claims are simply false. Google is not having any conversations with Dish about creating a wireless network,” Google said in a statement.
As a condition of the regulatory approval of its merger with No. 4 carrier Sprint, No. 3 carrier T-Mobile has been asked by the Justice Department to divest enough assets to render another major mobile company—effectively a replacement for the competition the merger would take out of the market.
Dish Network, which has already acquired ample spectrum in recent years, is deep into negotiations with T-Mobile and its parent company, Deutsche Telekom, to acquire the offloaded assets.
According to the Post, Former Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally, now director of Google parent company Alphabet, has recently conducted talks with Dish to partner up in creating a new telecom.
Acquiring equipment and technology divested by T-Mobile, the paper said Dish and Google could build a national mobile network within three years.
So why would Google be into this?
Google already has a consumer mobile business, Google Fi, which is based on MVNO agreements with T-Mobile, Sprint and US Cellular.
But according to BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk, Google’s priorities now rest in cloud services, where it competes with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.
“The cloud is becoming more reliant on the last-mile providers,” Piecyk told the Post. “It’s in Google’s interest to make sure the last-mile provider is inexpensive.”
