Google agrees to buy Nortel Networks patents
 

a whoop $900Million for 6,000 patents from Nortel.
among those are wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, internet, service provider, semiconductors.......

we could see another wireless carrier soon in North America!

http://www.allaboutnortel.com/
Google Blog Post

I don't see Google entering the wireless business. It's too competitive and the barrier of entry is setup pretty high.

The whole purpose of acquiring all these patents is to further strengthen Android's dominance in the market.

And to prevent any sort of lawsuits from the other players for patents they think they own.

Google Earth, literally.

they have google voice and it works, they have a good OS and it works, they have phone manufacturers, which could be better... whats not to stop the from going into wireless carrier business??

who knows.. it would be good if they did

I'm thinking the point of Google acquiring Nortel's patents is so that they would potentially have less patent lawsuits. The industry right now is like a giant field filled with landmines. You maybe stepping on someone's patent before you even know it. By acquiring patents, you can gaurantee that those patents won't come back and haunt your company later on.

All about patent protection and using your portfolio as leverage so you don't get sued as easily. You may be infringing on someone, but they may be infringing on your patents too.

Google Voice and Gmail calling are very different to wireless carrier business. What Google has are some version of smart VOIP solutions.

Wireless carrier on the other hand needs huge amount of capital to build infrastructure, spectrum licensing... etc.

Google certainly has the resource to buy a telco out, but such move benefits its core business very little if at all. Google will most likely continue to develop solutions as our internet life progresses. The project they are doing of building gigE in Kansas City, for example, is not a sign that Google want to become an ISP, but rather to understand what kind of future services and application they can provide if we have very fast connectivity to the internet.