Rank: Chief Joined: 8/4/2010 Posts: 8,977
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Quote: The Silicon Valley company is deep in the throes of a multipronged effort to fund, build and help run wireless networks in emerging markets such as sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, said people familiar with the strategy. The wireless networks would be available to dwellers outside of major cities where wired Internet connections aren't available and could be used to improve Internet speeds in urban centers, these people said.
Google plans to team up with local companies in the emerging markets to develop the networks, as well as formulate business models to support them, these people said. It is unclear whether Google already has lined up such deals or alliances. In some cases, Google plans to provide its own recently developed wireless technologies to help such networks, these people said.
Some of those efforts revolve around using certain airwaves reserved for TV broadcasts to create wireless networks, but only if government regulators allowed it, these people said. Google has long been involved in public trials to prove the technology—which operates at lower frequencies than some cell networks, allowing signals to be more easily transmitted through buildings and other obstacles and across longer distances—can work. And it has begun talking to regulators in countries such as South Africa and Kenya about changing current rules to allow such networks to be built en masse.
Google has also been working on building an ecosystem of new microprocessors and low-cost smartphones powered by its Android mobile operating system to connect to the wireless networks, these people said. And the Internet search giant has worked on making special balloons or blimps, known as high-altitude platforms, to transmit signals to an area of hundreds of square miles, though such a network would involve frequencies other than the TV broadcast ones.
Google has also considered helping to create a satellite-based network, some of these people said. "There's not going to be one technology that will be the silver bullet," meaning that each market will require a unique solution, said one person familiar with Google's plans.
http://online.wsj.com/ar...78503350402434918.html.
$15/barrel oil... The commodities lehman moment arrives as well as Sovereign debt volcano!
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