Google Talks with Dish About Partnering for LTE

Google has held preliminary talks with Dish Network Corp. to partner on a new wireless service that presumably would be a Long Term Evolution mobile network, the Wall Street Journal reports. But Dish apparently has been talking to a few potential partners, so the talks with Google would not be unusual, except for the fact that Google would be bringing cash and application expertise, not network infrastructure skills Dish would need.

To be sure, there are lots of reasons for holding such talks, so nothing is certain. For starters, Dish Network, which has been talking about finding a partner to help it build out an LTE mobile network, if the Federal Communications Commission approves its request to use satellite mobile spectrum to support a terrestrial LTE instead, might want to pique the interest of other service providers.

Talking with Google is one way to do so. But Google has a vested interest in spurring faster broadband access, on as many devices as possible, for the simple reason that faster page loading increases the amount of ad inventory it can display to consumers. 

Google for that reason has invested in any number of ventures that promise to create faster broadband, ranging from municipal broadband to Clearwire to Google Fiber in Kansas City. At least so far, most of those initiatives have been intended to spur action by service providers, not to get Google into the service provider business. 

Google's building of its own branded "Nexus" line of smart phones has a similar process, namely, to illustrate what can be done with an Android handset.