KEY POINTS:
We have a little Government radio spectrum auction coming up in December that will sell access to some highly sought-after radio frequencies so new services such as wireless broadband can be offered.
That will raise a reasonable sum for the Government, maybe tens of millions of dollars.
But
just wait for the frenzy the auction of 700Mhz radio spectrum in the US will generate.
Payments for that spectrum - seen as the "last beachfront property" in the US wireless space, as most of the other appropriate frequencies are already in use - are expected to total upwards of US$15 billion ($19.9 billion).
We haven't seen that sort of money on the table since the European 3G auctions, which sent more than one mobile player bankrupt.
And if there wasn't enough competition for the airwaves from traditional US mobile players such as Verizon and Sprint, internet giant Google has also given a strong indication that it will join the bidding.
That has no doubt struck fear into the mobile industry, whose collective pockets are nowhere near as deep as Google's, with its US$160 billion market capitalisation.
The Federal Communications Commission yesterday bowed to the lobbying of Google, which was demanding that a good portion of the spectrum sold in the auction be used to support any device or service desired by the consumer.
Traditionally, the successful bidders in spectrum auctions have been able to tightly control what their customers can use.
This has largely determined over the past 15 years what mobile operator a customer chooses to sign up to.
Now Google, whose allegiances lie not with the network operators but with the consumers who use its search engine, wants mobile phone networks to be treated with the flexibility the internet offers.
Bring along any compatible mobile phone and, in theory, you'll be able to use any service on offer.
On the web, you can pretty much do this now.
Internet providers sell access to the pipe that connects you to the internet but unless you're illegally downloading thousands of movies or albums, making you what's known in the industry as a "bandwidth leech", you are generally left to your own devices.
Contrast this with the mobile operators, which do their best to keep you in a walled-garden of content offerings.
Vodafone Live is the best example of this approach.
While most mobile operators now sell straight internet access, they also package up services to make it more attractive to buy what they decide to offer - whether that be ringtone downloads, streaming TV feeds or news alerts.
Google is trying to offer better access to the services its business relies on, and in this area it sees the wireless providers and their walled gardens as the enemy.
The hostility between Google and the mobile industry was no more obvious than at the 3GSM mobile industry show in Barcelona this year, where several mobile operators said they'd rather work together to build their own alternative search engine for mobile phones than use Google's.
The tension springs from the fact that everyone knows that mobile search is the next major form of advertising revenue.
The location-sensing power of mobile phones mean search engine results can be tailored to your actual location, giving more targeted results than you would get from using the Google search engine on your home computer.
With those location-based services in mind, Google has been building a free city-wide Wi-Fi networks in San Francisco and Mountain View, California, to give people in those areas better, unimpeded access to the internet.
It also struck a deal with mobile operator Sprint to offer Google applications on Sprint's WiMAX wireless broadband service.
With its acquisition of the YouTube video-sharing website, and already the biggest search engine provider in the world, Google's success depends on its customers being able to gain access to enough bandwidth to use its services, and preferably from mobile devices.
For that reason, an increasingly realistic scenario would see Google buy radio spectrum and build its own mobile network.
On the other hand, it may be a bluff to extract better co-operation from the mobile industry.
Either way, the mobile landscape is irreversibly shifting and Google, with its desire to take internet search mobile, is driving the change.
