Building a nation-wide, 700mhz wireless network could cost as much as $12 billion and take as long as three years to build, said Google’s Washington telecom and media counsel on Sept. 25. That would be on top of a minimum of $4.6 billion to buy the spectrum.
Google’s Rick Whitt told students at George Washington University’s Institute for Politics and the Internet, “It would cost more money than people think. Do we really want to take that leap?”
Cost estimates vary, of course.
Sprint expects the WiMAX buildout at 2.5 GHz to reach 100 million people by the end of 2008, with Sprint providing coverage to 70 million and Clearwire to 30 million people. Sprint expects to invest approximately $2.5 billion in building out WiMAX through 2008. Beyond 2008, the company expects to extend its coverage to approximately 125 million people by year-end 2010. That phase would be driven by economics, requiring an additional capital expenditure of approximately $2.5 billion.
Aloha Partners has more than 270 licenses in the 700 MHz band, covering nearly 65% of the U.S. population and nearly 85% of residents living in the top 100 markets. Aloha Partners says they’ll use their two, 6Mhz channels on the 700MHz band for HiWire mobile television service, providing some 24 tv channels to handheld devices.
Aloha Partners predicted that building out a nationwide system at 700MHz would be far cheaper — closer to $1.7 billion (pdf). A one-way television system would cost much less than a 2-way network, of course. Kagan and Aloha estimated the initial 700 MHz CapEx for building out a nationwide mobile tv network at $450 million (versus $2.1 billion for Modeo’s proposed 1.65 GHz service).
Kagen estimates a nation-wide, 2-way 700 MHz network would cost $1.7 billion to build out, while Google estimates the build out cost at $12 billion. But Kagen doesn’t have an iron in the fire.
Google does.
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