Today, Google announced plans to build a fiber-optic network for Kansas City promising connection speeds around 1 Gps which is 100x faster than the broadband most people are used to. There were 1,100 cities that applied and it's not surprising to see why Google announced the winner a week after the huge merger announcement. We think Google was trying to buy T-Mobile as well but would not pay anywhere near the $39B that AT&T did. There is also a great case for Google to buy Verizon FiOS. Sprint is in big trouble now with the AT&T and T-Mobile acquisition and Google could use both FiOS and Sprint.
So the big question is this foreshadowing Google buying Sprint? Why not . . . Sprint's headquarters are in Overland Park, Kansas which is on the other side of the Missouri River from Kansas City, Missouri. This would not surprise me considering Sprint's stock has been struggling for the last 10 years and its stock is down over 80% while competitors AT&T and Verizon are up almost 40% in the same period. Google's announcement also comes on the heels of AT&T announcing the acquisition of T-Mobile and they are capping data usage. Clearwire opposes the merger and Sprint opposes the merger and are the wireless leaders in 4G Wimax.