Thoughts on Google's Project Fi

Google's recent release of Project Fi once again proves Google's tenacity to be first to market in a specific tech space and drive (some would say force...) the industry to progress with them. Although they will never publicly state this approach to business it is the core of how they operate. This strategy time and time again proves massive profits up front, following a quiet ramp down of service and concept maturity once the industry has adjusted.

SIM Card Technology & Offering

Project Fi is a bold move towards a world of a carrier-less phone plan and an infrastructure that meets many individual needs. The flat fee (and it is cheap!) favors a standard pay-per-gigabyte model but also poses an incentive for customers who do not go over their threshold through a credit reward. Your phone will almost always have a signal due to service agreements with T-Mobile & Sprint, as the phone's SIM card will choose the strongest signal while also weighing public WiFi as an option. Think of Google's offering as a humongous mesh network and your phone bounces off different towers and routers as you move. Unfortunately, this special SIM card is only in Google's Nexus 6 devices (and as far we know, designed or manufactured by Google), but one can predict only more Google phones adopting this capability moving forward. Now that I've gushed about a few reasons why Project Fi would be the obvious over your current carrier today, I bring you my red flags...

Stud or Dud?

Google selling hardware is somewhat a new phenomenon, but google selling the data and cell service to their hardware is entering a new realm of possibilities. And with possibility, come major challenges...here are my top concerns:

1. Security - If a phone is constantly connecting to different cell towers or public WiFi networks, what does this mean for privacy? Sure the connection is passing through some encrypted tunnel but public WiFi immediately flags issues for my own personal reasons. I'm not saying my privacy agreement with Verizon is fabulous today, but mixing in public WiFi would not help me sleep at night.

2. Reliability - Let's be honest, Sprint and T-Mobile are not prime service players because their cell service is spotty and lack a constant 4G/LTE connection. Signal strength in the city is fair, but Project Fi would rely on public routers in dense areas and cell towers in rural territory. I can't say I'm quite ready to rely on a combination of two spotty service providers for my phone...

3. Device Battery - Perhaps I am missing some technological understanding, but my personal experience and attentiveness to mobile innovation suggest to turn on/off your cell chip or WiFi chip to conserve your smartphone battery. Although the Nexus 6 battery is an improvement  from older models (3220 mAh is a lot of juice), I'm not sure any smart phone battery can pack enough heat to support constant searching, identification, and switching of hundreds of networks in a given day.

Bonus: I can only for see a long and dreadful lawsuit coming from service monopolies like Verizon and Comcast, exposing every loophole imaginable and .muddying the waters for Google and partners to push forward.

Conclusion

With all that being said, Project Fi is a major step in the right direction. Security concerns aside, the model is innovative and the benefit to cost ratio is off the charts. One can hope Fi does not fizzle out like other Google ventures. If it fails, it needs to fail successfully by forcing pressure on carriers to finally change their horrific 'locked-in' contract plans. It has massive business opportunity as well, possibly offering an enormous cost reduction for employee mobile devices depending on industry.

**UPDATE <<4/25/2015>>**

Google's patent for Project Fi's architecture and essential inner workings has recently surfaced and can be found here. This patent was filed in October 2011, inferring Google's plan to enter the telecommunications space as a service provider (in some form) has been a long time coming.

Why The MLS Will Be Huge

Every year Major League Soccer remains as the punch line of all tacky sports jokes, while the public jabs at the sport itself or why America just 'Does.Not.Care'. But what every soccer hating critic leaves out of the argument is the raw data. An average attendance of 19,000 fans per match, emergence of multiple soccer specific stadiums, and two new teams in popular markets are paving the way for the MLS to be huge.

Attendance

No one is arguing the NFL is America's most popular sport. The television contracts and advertising opportunity alone blows most leagues out of the water, and attendance surpasses 50,000 most anywhere in the country. The MLB is a surprising second in average league attendance, but the variance of a 35,000 sold out Red Sox game and a struggling crowd of 8,000 in Miami is disheartening. Where else does this leave us but Major League Soccer surpassing both the NHL and the NBA in average game attendance. Sure there are less games in a season, but isn't that how sports like football became so popular in the first place?

Each game means more than the last, and with a regular season of 32 games you can get a taste of why the UK is a slave to soccer on the weekends. It is hard to explain, but each MLS match feels like the most important one, and bring out the best in the team's fan base with an atmosphere that is more electric than sleepy.

Grow, Grow, Grow

Like any professional sports league, the ability to scale as an organization is a difficult task. With factors of location, fan interest, investor/operator selection, and more, the clip at which the MLS is investing in league growth is fast. New York City FC and Orlando City SC have been worthy competitors since the 2015 season start and have attracted world soccer stars like David Villa and Kaka. Los Angeles and Atlanta are also receiving future teams, proving the demand for the sport is high and large cities like LA can indeed support two teams.

Playing Catch Up

Call it 'catching up' or what you will, but the United States' investment in soccer dates back to the early 1990's, when the MLS was chosen as the premier home grown league to develop a reputable USA team come the 1994 World Cup (hosted in the US). While most of the wold remains decades ahead of America in soccer tradition and skill, the MLS product is nothing to sleep on. New television contracts with ESPN, Fox Sports One, NBC Sports, & Unimas are raking in the dough. Ticket sales and apparel revenue is at an all time high. Star players in Europe are receiving competitive MLS offers in the millions and the average player salary is on the rise.

All things are looking up for Major League Soccer, yet nobody wants to admit it. The league has captured the most important fan base in the country, a demographic comprised of 18 to 35-year-olds who are organically creating the traditions that could last for decades. Never a soccer fan in my youth, the MLS was an easy league to gravitate to and extremely cost effective for catching a live game ($250 total for 18 home games for my team). I am a football / baseball / hockey fan as much as the next person, but there is something new and refreshing about the MLS that screams prosperity.