Update: The Wall Street Journal is corroborating this story with a report that makes this sound like a done deal. The Journal mostly focuses on the Sprint side of things, saying the MVNO agreement with Google went all the way up to the Sprint and Softbank CEOs. Apparently Sprint was worried it would be "letting a rival into the gates" by dealing with Google, but a clause limiting Google's customer base calmed the company's fears.

Reports about a rumored Google wireless service are cropping up again. The Information (subscription required) is reporting that Google plans to resell Sprint and T-Mobile services as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO).

The last time we heard about this was back in April 2014 , when Google was supposedly talking to Verizon and Sprint. MVNOs are resellers of wireless access—they get access rights from one of the "Big Four" carriers and resell it to end users. Google does a lot of ISP work with things like Google Fiber, Project Loon, and the Space X investment , but those are all projects where it owns the hardware and is free to innovate. As a reseller, Google controls little other than the price and packages it provides to end users and the software it puts on devices it sells.

The report says that Google views the MVNO project (codenamed "Nova") as an "experiment" that the company hopes will “get carriers to step up” to improve their service. The report says Google hopes to push down prices and "improve the experience" end users have, which presumably means not packing phones full of crapware. One possibility stated in the report is that the plans could be branded as a mobile service for Nexus phones and sold through the Play Store.

It all sounds like a big copy of the Google Fiber plan, but again, it's much easier to do when you build out your own network and control everything. With the MVNO plan, Google will be trying to change the system from within the system, which is a lot harder. It will also be doing it with the #3 and #4 carriers, so the coverage won't be that great. At Ars Orbiting HQ, our favorite MVNO is Straight Talk, which offers unlimited text, calls, and 3GB of data on AT&T's network for $45 a month. This is a big savings over normal carrier plans, but for the most part carriers don't seem threatened by MVNO pricing—they just ignore it.

The report says that a launch this year is likely, and Google even considered launching the service as early as last fall.