I asked the question in September, and I’ll ask it again: Do we really need live TV on our cell phones? AT&T, the largest U.S. carrier, says we do.

AT&T said Thursday it will offer live mobile TV service from MediaFLO in May through two handsets — the LG Vu and the Samsung Access. Subscribers willing to pony up the extra bucks (prices won’t be announced until later) will receive eight channels of live TV plus two exclusive channels in select markets.

AT&T offers everything from music to Web surfing is looking to live mobile TV as a way to earn additional revenue, something all the carriers desire as cell phone call prices continue to fall. Rival Verizon, the No. 2 U.S. carrier, already offers broadcast mobile TV through V-Cast.

I’m still shaking my head over this one. Motorola, one of the stalwarts of the mobile communications industry, will split into two publicly traded companies in 2009, one for its profitable infrastructure equipment, the other for its not-so-profitable mobile handsets.

How did this happen?

And what does it mean for the mobile industry?

I’ll let Wall Street debate the finer details of how Motorola’s crash-and-burn happened, but it comes as no surprise. I’ve been watching Motorola lose its grip in the mobile industry for almost three years, since the heady days of the Razr.

Back in 2005, Motorola introduced the Razr as an exclusive fashion phone costing $600 with a service plan, $800 without — and people complained that Apple’s iPhone was too expensive at its introduction. Like the iPhone, the Razr was the must-have geek toy of its time.

In 2006, however, Motorola allowed the Razr to enter the mass market as a mid-price (then super-cheap) phone, which lessened its must-have coolness and social impact. It seemed every snot-nosed kid at the mall had a Razr stuffed in a back pocket.

The jockeying for position is over. It’s time for the U.S. carriers, the world’s handset manufacturers, and third-party application developers to innovate the mobile wireless future.

Today the U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced that the big winners in the 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction were, indeed, Verizon and AT&T, the two biggest players in the industry.

Verizon won the coveted C-block for $4.74 billion, besting Google’s bid of $4.71 billion. Going into the spectrum bid, which began at the end of January, many industry followers had hoped that Google would take its bid seriously as a way to shake up a stagnant industry.

Google committed to bidding the minimum of $4.66 billion, which triggered a rule that the winner of the 700 MHz C-block spectrum would have to open its network to any device, any application. Just by bidding, Google dictated the new rules of the game — rules that Verizon must now follow.

AT&T won 227 regional licenses around the U.S. Those licenses, along with the piece of the 700 MHz puzzle it already owned, allows AT&T to further enhance the quality and reliability of its existing network and wireless broadband.

“It means that the two big guys just got much bigger,” Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus, told Reuters.

It also means that the jockeying for position is now officially over. The remainder of 2008 will be for the carriers, handset manufacturers, and application developers to introduce their initial products — and you can bet these will be far from perfect. There will be missteps, misfirings, false starts, claims of so-and-so being unfair, buggy software, crappy hardware, and disappointment, but these are the growing pains of an industry in transition

2009 is still the Year of Wireless.

For now, with the auction over, here’s how the U.S. wireless industry shapes up for the remainder of 2008.

I know you can’t wait — it’s better than who is going to make it to the Final Four. OK, not really, but the largest and most lucrative wireless spectrum auction in U.S. history ended today, and we’ll know within 10 days who won the coveted C-block.

Presumably it’s Verizon, the No. 2 U.S. carrier, and not “telecom” upstart Google, but who knows? Maybe there is a surprise or two in the final results. Or not.

Even so, the auction will bring in $19.5 billion for the Federal Communications Commission, with $4.744 coming from the C-block winner. The winner can claim its prize within the year and start building that super-duper, next-gen, open-access wireless network we’ve been hearing about.

All in all, the event took 38 days to complete with 261 rounds of bidding. For a blow-by-blow account, see RCR Wireless News.