The U.S. Wireless Wall is crumbling. This time next year, the wall may have fallen.

Metaphorically, the Wireless Wall is not unlike the Berlin Wall, which separated East Berlin and West Berlin from 1961 until 1989. Only in the U.S. wireless industry, the Wall separates the protect-their-turf carriers from the we-want-freedom consumers.

There’s been a steady assault on the Wireless Wall this year; it’s cracked but not fallen. Yet. The latest blow comes from the No. 2 U.S. carrier, Verizon Wireless, which plans to support the Google-led Open Handset Alliance and its new, open-source software platform Android. Together OHA and Android seek openness that will allow any phone and any application to be used on any network.

Now that Google has jumped into the deep end of the pool, what are its plans for the upcoming wireless spectrum auction? Is Google playing to win? Is this a bluff? Do we as consumers want Google to win? Should we care?

As expected, Google made it official today: It will bid on the “C Block” 700 MHz spectrum offered by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The bids, expected to go as high as $4.6 billion, begin January 24, followed by a series of bidding rounds. An end — and answers to many questions — may not come until March.

Google’s plans for the auction are outlined in its official blog, although the company doesn’t give us much insight into its strategy. Some bloggers, including Om Malik, rightly ask if Google is in the auction to win. As Om points out, part of Google Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt’s comments didn’t sound like Google is going to fight like hell and do whatever it takes to win.

Color Verizon’s announcement today however you want: an about-face, a shocking surprise, a concession to Google and the Powers-That-Be. But the No. 2 U.S. carrier opening up its network to any phone and any software application is nothing more than Verizon counter-punching in a high-stakes heavyweight bout between the carriers, Google, the government, and consumers.

I’m glad they did it. Woopie! Fantastic! Way to go! But this should have been done years ago by a notoriously protective carrier known for its iron-fisted rule over the devices running on its network. After all, the use-whatever-device-you-want approach has been practiced for years by T-Mobile and other GSM carriers, especially outside of the U.S.

As David Farber told Wired today, “So, basically, Verizon has now joined every other carrier out there — with the exception of AT&T — in saying they will allow other devices to run on their network. They’re just saying ‘me too! me too!’ ”

Three recent posts on the Web discuss the coming of the Mobile Web. One thing we can all agree on: It’s a big deal. What we don’t agree on is this: When will it get here, and will it be what we as consumers need?

The Register recently conducted a poll of its readers with more than half believing that “always-on mobile Internet access” will become “fundamental” to how they work. Recognizing that its poll is skewed — techies read the “publication”, not my insurance-salesman neighbor — The Register nonetheless rightly notes that once availability, accessibility, traffic structures, hardware, and other issues are sorted out the Mobile Web will finally arrive.

“When the technology passes the always-on threshold,” The Register writes, “you can expect people to use it with impunity.”

Which brings me to my second bit of news.

I’m all for openness, open source, Linux, Wikipedia, the whole community. And I love the fact that Google is in partnership to develop an open mobile operating system, which in theory should lead to new and exciting innovations for our cellphones.

But I’m worried.

The product developer in me has seen this many times. A group of people get together — researchers, industrial designers, hardware engineers, software engineers, the electrical guys, marketers, number crunchers, project managers, consultants, vice presidents, parts sourcing, manufacturing, interface designers — with the sole desire to design, develop and manufacture a successful product. With any luck, that product might be an industry-changer.

Like the Google phone.

Or, as we now know it, phones developed and manufactured by others that uses the free and open-source Google mobile operating system Android. It’s that phones developed and manufactured by others that really bugs me.

Also see: The Gphone is coming; how Google could rewrite the rules

It’s clear that Google, which announced its entry into the wireless world today, is out to break the stronghold of the carriers in the U.S. to advance their own initiatives — selling mobile ads and getting their applications on as many cellphones as possible.

As expected, Google did not announce it was delivering an actual branded phone, dubbed the Gphone. Instead Google is leading a broad industry partnership known as the Open Handset Alliance and is developing an open software mobile platform known as Android. Together, Google hopes, these will deliver a new breed of handsets and greatly improve the mobile Internet experience for consumers worldwide.

“We are not building a Gphone, we are enabling 1,000 people to build a Gphone,” Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms, told The New York Times. (See also Rubin’s blog announcement.)

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive officer and chairman, said in a statement, “Our vision is that the powerful platform we’re unveiling will power thousands of different phone models,” he said.