Google has today filed a patent application for technology that lets a mobile phone automatically detect the cheapest wi-fi, WiMax or cellular plan in any given location.

The idea is that rather than being tied to a single phone company or ISP plan, your cellphone and automatically pick-and-mix from the cheapest connection options as you move around.

Ironically, the first Google Android-powered phone, the G1, is locked to T-Mobile’s network – one of the device’s many elements being criticised in the first wave or often negative reviews.

That’s only natural. T-Mobile and wireless internet providers won’t be very open to such technology.

But if Google sets up its own broadband infrastructure, that should help kick things along.

To wit, last year, the company took part in a multibillion dollar US government spectrum auction. It was ultimately outbid by traditional telcos AT&T and Verizon, but did gain a government assurance that the winners could not block Google from buying bandwidth on their networks. Google has also invested $US500 million in a WiMax network being built by Telecom New Zealand’s key technology partner, Sprint.

Google’s patent is called “Flexible Communication Systems and Methods” and the abstract says:

“A method of initiating a telecommunication session for a communication device include submitting to one or more telecommunication carriers a proposal for a telecommunication session, receiving from at least one of the one or more of telecommunication carriers a bid to carry the telecommunications session, and automatically selecting one of the telecommunications carriers from the carriers submitting a bid, and initiating the telecommunication session through the selected telecommunication carrier.”

Read the full patent here.