On Nov. 5, 2007, Google announced the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of dozens of technology and mobile telephone companies, including Intel Corporation, Motorola, Inc., NVIDIA Corporation, Texas Instruments Incorporated, LG Electronics, Inc., Samsung Electronics, Sprint Nextel Corporation, and T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom). The consortium was created in order to develop and promote Android as a free open source operating system with support for third-party applications. Android-based phones require the latest third-generation (3G) wireless networks in order to take full advantage of all of the system's “smartphone” features, such as one-touch Google searches, Google Docs (e.g., word editors, spreadsheets), Google Earth (satellite mapping software), and Google Street Views (a local mapping service).