Steve Jobs’s legacy on the mobile industry is uncontested, but instead of just changing the balance of power between handset makers and the carriers, Jobs’s original vision was even more revolutionary: he wanted Apple to become a carrier using unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum.
According to venture capitalist and wireless industry legend John Stanton, “[Steve Jobs] wanted to replace carriers” from 2005 to around 2007.
“He and I spent a lot of time talking about whether synthetically you could create a carrier using Wi-Fi spectrum. That was part of his vision.”
This obsession with replacing carriers lasted until 2007, when he abandoned the idea of Apple figuring out a way to harness unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum into a carrier of its own. But imagine what a different world we all could have been living in if Jobs had succeeded.
[via MacWorld]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
32 responses to “Steve Jobs Once Wanted To Turn Apple Into A Carrier And Use The iPhone To Destroy At&T”
i was just telling my wife that apple should just be their own carrier and isp a couple of days ago – jinx! if only this would come to fruition….
If only yoiu could do this with satellites
from space then Apple would be able to worldwide instead of using towers on the ground.
80 billion dollars says they have not completely ruled it out.
All this Apple technology will lead, undoubtedly, to their version of the Wardenclyffe Tower for wireless world transmission. It’s sweet that a company that controls the whole widget will pretty much be the only one capable of implementing Nikola Tesla’s World Wireless System concept.
Apple being their own carrier will, without a doubt, happen. Given that everyone seems to hate their carrier, whatever network or country they’re on, seems perfect for Apple’s notoriously ‘disruptive’ influence, getting rid of the bad and replacing it with the good. Still can’t believe they haven’t gone in like a raging bull on NFC technology, given that they’ve got half the world’s iTunes account details linked to credit cards. I wouldn’t have thought that would even be *that* difficult.
A Wifi only carrier?….wow that would blow hard!
Sattelite communication requires much more power than WIFi or 4G networks, maybe when batteries will last for years.
My dream too! Get rid of the thieves all over the world
More power than ordinary satellites?
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I really dont understand where the “destroy at&t” is coming from. In the whole excerpt there is no mention of one specific “target”. Secondly in the first iphone keynote the then CEO of cingular said that he had met with Steve 2 years before that keynote. So did he really abandon his desire to be a carrier in 2007? Partial quoting as is the case in this article just brings terrible misinterpretation. I do believe Steves desire to be his own carrier but I do not like the way Brownlee twisted everything up.
He means more power for the phones to communicate to distant satellites. See those giant antennas on the Iridium phones?
Bill Gates spent most of the 90’s attempting this and lost billions of dollars. In the end, they couldn’t launch enough satellites and the company folded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…
Considering Apple have taken out patents on advanced solar panel layering methods (it appears that they are working on making the touchscreen, or a layer underneath it, function as a solar panel. at first they took out patents for the regular idea, of a MacBookPro which would be able to charge via solar panels at the back of the screen, now it seems they are already patenting actual manufacturing/layering designs/methods for them.
Future iDevices will be able to charge themselves via these types of improvements.. That is not all, however. Apple have also taken out patents on advanced hydrogen fuel cell related designs, liquid metal know-how and actual multi-cell fuel cell tech.
When I think that Apple are going to eventually roll out a combined form of a solar panel / hydrogen fuel cell, which will be ultra-compact and integrated in the way only Apple knows how to do, I can’t wait to see what their Geo Team are working on!
They’re probably still working on it.
Tried to kill off AT&T? In 2007, AT&T was bought by Cingular which was owned by SBC. Prior to Cingular buying AT&T, AT&T sucked. So I suppose it makes sense and it makes sense that Jobs dropped it once AT&T was bought by Cingular.