The aim of Apple has always been to conquer all. They are the biggest technology company in the world and are richer than the US government. But that didn’t stop ex-CEO Steve Jobs wanting more.
Jobs was always looking to the future, which is shown in the patents that Apple own for example. There are thousands of them that don’t and never will get used, but the ideas were secured for the future, for that ‘just in case’ moment.
This was again true with Jobs’ idea of using the WiFi spectrum as a carrier, thus bypassing the need for a mobile network and keeping everything in-house. In a way you could call Steve Jobs a bit of a hoarder, wanting everything for himself and Apple, but on the other hand the idea could be genius.
During the Law Seminars International event in Seattle on Tuesday, John Stanton, Chairman of Trilogy Partners, said he spoke frequently with Jobs about his dream to create a wireless network owned and ran by Apple. “He wanted to replace carriers,” Stanton explained. “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” Stanton added, noting that he worked with Steve Jobs from 2005 through 2007.
Jobs wanted to take advantage of unlicensed spectrum that Wi-Fi networks use, something that no other carrier does, although it is unclear how advanced his plans or intentions for such a project were. Jobs reportedly came up with the idea in 2007 and four years later, the iPhone is now available on three major U.S. wireless carriers and one regional carrier. And that’s only in the US, not including worldwide availability. Stanton was the former head of Voicestream before it became T-Mobile, and he also worked for McCaw Cellular, which later became AT&T.
Should Apple still be looking at this type of network, or are the happy using the carriers they have selected?
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