Skip to main content

Before iPhone, Jobs wanted to create Apple’s own network using Wi-Fi

steve-jobs-holding-iphone-4-smileApparently, back in the iPhone’s early planning days before the 2007 launch, Steve Jobs thought it might be a good idea to bypass wireless carriers like AT&T and create Apple’s own network. According to industry legend John Stanton, Jobs wanted to create a network using the unlicensed spectrum used by Wi-Fi.

“He wanted to replace carriers,” Stanton said at the Monday Law Seminars International event in Seattle, according to IDG. “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, presently chairman at venture capital firm Trilogy Partners, has had a long history with wireless carriers. He was formerly the head of what later on became T-mobile; he was an early investor in the company responsible for the Sidekick and also Android; he was an early investor in RIM, and he was the first employee to work at AT&T’s early form, McCaw Cellular.

The wireless industry veteran says he spent much time with Jobs from 2005-2007. Jobs’ idea to replace these carriers completely was nixed in 2007 when the Apple founder just gave up on the idea.

Apple ended up signing a deal with AT&T, and recently broadened its U.S. carrier range to Verizon and Sprint. However, Stanton said that Apple’s iPhone had a big impact on how business was done with the carriers. Apple paved the way for other companies, such as Google with Android, to gain revenue from software and services which could have been captured by AT&T. Thanks to Jobs, carriers don’t backseat develop anymore, and must be satisfied with simply selling the devices.

“If I were a carrier, I’d be concerned about the dramatic shift in power that occurred,” Stanton said.

Jeff Hughes
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I'm a SF Bay Area-based writer/ninja that loves anything geek, tech, comic, social media or gaming-related.
Apple has just fixed one of the weirder iPhone bugs
The Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max's camera module.

Apple has squashed a bug on the iPhone and iPad that caused deleted photos to reappear on the devices.

As smartphone bugs go, this was surely one of the more bizarre ones. Reports of the strange issue began to surface following Apple’s rollout of iOS 17.5 last week.

Read more
Apple may release a completely new type of iPhone in 2025
iPhone 15 Pro Max laying outside in a park.

The iPhone 16 isn’t even out yet, but that hasn’t stopped rumors about the iPhone 17 from swirling already. One of the latest comes from The Information, and it claims that a thinner iPhone 17 may be released in 2025 as a completely new addition to the lineup. It’s reported to be code-named D23 internally, and it’s expected to be a major redesign — potentially as big of a redesign as the iPhone X was in 2017.

The main changes for the D23 iPhone are a very thin body and a smaller cutout in the display. There’s also some talk that Apple may replace the Dynamic Island with a pinhole cutout, and we may see that as soon as the anticipated iPhone 16 launch this fall. Other changes might include moving the rear camera from the upper-left corner to the top center. The screen could fall somewhere between the 6.1 inches of the iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9 inches of the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Read more
How to connect an iPhone to a Mac with or without a cable
An iPhone being used on a MacBook as a webcam thanks to Apple's Continuity Camera feature in macOS Ventura.

When you connect your iPhone to your Mac computer, you’ll be able to access several features and settings. Whether you’d like to upload or offload media from your Mac to your iOS device, or you’d like to download a firmware update for your iPhone, you’ll be able to do so by connecting your smartphone to your Mac with a Lightning or USB-C cable. You can also link your iPhone to your Mac wirelessly, and our guide will provide you with detailed instructions for both wired and wireless connection methods.

Here’s a guide on how to connect your device to a Mac, with or without a USB-C or Lightning cable attached.

Read more