“There are four reasons that Apple may eventually launch a Wireless ISP subsidiary,” Phil Leigh writes for Inside Digital Media.
“First, the market for Apple’s portable hardware cannot achieve full potential without significant improvement in Wireless Internet access,” Leigh writes. “The exceptional iPhone and iPad successes are forever changing user expectations about network connectivity.”
“Second, regulatory roadblocks commonly employed by FCC-licensed incumbents cannot prevent Apple from entering the market because Wireless ISPs typically utilize unlicensed frequencies,” Leigh writes. “Third, Apple can adequately finance mesh Wi-Fi networks capable of transforming wireless Internet connectivity — within population centers — into a semblance of an ever-present universal access field.”
Leigh writes, “Fourth, historical examples suggest technological leaders might naturally evolve in such a manner.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Opportun” for the heads up.]
I’m going to have to invoke Betteridge’s Law of Headlines here…
Interesting, but knowing this made me cringe when I read this headline: Now That Bin Laden Is Dead, Can We Have Our Freedoms Back?
Thanks for that. Just imagine the Pandora’s Box of having to do this in every country.
A ignorant fool’s speaking. This Leigh has no clue how telecom industry operated. He is talking out of his rear.
Apple is a product company, not a services company. I hope that they stay out of the litigated mess that is telecommunication.
No.
Why not?
Under the current stupidity, if you live outside the USA and visit the USA with your iPad, you AT&T will not sell you a SIM card to use while you visit. The whole point of an iPad us to have a mobile flexible device that works anywhere.
Absolutely. Apple’s future is in cloud computing for delivering content. With wired and wireless ISPs already capping data usage there is NO WAY Apple is going to let its future be dependent on third parties. They have always provided an end to end user experience and becoming a wireless ISP is the natural end to their current strategy.
Very interesting topic here… It WOULD be nice to have a new ISP that is pro-consumer. If Apple had the capability to tackle this dilemma, it would be great… can’t go any further with this sort of speculation, lol!
Who really knows? No fortune teller crystal ball here.
I think the idea behind the company Clear or Clearwire is sound but it’s takes money and big thinking. Maybe something can be done to get them away from their current partner and show them the Apple way.
ClearWire/Clear sucks. They have oversold their capacity.
Their original intent was to be an ISP for old-school mobile devices. To get subscribers, they sold it as a home service, which is crushing them. Add high traffic Apple devices (think what they did to ATT) and they will completely and utterly fail.
Not to mention that the company is broke and has filed paperwork with the SEC that they might be out of business by the end of this year.
Sprint holds a majority position in Clear (Clearwire). Sprint can be bought for $15B. That would give Apple instant infrastructure and licensed frequencies to reach about 60% of the people on earth with WiMax service. WiMax is 30% faster than LTE and uses bandwidth more efficiently. It has a maximum range of 30 miles versus WiFi’s hundreds of feet.
Apple will not let the current gatekeepers throttle its business. They will disrupt the cable/satellite/phone ISPs just as they have everyone else who got in their way.
Apple take on that customer service nightmare? I truly doubt it.
Not if they only allowed Apple devices on the network. The mesh network is entirely installed on vendor premises, the user devices just connect. For a fee, of course. WiFi services can completely obliterate cell phones. Apple showed us how with FaceTime. Customer service will be about as hard as iTMS or the App Store.
Then we will see the iPhone nano, a mobile hot spot with in-built cellular capability and Apple acting as an MVNO. Bang. ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint have only one customer with a very strong bargaining position and a big pile of chips. This capability will be for those areas where population density won’t support a full-up mesh.
Well, I can dream, can’t I?
Uh, no. This sounds like a great idea: Just set up the Wi-Fi centers and BOOM! instant network.
Sorry, there are WAY too many hurdles to overcome. Leased space/negotiations. Maintenance/installations. Having enough centers to provide service w/o dropped connections, handoffs to other centers as you’re moving, etc.
If becoming a wireless ISP were so simple and easy, AT&T would have done it long ago. After all, it has a large network of Wi-Fi hotspots. And yet nothing.
Finally, there will be no iPhone nano. It just makes no sense whatsoever because you lose all the benefits of a touchscreen when you shrink it down much smaller than the current iPhone. The current iPod nano’s screen is nice, but very limited use.
I disagree.
There is every reason why an iPhone Nano could work. It’s less about the hardware and more about the apps. A 2-inch screen, limited memory and smaller feature set would do it. That kind of spec could define a device that could win over many feature phone users. Once in the ecosystem mill, they would want to upgrade. Good for customers. Good for Apple futures. The iPad demonstrates that Apple can do great tech at an astonishing price point. Or have we forgotten that the world and his uncle fully expected iPad 1 to launch at around $1,000 last year?
Since we have neither cell phone service nor high-speed internet where I live, I’d welcome Apple’s offering. Chances are they’d never get to my neighborhood either, so I guess I don’t care one way or the other.
I’ve been saying that they will be doing this since the original iPhone came out. It was probably delayed 1-2 years just to get a carrier to agree to Their terms (AT&T only till 2011?). Though not nationwide, a purchase of clearwire combined with a voip solution (think FaceTime or some voice only variant such as skype) would be a iTunes type model (no significant revenue stream but pushing sales of devices) ala mobile me plan at $299/yr??? That could wipe out in one fell swoop all cell carriers (grow the infrastructure as money comes in), isp’s (not just your mobile devices), and pc competitors as you would not be eligible for oTA WLAN without osx.
It will happen, the 4g just isn’t built out enough for the outright purchase by apple.
Yes
why not just buy tmobile then?
I vaguely recall Cringely predicted this about 5 years ago. Something along the lines of some retailer with lots of storefronts, but a declining business using them to create a wireless network, as wireless tech improves range. I think the store he was talking about was Blockbuster. It was starting to die, and needed a new business model.
He was talking about WalMart using their backbone and tech expertise to do this. So far, nadda…
He was talking about Starbuck’s. Pretty sure.
Think about the requirement to do this in every country Apple wants to sell products in, and it looks more and more like a snake pit.
Apple would rather create the demand for cheap bandwidth and count on the marketplace to provide it. It will work in the long run but there will be bumps in the road
Norm Dwyer raises an interesting point. If Apple were to seriously entertain this, I think it would have nothing to do with cellular networks as we know them today, however. 3G and even 4G are the equivalent of an early 1950 black and white TV signal. I doubt that when the 3G specs were envisioned by the telco industry that they had a clue of the bandwidth demands brought about by the iPhone.
With the FCC spectrum auctions taking a swath of the old analog TV bandwidth space, I understand that such frequencies would allow for a significant advance in making wireless Internet dramatically faster, more reliable and more pervasive. Concrete walls would no longer be an impediment to a cellular signal, and a future replacement to what we consider WiFi today would be entirely different.
My point is that I don’t think that Apple wants to get into the cellular business as we know it today. If the company were to go in this strategic direction, it would be like Apple to change the game entirely, and use a real next generation technology and bandwidth.
I remember as a kid having to adjust the rabbit ears on an old black and white TV for my parents as they screamed at me so they could watch Ed Sullivan and some idiot spinning plates atop tall sticks. Later, I was sent to the roof of our house to do the same thing with our old TV antenna. That was so yesterday. It’s the equivalent of where we are right now with 3G and 4G cellular networks.
Absurd? You bet. And I have a hunch that a few to several years from now, that this will start to change radically. Only then would Apple consider getting serious along these lines if it makes business sense.
It’s not really so “yesterday” as I still have to futz daily with my small indoor antenna to get my over-the-air HDTV broadcasts.
Maybe this is the reason for the giant warchest of $$$.
Brian elaborated on my original point nicely. I don’t see Apple recreating or entering snakepit that is cellular networks. It will be a next gen technology that will make cellular networks pointless. This might sound pie in the sky, but this is what Apple does and has done, time and time again.
I wonder how many wi-fi base stations 10 billion dollars would buy. Pocket change to Apple.
I wonder if satellite would be a part of the solution, along with Apple stores and other transmission sites. This could be some of the reason that Apple has been accumulating cash.
Perhaps centered around the NC site.
Talk about another disrupted industry.
That would blow everything out of the water.
I think Apple could pull it off.
A couple of years ago, it occurred to me that if Apple would only buy/make/launch a low-orbiting satellite(s) with their stockpile of cash, they could not only be a wireless ISP, but their own telecom company. I’m with on this Applesmack, it would be a worldwide gamechanger and stick it to AT&T and others!
A virtual ISP- wired & wireless.
Negotiate access via Comcast, TWC, Cox, SuddenLink, Cablevision, AT&T, Verizon, & Sprint-Nextel.
Sell a package based upon data cap/month rate.
It’s doable & Apple has the $ & clout to make it happen.
It makes a bunch more sense than building tv’s or getting into the content aspect (not a zero sum business). Obviously they can’t cover the whole planet at once, but there are areas where Ota 4g is equivalent to home dsl or cable service. You’d have to cap both Mbps and possibly total dl limits to keep out 24/7 torrenters, but I think apple could do at a reasonable rate (ie fast enough to stream and enough to cover 3-4 hours hd streaming per day).
The ‘dumb pipe’ is the most logical aspect for apple to be in to insure that it’s customers get the services that they create and not be hampered by the isp’s (both cell and landline) and maintain in an iTunes model of little profit but drives sales.
This limiting factor (I am in Germany and don’t even have visual voicemail on iphone 4 through o2!) is growing by unlimited no longer being unlimited and is getting in the way of what apple is trying to do. This IS where that cash (some of it anyway) WILL go – iCal it for 2 years max!
buy comcast they suck. Apple can make them better.
Yes! Do it! Now!
See Lightsquared, a new cellular provider with a hybrid, tower/geo-stationary satellite cellular network coming to the U.S. this fall. LightSquared is building a state-of-the-art open wireless broadband network to offer network capacity on a wholesale-only basis to business partners. Apple could partner with such a company to provide its own broadband service.
http://www.lightsquared.com/
Google Lightsquared. It is developing a hybrid broadband network that utilizes cell towers with a geostationary satellite to be parked above the U.S. and it will be selling bandwidth to business partners. Apple could use this technology. The satellite is already launched and the beginnings of the network should be ready this fall.
….where the puck is going, not where it is!
Sorry about the double posting of info above. I thought the first post got lost. Apparently Lightsquared already has asked for — and received — an FCC waiver that will allow the company to launch with a terrestrial-based network only. I think I read it has one satellite launched, but that it cannot meet the coverage requirements within the original time period specified by the FCC license It will be a 4G LTE network and the business plan is still to lease bandwidth to partners though.
Sign me up. Anything would be better than the money-grubbing scumbags we have to deal with today.
I absolutely agree that Lightsquared could be a viable way for Apple to provide customers with wireless broadband nationwide in the US. I truly hope they are in discussions for just such a a roll out. Lightsquared will be fully operational this year, and so will the Apple data center in NC be. A marriage made in heaven so to speak.
I’ve thought for awhile that LTE-Advanced is the tipping point. Wireless becomes completely data, with voice as just another service. I think the incumbents can be beaten, as they have too much history with the old ways of doing things. I think Apple has enough cash and are bold enough to use it to buy up the early supplies of LTE-Advanced handset chips and base stations. I suspect there are plenty of ways to get tower space. They can readily point to the difficulties AT&T and Verizon have had keeping up with bandwidth demands, as a supporting argument to the regulators. The target rates of 1Gbps to fixed endpoints and 100Mbps to handsets in motion can deliver video services as well, or better than, cable & satellite TV. Data over satellite is no good for interactive services since the latency is so high, but may have a role for streaming content. It could be a bet with a trillion dollar payoff ($100B per year for 10 years). They’ll only do it if they can do it right, but imagine that service – “it just works”!