According to wireless guru John Stanton, he and Steve Jobs repeatedly discussed the feasibility of creating a “synthetic carrier” over Wi-Fi connections — thereby squeezing out AT&T — between 2005 and 2007.
Stanton didn’t elaborate on why he abandoned the idea, though I’d guess it’s because Jobs figured out how to get Sprint to give him $US15.5 billion for the right to sell iPhones.
Further analysis is available at Computerworld.
Mark
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 12:12 PMthey are getiong the best of both worlds, imessage has already lowered sms income, how long before we see italk, free automatic phone calls between iphones?
Fred
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 1:38 PMYou mean like Facetime…??
Mark
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 3:08 PMan automatic voice version of facetime, that works on 3g
InformedGamer
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 3:10 PMI’d assume you’d want iTalk to actually work though… Facetime is a gimmick and hasn’t worked since the iphone 4 was released. I’m yet to get facetime to work.
Sort of makes me laugh at apple’s slogan “It just works”
iMessage is kind of useless. Unlimited caps have become normal, which means you get unlimited talk and text, however your data (which iMessage uses) is still limited.
david
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 9:53 PMBut the point is unlimited message caps become meaningless to the end user. Something that was important a year ago is now worthless. The same thing will happen with voice calls. At some point end users are going to say “all I need is a data plan thanks”, or I only need “3gb per month and I’ll pay for calls as I use them”
I currently pay 69.95 per month for $350 worth of calls and 3gb data with Telstra…My next contract will see me keep the 3gb but drop the voice component.
Sprae
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 9:50 AMBS. I use Facetime 3-4 times a week to talk to my oversea parents and show them their grandchild. 90% of the time it’s flawless. This has saved me loads money on international calls, let alone VC costs. More than cover the cost of iPad 2 for both parties.