Steve Jobs Wanted an iPhone-Only Wireless Network

[wraggster]

One of the more profound ways that the iPhone changed the mobile industry was the fact that it upended the relationship between the handset maker and the wireless carrier: Apple sells many of its phones directly to customers, and in general has much more of an upper hand with carriers than most phone manufacturers. But venture capitalist John Stanton, who was friends with Steve Jobs in the years when the iPhone was in development, said the Apple CEO's initial vision was even more radical: he wanted Apple to build its own wireless network using unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum (http://www.itworld.com/networking/224375/stanton-jobs-wanted-own-network-unlicensed-spectrum), thus bypassing the carriers altogether.
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/11/15/2155202/steve-jobs-wanted-an-iphone-only-wireless-network