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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 the networks—between 2005 and 2007. Stanton didn’t elaborate on why he abandoned the idea. Further analysis is available at Computerworld.
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I think it was not feasible with Wi-Fi but will be pretty feasible with White Spaces once we actually get them opened up. Imagine wireless networks spreading for miles. This will change how we connect even more than 4G or 5G or whatever. That is of course if they don’t decide to over-regulate it as usual or god forbid to auction the spectrum.
Isn’t WiMAX a variation of Wi-Fi designed/used for cellular mobile communication? It is based on 802.16 technology as opposed to the 802.11 that Wi-Fi uses and can cover significantly greater area.
Maybe the problem they had is that whilst back in the mid 2000s WiMAX was considered a decent 4G option, it was not as widely used as LTE. Add to that the fact that only a handful of countries were even considering WiMAX technology and it would have made the iPhone so limited in scope it would have been largely irrelevant in many regions. Personally I think we should have bth – WiMAX to replace Wi-Fi for commercial and domestic internet and LTE to replace/supplement HSDPA/HSPA for mobile data.
P.S. of course they are going to auction off the spectrum – there is no other way to distribute it – you have 4 main companies but just dishing it out to them evenly prevents any other current ‘virtual network’ from entering the race and would certainly stop a total newbie buying it up. The only thing this time is that the networks will not be as willing to pay astronomical fees for it as they haven’t seen a good enough return on their 3G networks and now recognise the actual level of investment required and that very few customers are willing/can afford to pay the high charges.
I think the initial idea of white spaces is that it would be left largely unregulated I hope that this will actually turn out to be the case. Just look at the innovation in the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi spectrums. While they are very close range frequencies, we have thousands of devices doing various things and using those spectrums. Any regulated spectrum that requires a licence to operate crushes and delays innovation. I believe that true long range free for all frequencies will enable the ‘internet of things’ that everyone is talking about now and will have a huge impact on technology.
Since this plan obviously failed he moved on to plan B, using millions of users on iPhones to crush networks. From what people on AT&T used to say on US Giz this was much more successful.