Supposedly Jobs Was Eager to Dump AT&T as the Exclusive iPhone Carrier

[dgstorm]

For folks who would rather not remember the dark ages of mobile when AT&T was the exclusive carrier for the iPhone, you might be intrigued to learn that Steve Jobs himself was also unhappy about it at that time. According to author Fred Vogelstein in his new book Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution, Jobs was just as frustrated with AT&T's slow network rollout as their customers of the time were, and was itching to bring the phone to other carriers.

Apparently, Jobs even considered breaking the exclusivity agreement with the company over a dozen times. Here's a quote with more of the details,

“Jobs had been leaning on AT&T executives to speed up its network upgrades since the iPhone had launched in 2007,” Vogelstein writes. “But he had limited leverage until the start of 2011, when the exclusivity period with AT&T expired and Verizon could also offer the iPhone.”

Things got so bad that Jobs apparently considered breaking Apple’s exclusivity agreement “more than half a dozen times” but each time concluded that switching to Verizon may not have been the cure-all he hoped for because Verizon radios tended to create problems with battery life and because he wasn’t sure Verizon’s network was appreciably better than AT&T’s at handling large amounts of data.

Share your experiences during those days and let us know which carrier you currently are using the iPhone with.

Source: BGR

 

[njcellgeek74]

I am on T-Mobile and have been for almost a decade. When the iPhone was strictly an AT&T phone, it was disheartening because even though I really wanted one, I wasn't jumping ship for it. Finally, regardless of carrier, we can all benefit from iPhone ownership. Jobs probably saw things the way I do. When you limit yourself that far down, you're shooting yourself in the foot. A lot of people switched but twice as many didn't, therefore Apple wasn't getting into the hands of as many consumers as they are now sans exclusivity.