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Jobs reportedly couldn’t wait to dump AT&T as sole iPhone carrier

Published Nov 18th, 2013 10:30AM EST
AT&T iPhone Exclusivity Steve Jobs

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Early iPhone users weren’t the only ones who wanted Apple to expand the iPhone’s reach beyond AT&T. Per Reuters, author Fred Vogelstein claims in his new book Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution that late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was positively itching to bring the iPhone to more carriers after feeling frustrated by AT&T’s purportedly slow progress in improving its data network.

“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.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.