Hoping Apple Allows iPhone Wifi Without Cellular Service

John Guidon, the CEO of Row 44, is a big Apple fan, he tells

me, and would love to be talking to Cupertino about the iPhone problem. He’s

responding to my

blog entry last night, when I wrote that

I hope that Guidon is talking to Apple: he says that passengers can surf

the web on their iPhones – but it seems that they’ll only be allowed

to do so, under current regulations, if Apple allows users to turn off the

cellular capability while still using the wifi functionality. At the moment,

that’s not possible.

The way I see it, the problem is one of economics, not technology. Apple is

very keen that people not use the iPhone as a video iPod with wifi

capabilities – a competitor, if you will, to the Nokia

N800. The reason is that Apple is getting paid a lot of money by AT&T

rumors

put the total at somewhere in the $300 per phone range, over the course of two

years. And AT&T isn’t going to want to pay Apple lots of money if the devices

aren’t used as phones.

But the problem should not be insurmountable, all the same. Apple can still

require iPhone buyers to enter into a 2-year contract with Apple, at a minimum

cost of $60 per month, before the unit works at all. Once they’ve done that,

they should be able to turn off the cellphone capabilities of their phone when

they’re airborne – or when they’re roaming

internationally. Or just when they want to be able to surf the web without

necessarily being contactable by anybody with their cellphone number.

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