Apple and future of the iPhone

When Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone in 2007, during his famous Macworld keynote presentation, he really wanted and desired to control or replace wireless carriers along with the introduction of his revolutionary hardware. He spoke personally to several leaders in the wireless industry to include John Stanton, former CEO of VoiceStream Wireless, where Jobs fantasized about creating a carrier using Wi-Fi networks. Unfortunately, a "green" Wi-Fi carrier technology wasn’t present at the time and buying a big traditional carrier such as T-Mobile or Sprint, offers extremely complex and counterproductive issues, even today. I suggest that Apple should merge with Bandwidth.com, who owns a subsidiary organization pioneering in hybrid wireless service, Republic Wireless.

Republic Wireless offers one smart phone, the LG Optimus, which provides unlimited voice, text and data for only $19 per month and amazingly with no contract. They are able to provide this revolutionary service at such a low price through a technology patented hybrid calling, you'll hear that terminology a lot in the coming years. It’s extremely efficient by using Wi-Fi as its primary carrier and switching to a cellular network in the absence of internet, courtesy of a contract between Sprint and Republic. Sounds too good to be true but in this case it’s not with one exception, if you overuse the cellular minutes, they might ask you to move to a traditional cell phone company.

Apple should strike immediately as this is in line with their late CEO’s vision and will without a doubt, revolutionize the wireless carrier industry. Furthermore, Bandwidth.com currently is the power and technology that supports dashboard emergency services for VoIP companies such as Vonage, Skype and Pandora. Bandwidth.com is a private company founded in 1999 and while the most current financials are unavailable, I estimate an acquisition cost of $200M based on the company raising $20.47M in private placement in the past 12 months. Furthermore, Apple maintains no debt, which is not nearly an efficient financial position to be in with the amount of money they're sitting on, therefore my recommendation is they finance an acquisition using debt as their primary source of capital.