Steve Jobs Had a Dream: Free Wi-Fi by Everyone, For Everyone

Wi-Fi is fast and nearly ubiquitous in smart devices, but its range means that its use is very limited. Most people have passwords on their Wi-Fi networks to prevent strangers from hacking into their hardware, or worse, using their network to carry out illegal activities online. But Apple co-founder Steve Jobs dreamed of a future where Wi-Fi was free for everyone.

Walt Mossberg, reputed technology journalist who gained prominence for his Personal Technology column in the Wall Street Journal, which ran from 1991 until his departure from the newspaper in 2013, is one of the journalists who had the opportunity to have some long conversations with Jobs.

In a column on Re/code on Monday, Mossberg wrote that Jobs was frustrated by the fact that the iPhone could show a list of Wi-Fi networks nearby, but wouldn't be able to use them to access the Internet, because of passwords on the networks. Jobs, Mossberg writes, wanted to resolve this issue.

His idea was to get as many wireless router makers as possible to build in a "guest network" option - essentially a second Wi-Fi network, securely walled off from the rest of the home network, and with its own name. Then, he hoped that the industry would encourage people to share their bandwidth with strangers via these guest networks. That way, a smartphone user could walk around, moving from one Wi-Fi hotspot to another, without logging in - much like people using cellular data move from one cell tower to another.

According to Mossberg, while Jobs understood the need for security, the late Apple co-founder "was determined to figure out a way to make free, safe, Wi-Fi sharing from homes and small local businesses not only possible, but common". In fact, this was not just some personal goal, but Jobs wanted to "get other companies involved, in a sort of consortium, to make this happen."

If Steve Jobs made any progress on the matter it isn't clear, as this is something that wasn't in the public domain until Tuesday.Having said that, it's interesting to see Jobs who is so closely identified with closed, premium ecosystems, wanted to build something "free and open."

As Mossberg points out, many routers today do in fact come with a guest network feature, but it's something you have to turn on yourself, and that requires a little tech savvyness to do, which is why most people don't enable the option, or protect it with a different password from their main network.

A network of Wi-Fi hotspots along the lines that Mossberg describes Jobs envisioning is probably a pipe dream - it would require far too many entities to work together and as cellular networks improve, the need for such a network is also slowly reducing.

In a country like India, it makes even less sense, since the law requires Internet providers including cyber cafes to log the identities of all users. A workaround would be a device based identifier, that works a little like a SIM card, so that the network you're using would always be tracked, but otherwise, needing to constantly log-in with your phone number (or a user ID) each time you move between networks would be cumbersome, and unfeasible.