Though it’s touted as a piloting project with potential chances of canceling, the CEO Tim Cook is seen interested in the project and considering it as a top priority.
The Team
Currently, a group of dozen is said to be on this secretive project, with all of them coming from diverse fields as satellite, antenna designing, and aerospace industries. Engineers as Michael Trela and John Fenwick are said to be leading this project within the campus. These both have previously led Skybox Imaging (a satellite imaging firm) and sold it Google in 2014. Later, they’ve worked for Google’s spacecraft and satellite operations for a while and grabbed by Apple in 2017. Names as Matt Ettus (worked in wireless networking equipment), Ashley Moore Williams (specializes in communication satellites) and Daniel Ellis (worked for Netflix and specializes in the content delivery network) are in the team. This bunch is striving hard to produce the desired results in the next five years.
But Why?
As there is no official announcement of this project yet, it’s reasonable to assume the purpose of this to reduce the reliance on current carriers. Further, reports are that Apple’s trying to bunk the carriers for beaming the data services directly into their iPhones in further. This could help the company to create a closed ecosystem and pass any updates easier and quicker. Another assumption is to improve the maps service. This is to make the location tracking more precise and great. As of now, it’s unclear whether the company would be using hardware of networking equipment from other makers as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc, or trying to build everything from scratch. Whatever it is, as long as Tim Cook is spending billions of dollars each year in the Research Wing of the firm, technologies as such would be tried.
