Elon Musk asked Apple for 5,000 million for exclusive access to Spacex, according to The Information. They had 72 hours to answer

The iPhone have been offering emergency satellite calls Since 2022, but in reality his ambition in that field began much earlier and went much further. Now we have known that there was a peak in that project. One in which Elon Musk offered an exclusive treatment to Apple, but that the company ended up rejecting.

Exclusive access to Spacex. According to The Informationin 2022 Elon Musk learned that Apple I was going to launch a satellite connection service with iPhone 14and then contacted those responsible to make them a proposal. He offered Apple to have exclusive access to Spacex to offer satellite connectivity for 18 months if the company paid 5,000 million initial dollars. After that period, Apple could pay $ 1 billion a year for the service provided by Starlink.

You have 72 hours. Elon Musk gave Apple only 72 hours to make a decision, and in fact threatened the company with launching their own service for the iPhone that would make the competition. The tycoon played with better letters: it already had a constellation of operational satellites and the technology necessary to do precisely what Apple had projected.

Well, no. Apple ended up rejecting Musk’s offer. Of course: announced the support of SOS satellite emergency callsbut thanks to an alliance With GlobalStar. On the other hand, Elon fulfilled his threat: two weeks before the iPhone 14, Spacex were launched announced an agreement With the T-Mobile operator that allowed smartphones users to send and receive messages in areas without mobile coverage.

Project Eagle. Apple’s ambition in this area was started before. In 2015 the engineers of the company They started working in Project Eaglean initiative that would create a satellite network with thousands of satellites to provide broadband Internet not only to iPhone, but also households. It was basically Apple’s Starlink. To carry out that Apple proposal allied with Boeing, and the deployment was scheduled for 2019.

But he doesn’t want to be an operator. This project ended up canceling in 2016. In The Information it indicates how Apple spent 36 million dollars in the initial tests of Project Eagle, but there were two major problems that led to their cancellation. The first, doubts about economic viability. The second, even more important, that of fear about that launch could affect the crucial relationships that Apple maintains with telephone operators. AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile-like many others in the rest of the world-could be affected if the company offered this type of service.

Apple still does not collect emergency calls. The company continues to offer the SOS satellite emergency call service in the iPhone, but the funny thing is that Still without charging for them. Some analysts believe that Apple fears that if you charge for the service you have to be subject to government regulations that affect operators. Moreover: some employees and managers of the company begin to question the viability of the long -term project.

And meanwhile, Starlink extends its claws. What Apple prefers not to do is doing it big elon Musk. A year ago Spacex launched the First set of Starlink satellites with direct connection For smartphones. Today, the Starlink Direct To Cell constellation (DTC) is ready to start Offer LTE coverage from space. It is just an initial offer in beta phase, but still has 10 times more reach that the coverage of any other satellite operator with the same objective. Spacex’s absolute dominance is the great engine of a proposal that can make Starlink, that is already profitableeven more.

Image | Fortune Ceo Initiative | Starlink | World Economic Forum

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