“I can think of a few reasons that Apple would be tempted to launch its own mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), but the overriding one is philosophical,” Dan Moren writes for Macworld. “Apple’s a company that notoriously likes to control everything related to its business. In its earliest days, that meant creating both hardware and software to form an integrated whole, but in recent years, that’s increasingly meant the whole shebang. A to Z. Soup to nuts.”
“Controlling the network would open up a lot of possibilities for Apple. They’ve been down this road before with technologies like iMessage. Sure, the iPhone could receive and send text and multimedia messages before iMessage’s launch, but by bringing the feature under its own control, Apple could develop features not supported by SMS: delivery and read receipts, audio messages, and so on,” Moren writes. “An Apple network could, for example, rely entirely on data, routing voice calls over FaceTime Audio by default. This is the kind of thing that raises the ire of those who believe everything in technology should be an interoperable open standard, but it’s also the experience that Apple’s customers seek out.”
Much more, pro and con, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nope. It’d be, as Steve Jobs might say, “a bag of hurt.” A can of worms. Too much downside for not enough upside.