Ask HN: chances Apple buys a cell carrier in 2011?

Apple's market is high-margin products where they can differentiate with superior design, marketing, and so on. Not low-margin commodities where they need to compete on price with everyone else.

It won't happen, the regulatory hurdles are too great. Also, maintaining physical and geographically disparate infrastructure is expensive. An infrastructure company is "bound to the land" and therefore more politically (regulatory or otherwise) vulnerable.

Being AT&T is no picnic.

But is there any company over the last 100 years you would rather have owned, aside from maybe Standard Oil? I agree with the majority of threads that it seems unlikely, for a lot of good reasons. Just might be reward for the risk going forward.

Not a chance. The moment they did this all other networks would remove the iPhone as soon as they possibly could.

Buy one in which country?

If they bought one in only one country then they don't get all that many advantages. If they buy one in every country, that's expensive and ridiculously difficult.

it would be nice, though. You know there would only be two plans: $25 limited and an unlimited plan (for who knows how much, $50? $60?)

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