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It would be an MVNO. Maybe they plan to subsidize some of the line cost through advertising. Google could potentially have access to all network traffic for better ad targeting. As a side benefit, they could gain insights into iPhone usage behaviors.

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In my experience, MVNO's have worse service despite being on the same network as the big providers. Especially when it comes to data.

Isn't Google worried about that hurting user experience?

The biggest problem with MVNOs is that they generally only get access to lessor company's towers, and not to any roaming agreements the lessor used to augment their coverage. The most obvious example is Sprint users have coverage in Montana despite Sprint having no towers in Montana (at least a year ago when I was carrier shopping.). But if you were on Virgin Mobile who are a Sprint MVNO, you got basically zero coverage in the state.

Being on the same network doesn't mean traffic from MVNO subscribers is treated equally. When the big providers have congestion, they will apply QoS to prioritize traffic from their direct subscribers over MVNO traffic.

Curious if the new FCC rulings will put the kibosh on that, or if the MVNOs are enough of a separate entity.

Have you tried Consumer Cellular?

When has google ever cared about the user experience?

Edit: I find it interesting that this comment got all the way to at least +5 and has now descended to -2 as I edit it. Apparently what I said was more polarizing than I thought -- I honestly thought it was something that everyone agreed with.

If the long term goal is to actually roll out their own network (and I don't know if that's true), launching as an MVNO would be the obvious next step towards that.

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