An idea presented last year is "recycled" this year by an American "expert" in mobile telephony says that Apple will soon offer voice and data services for its iDevices. The American company will become a virtual mobile phone operator that will offer GSM voice and data services for the iPhone and the iPad tablet, and the iTunes Store will be the system through which everything will be sold. Apple will become an MVNO operator, more precisely it will rent GSM networks from other mobile phone operators and use them to offer services to its own customers, so we are probably talking about quite high prices considering that Apple is an intermediary here.
If Apple will start offering GSM services for its customers, then the dependence on mobile phone operators decreases because the American company can offer iDevices at a subsidized price without other companies and can increase its profit in the long term. Of course, such a business model is risky, but Apple is known for getting the best deals for its own services, so we might be in for a pleasant surprise. Until then, everything is just a rumor, an interesting one, quite old, but which will probably never become reality.
