Whilst travelling and being hassled by lack of network, data charges etc it came to me that some giant company, and I'm thinking Apple here, should basically use their immense worth and really lock it all down.
Apple are pushing all this online "Cloud" thing to everyone and are becoming more and more a mobile device company, with iOS 5 this is really going full steam ahead. Now they have billions of dollars in the bank, cash, not make-believe worth - it strikes me that the limiting factor with all their new devices are the networks on which they are used and associated charges/data limits. Maybe it's time they started branching out into the network market?
They could basically buy out a few of the world network players and, for a premium charge offer unlimited access worldwide, removing all these download limits and roaming issues. It could be expensive, people pay for convenience - if Apple were to offer me unlimited internet/phone use anywhere in the world for £100 per month I'd happily pay it.
There are many hurdles I'm sure, competition laws, country specific issues etc but I'd imagine they'd be able to buy out 3 companies (they wouldn't have to be the biggest ones, just have the coverage) and cover most of Europe/North America and Asia without problem. This may all be far too expensive of course and there could be many things I haven't considered but does anyone else think this would be a logical step?
Apple are pushing all this online "Cloud" thing to everyone and are becoming more and more a mobile device company, with iOS 5 this is really going full steam ahead. Now they have billions of dollars in the bank, cash, not make-believe worth - it strikes me that the limiting factor with all their new devices are the networks on which they are used and associated charges/data limits. Maybe it's time they started branching out into the network market?
They could basically buy out a few of the world network players and, for a premium charge offer unlimited access worldwide, removing all these download limits and roaming issues. It could be expensive, people pay for convenience - if Apple were to offer me unlimited internet/phone use anywhere in the world for £100 per month I'd happily pay it.
There are many hurdles I'm sure, competition laws, country specific issues etc but I'd imagine they'd be able to buy out 3 companies (they wouldn't have to be the biggest ones, just have the coverage) and cover most of Europe/North America and Asia without problem. This may all be far too expensive of course and there could be many things I haven't considered but does anyone else think this would be a logical step?