[amartya916]

I completely agree. For a while I was wondering whether an MVNO operator like Virgin Mobile (piggybacking on Sprint) that exclusively works with iPhones (a fairly recent change) was a stealth move by Apple to test the waters. As you rightly pointed out, it just doesn't make sense for Apple, and in the broader sense, the bigger these companies get, the worse it is for consumer choice.

[MBCook]

As I remember the rumors were Apple originally wanted to go MVNO but ended up going with AT&T instead because they couldn’t get it to work the way they wanted to for some reason.