Apple as a Cellular Carrier

Ben Brooks on Apple's supposed plan to become their own service provider and bypass carriers entirely:

How about the fact that they would have to build a wireless network and get the spectrum to do that from the FCC? Apple can figure out the phone subsidies, but magically making a cell network infrastructure appear is likely to be much harder.

You're thinking too small, Ben. That's just the US. Apple has iPhone customers all over the globe.