Apple in talks to launch its own mobile phone plans

The denial comes after Business Insider reported that Apple was testing an MVNO in the United States.

Launching an MVNO, or Mobile Virtual Network Operator, would make it so that the service and the product are both supplied by Apple and could make the world’s most profitable smart phone maker even more profitable.

It may take Apple as long as five years to roll out pricing plans for customers if it chooses to do so.

An MVNO is a virtual carrier network where space is leased from existing carriers and offered to customers at a price.

“We haven’t mentioned nor do we have now any plans to launch an MVNO”, stated an Apple spokeswoman in a press release on Tuesday.

The testing of the MVNO service however doesn’t guarantee that it will ever see the light of day for iPhone owners in the US and Europe. This would be possible because Apple would have already purchased bulk access to network services from one or more wireless providers. It will pay large sums of money to carriers to offer service for iPhones, but carriers will lose all connection with the customer. In turn, Apple would provide talk, texting, and and data service, just like you’d get from a traditional wireless carrier. The telecom organizations sell off their capacity to Apple in this scenario. “He wanted to replace carriers”, Stanton said of Jobs, the Apple founder and CEO who died October 5 after a battle with cancer. In April, Google announced Project Fi, a partnership with Sprint and T-Mobile to bring a similar service to users of the Nexus 6. The company in 2006 filed a patent application on becoming an MVNO and extended it in 2011. The company is also planning to launch its own Siri-based voicemail service, iCloud Voicemail.

No MVNO from Apple anytime soon, that’s the clear message.

Last year, Apple included its SIM in cell-enabled versions of its iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 tablets.