Should Apple buy a carrier, or just go around them?

Apple is famous for its “own and control” philosophy where it controls the operating system and hardware of its devices, and more recently, its heavily guarded gates to its app stores, both iOS and Mac. When it comes to the iPhone, the main element that’s still much beyond Apple’s reach is the carriers. Jean-Louis Gassee proposed Apple solve this problem by just scooping up a carrier, like Deutsche Telekom. It’s certainly got the cash and clout to do so, but Apple has been reported for months to be working on this from a totally different angle. And more recently, the company is continuing to rack up patents on methods that could allow it to do an end-run around carriers.