That's true in principle, they could buy directly at Telecom manufacturers, rent antenna space and use subcontractors to install base stations, but there are co

That's true in principle, they could buy directly at Telecom manufacturers, rent antenna space and use subcontractors to install base stations, but there are counter examples showing they are not so good at this business. For example Google has tried to provide free Wi-Fi, at the time some people were afraid it would be some rehearsal for a Wimax deployment, it never happened. 8 years ago, Google made a lot of noise with their high altitude platforms (their so called balloons). They met some Telcos, but it went nowhere. Long time ago Google had also a project to provide phone calls with interesting fees. It was a MVNO in practice but it never got traction even if Google had access to an incredible number of Android users.