With FireOS, Amazon has cooked up their own version of the Android operating system using Google’s source code, giving themselves their own OS that they can do with what they please. AT&T reportedly wants the same sort of deal, and they tried to work with ZTE in the past to get it, but export sanctions made the partnership too complicated, so now they’re looking to Cyanogen.

The name Cyanogen will be familiar to anybody who’s ever rooted an Android phone. They already have their own version of Android that they license, but partnering with AT&T would be a huge deal for them.

While there are no doubt advantages to AT&T having their own custom version of Android, there are issues as well. Future Android updates would need to be tweaked to work with whatever AT&T and Cyanogen come up with, and there’s always the possibility that certain updates simply wouldn’t work at all.

Even if the reports are true and AT&T have spoken with Cyanogen (and ZTE in the past), there’s no guarantee that this will ever come to fruition. This could be nothing more than AT&T exploring all of their options, but if they do go through with it, it would be a decent-sized shake up to the Android eco-system.

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