The value chain is: carriers -> hardware -> OS -> platforms / services -> apps. People forget about the carrier bit. Whatever happens on the 'internets', well

The value chain is: carriers -> hardware -> OS -> platforms / services -> apps. People forget about the carrier bit. Whatever happens on the 'internets', well, carriers can bill for. If the 'internets' becomes all that more indispensable, your MB/s rate just doubled. It's not particularly competitive, and those carriers also own content, and other parts of the value chain. Though their profitability may be lower, their revenues are not, they are just as powerful as Apple. There needs to be more competition among carriers. Then we can also apply some rules to Apple and Google about dividing up the value chain so that 'apps' and 'hardware/os' compete on independent layers.