AT&T vs ... Apple?

If, as Zachary Karabell argues, the natural state of the cell business is monopoly or near-monopoly, and the future of cell service in America is a combined AT&T/T-Mobile vs. Verizon (which, presumably, will eventually consume Sprint), then the main thing to say is: Thank God for Google and Apple.

If the competition in the telecommunication space isn't going to come from the carriers, it'll have to come from somewhere, and right now, the only players with the strength to make Verizon and AT&T give on anything are Google and Apple, both of which have demanded and received substantial concessions from the carriers (and Google actually went beyond that and bid against Verizon and AT&T on spectrum until it got concessions on open-access rules). That would mean the competition in the cell business is less between carriers and more between the incentives of the people who control the networks and the incentives of the people who control the operating systems, but at least it would be some sort of competition.