It is an interesting read but as usual the article and the article quoted by Rob Pegararo don’t get into the whol;e concept of the business model that these carriers have deployed.
As much as it may criticize the carriers game plan’s why not criticize not the Carriers but the so Called Business Development Teams that are deployed at various carriers and elsewhere that may talk the great concept of providing services in the best interest of the customer.
None of the carriers have and will ever do the right thing unless they are forced to do so either due to cmpetetion or some regulations being imposed.
As Rob points out in his article “There is reason for hope, however: It’s not as if the carriers haven’t made this mistake before. They let their own worst instincts lead them to impose arbitrary limits and rules around basic voice and messaging services. Calls to landline phones once cost extra, while text messaging might only have worked with people using the same carrier.
Those restrictions eventually fell away, as carriers realized they’d make more money if they focused on making their services as useful to customers as possible.”
It is time to talk about the MBA’s that run such operatiosn who may have sat ina class about Ethics, or Customer Satisfaction etc but have probably left it out of their daily routine.
Why do the various heads of the business units allow such crap to go on or where did the Fiduciary responsibilities bestowed upon the managers go, to allow them to screwup and get away with it constantly.
It is not like the carriers don’t change their ways in terms of the services they make available eventually, but the costs associated for it are always higher and nobody ever gets to be held accountable.
Maybe Im off tangent here but what Im trying to state is that Mobile Phone Applications devoted to things such as Video in the long run can be of value only if the following fall into place.
1. Battery life
2.Video Content is valued and of quality.

Services that may incorporate video as one of the delivery mechanisms have a better chance of being appreciated than purely entertainment driven video services, most people still will prefer to view entertainment on larger screens, even Video Ipod’s according to a crude statistical analysis by Nielsen has so far not been monetized as such.
Give me reliable voice services first and foremost. I would argue that most people still today have issues with voice calls on mobile phones lacking quality and or also being reliable always.
Business Development M anagers if they were truly serving in the interests of the customers would make sure they live true to their word. Instead all advertisements carry fine print excluding of any responsibility to the services they tout.

There are a number of benefits to carriers to switching from the programmed to the user-to-user content sharing model including (i) better user experience, (ii) increased data/SMS usage, and (iii) reduced churn/increased loyalty. 

However, in order for mobile video sharing to reach mass adoption, key challenges need to be overcome including (i) video handset penetration, (ii) carrier interoperability, (iii) network bandwidth, and (iv) data plan pricing.  Luckily, these trends are quickly moving in the right direction.

The next step is for mobile social networks, in concert with the carriers, to develop services that balance carrier security with user freedom to upload and share their content with anyone with a mobile phone.

Face it: Carriers will continue to make deals like this because it’s profitable to them.  You can argue “ethics” or “customer satisfaction” all you want but the fact is they are making money with this system and they will continue to use this system until its apparent it doesn’t work.

Plus in a time where carriers are struggling for ways to differentiate themselves from each other - struggling to avoid becoming a “dumb pipe” - they will continue, in the short term anyways, to do deals like this.  They desperatly need deals so they can say “Hey we have MySpace/YouTube/Hot-new-content-deal, come switch to us!”