[hga]

It's worth pointing out the one major relevant fact they didn't cover, that Fake Steve Jobs pointed out at the end of last year: every quarter after the first "iPhone Christmas" (4Q07, the first Christmas after the release of the first iPhone), AT&T's had lower wireless capital expenditures (capex): http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/12/att-by-the-numbers.html (through 3Q09 at least).

AT&T made a conscious choice to maintain its operating and net earnings at the expense of its quality of service (something we've heard detailed bits and pieces about, e.g. insufficient backhaul, like this article's comments on the not much used in the US market chip Apple used/uses). We'll see if that was a good choice as Verizon et. al. converge on LTE along with AT&T.