After 7 years in the telecommunications industry with the nations second largest telco, I can say for certain that they are dumb, and so are their pipes.
Telcos CEOs and big shareholders are extremely arrogant, but not dumb. IMHO in the US, the balance of power between telcos and phone manufacturers is still in favour of the telcos. To have any chance Apple will have to bring back most of their foreign profits (and that will cost a ton of taxes) and ally with other vendors (Google, Samsung, etc.). So not likely at all.
The balance of power between the telcos and most "phone manufacturers" is in favor of the telcos but for Apple and the telcos it's decidedly in Apple's favor which is why they are now all on board with no exception I'm aware of to Apple's basic demands on branding, logos and crapware.
I would argue the senior staff may not be dumb, but much of their staff is another story. For example, I was working closely with Verizon staff while they were petitioning the FTC to allow them to raise 411 rates. Their argument for the required rate increase was that they were loosing customers to things like google 411 search, so they need to raise rates to keep their service profitable.
How's that for logic? "Hmm, we now have competition for our product that is better and cheaper, oh well we better just raise our rates." Meanwhile they were very slow to make improvements to their product as a means of countering competition.
The logic is that they have already lost the knowledgeable, price sensitive customers. Raising the rates would allow them to extract more value from the rest, e.g. old people.
Or will Apple, Google, etc form a US (or non-US?) company that's invested in by their foreign, profit-booking subsidiaries thus negating the tax situation?
It's hilarious that you could "launder" profits this way.