The blame here lies squarely with Apple for allowing the carriers to pull this sort of bullshit with their customers. They're the ones who implemented this whole carrier profile mess on their platform.
Carriers have been doing this stuff every since the first feature phone came out. I remember Verizon disabling things like USB access to storage so you'd have to use their gateways to get pictures off your phone at $1.50 each.
Why do carrier Android updates take so long? One of the reasons is probably so they can put these kind of "features" in.
Apple has done a lot for the wireless market. They were able to strong-arm AT&T into allowing them to ship a phone without all the standard preloaded carrier crud. My guess is this was a totally non-negotiable point on the carrier's side.
I'm sure if Apple didn't agree to those terms they wouldn't be selling the iPhone at all. They probably had to fight pretty hard just to avoid carrier branding on their phones.
Carriers are also allowed to do it to Android phones, but choose not to do so. Why is that? Do they make more money from Android phones, and are incentivised to make them appear better performing?
> Carriers are also allowed to do it to Android phones, but choose not to do so. Why is that? Do they make more money from Android phones, and are incentivised to make them appear better performing?
Studies have shown that iPhone user use far more data on average than Android users. Carriers would naturally throttle iOS devices first.
They could take a lesson from Tron.