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When you control the pipes, you control the ecosystem. At the very least, you can impose your will on a good portion of the environment. This is what the mobile industry has come down to in the United States. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint have as much or more say about the devices that eventually reach consumers hands than the platform providers or manufacturers.

Why do Android device updates take so long? Ask the carriers. Why are there half a dozen different skins for Android smartphones? Ask the carriers. Why do high-end smartphones cost what they do? Ask the carriers. Why did Nokia have to wait to enter the U.S. market with its new Lumia line? Ask the carriers. Why are there a ton of different versions of the Samsung Galaxy? Ask ... you get the picture.

What was considered the most influential consumer media trend of 2007 and '08 was how providers of many categories were bundling services together and going after one another in the market. Suddenly Comcast could compete with Verizon, or with something we used to call Cingular. The "triple-play" was changing not only the way services like broadband Internet and phone were offered, but the shapes and makers of the devices themselves.

Fast-forward nearly four years later, and that tide has almost completely subsided.

This was more or less an inevitable outcome: the Samsung Galaxy Nexus on Verizon is not going to launch with the Google Wallet. Verizon has said that it is not blocking the application but rather that the company is working with Google to make sure that Google Wallet is up Verizon's technical and security standards. Does that mean we will see the Google Wallet on the Galaxy Nexus eventually? Perhaps, but the whole scenario is a series of convoluted partnerships and expectations.

This is exactly what we thought would happen to the Google Wallet. As we noted earlier this year, the first partners are losing their exclusivity by the end of the year. It looks more likely now that the exclusivity lasted until the Galaxy Nexus was launched. Either way, there are too many players in the ecosystem and all want a piece of the action.

Telecommunications giant Verizon is reportedly working on a Web streaming service akin to Netflix, according to a report from Reuters. The new service could be available to as many as 85 million U.S. households beginning next year, sources said.

At first glance, a company with the size and clout of Verizon would appear to be a formidable potential challenger to Netflix, who has been especially vulnerable lately. Still, there are reasons to doubt that Verizon would be successful in making a dent in Netflix's dominance of this space.

As part of its bid to acquire the assets of T-Mobile, AT&T made the case earlier this year that consolidation through mergers were the only way for nationwide carriers to inexpensively (the euphemism here being "horizontally") piece together a 4G network.

Today, Verizon Wireless demonstrated that is clearly not the case, in a deal which enables it to manage the block of spectrum that was the subject of the best-placed bid in the big FCC 700 MHz auction of 2008, even though VZW was already the clear winner of that auction already.

Verizon is making a concerted effort to bring its enterprise mobility and unified communications options up to industry standards. In the past, Verizon has been criticized as taking a scattershot and sometimes shoddy approach at enterprise solutions and falling short of expectations. Verizon executives know this and are trying to change.

This week at CTIA in San Diego, Verizon unveiled two new enterprise solutions - a private corporate application store and a mobile unified communications client that are intended to take some of the lay-hanging fruit enterprise options and help tie Verizon's enterprise efforts together.

In March the CEOs of Sprint, Verizon and AT&T took the stage at CTIA in Orlando for a lively discussion about the state of the mobile ecosystem and its future. The keynote was affable with an undertone of drama, coming two days after AT&T announced that it was acquiring T-Mobile for $39 billion.

The CEOs returned to the stage today at the CTIA Enterprise & Apps conference in San Diego. A lot has changed from March. Sprint has sued AT&T to prevent the T-Mobile merger and is fighting for its livelihood as a major U.S. carrier. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse took a couple swipes at AT&T head man Ralph de la Vega but overall the carriers spoke about working together and how they are pushing the bounds of mobile innovation in the United States. Check out our Storify of the keynote below.

Verizon is announcing today at its developers' conference that it is has completely rebuilt its application store that ships with every new Android device the carrier sells. Starting from scratch, Verizon has recreated its own Android application store and integrated a new search feature from app discovery engine Chomp.

The Verizon Android store will focus on premium apps and ship alongside the Android Market on Verizon devices. Verizon is dropping its V Cast app store and renaming it Verizon Apps. On the flip side, Verizon is trying to make app search easier through its partnership with Chomp, a company that has created an algorithm specifically designed to tackle the tricky problem of app store search results.

Add Sprint to the telcos looking to get into the cloud services market. According to Roger Cheng, Sprint will be offering "hosted collaboration services" to small and medium-sized businesses using its data center to provide capacity.

It appears that Verizon is starting to block hotspot tethering for consumers using jailbroken devices without data plans. A ReadWriteWeb employee using a jailbroken tethered Verizon Motorola X without a data plan was sent to this page outlining Verizon's hotspot data plans today when trying to access a hotspot. This is a new development, since the employee used her jailbroken device as a hotspot two days ago.

The move from Verizon comes the day after AT&T started moving jailbroken hotspot users without data plans involuntarily to tiered data plans. Verizon hotspot plans start at $20 for 2 GB of data when added to a data plan of $29.99 or more. Every GB after the 2 GB threshold is an additional $20. The move corresponds with U.S. carriers closing loopholes in their pricing structures to maximize revenue from data as voice and text messaging revenue decreases.