Saying back into the days of strong carrier control assumes that you ever left those days behind in the U.S. Since the great white hope for this happening was the iPhone, which is still only available on one single carrier, this seems somewhat naive.
Either Apple couldn't get any concessions from the other carriers or they accepted a big bag of cash to give one carrier an advantage over the others. Either way carriers are in control. All you get is a slightly different set of consumer hostile activities that affect different demographics.
At best you could argue that Apple is demonstrating a better way to do things on the AT&T network and customer pressure will force other carriers to emulate (if/when allowed by whatever contract binds Apple and AT&T), but exactly the same could be said about Android. And similar could be argued across mobile OSes too e.g. with Android pressuring Apple into relaxing its arbitrary developer tool restrictions and iPhones showing a market for unbranded (by carriers at least) phones.
Apple's iPhone is still unique in its niche. Of course Android is commoditising the smartphone market, so if you are in the market for a smartphone then iPhone/Android/WebOS/etc... are all comparable.
But if someone actually wants an iPhone or an Android in particular then the view is different. In that case the carrier can get any manufacturer to build what they want or they'll choose a different manufacturer for their Android phone. But you can't get the iPhone anywhere else than Apple.
Apple does not need to bow to carrier pressure because they are the only game in town (if you want an iPhone, if you don't care about the OS then I agree with you).
It sounds like you think there was (is?) a time when carriers in the U.S. had no power and the customer reigned supreme, but this only applied to people on AT&T who wanted an iPhone (and didn't want tethering or Skype over 3G for the first few years etc.)
If Google have betrayed us all by destroying this tiny, short-lived, half-hearted, single-network, sub-national niche of telecoms utopia then I'm not sure I can bring myself to care, particularly if they've opened up various other niches in exchange.
Either Apple couldn't get any concessions from the other carriers or they accepted a big bag of cash to give one carrier an advantage over the others. Either way carriers are in control. All you get is a slightly different set of consumer hostile activities that affect different demographics.
At best you could argue that Apple is demonstrating a better way to do things on the AT&T network and customer pressure will force other carriers to emulate (if/when allowed by whatever contract binds Apple and AT&T), but exactly the same could be said about Android. And similar could be argued across mobile OSes too e.g. with Android pressuring Apple into relaxing its arbitrary developer tool restrictions and iPhones showing a market for unbranded (by carriers at least) phones.