“You see developers putting enormous effort into ease of use for their [mobile] apps, assuming free bandwidth … but then those apps launch 100 connections,” said Wim Sweldens, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s Wireless division at Mobilize 2011 today. That load saps available bandwidth for the user pretty darn fast, especially since there are precious few unlimited data plans left for consumers.

Simple fact: Cost-conscious consumers won’t stick with glitzy new apps if it costs an arm and a leg to access them, Sweldens said. ”We need to come up with a different way of pricing some bits may be more valuable and other bits you may want to wait for. We need that kind of yield management [for bandwidth].”

If consumers get whacked by huge cell bills, “they get confused, and confused customers aren’t good for anyone,” Sweldens said. And when it comes to smartphones, apps are where it’s at. 

Iyad Tarazi, VP of network development and engineering for Sprint, agreed that bandwidth availability is critical. Sprint launched unlimited data plans four years ago in order to offer customers flexibility at a reasonable price, he said. That was not altruistic, however. “We wanted fast 4G adoption to drive the use of video, interactive gaming,” Tarazi said.

Even as bandwidth costs reemerge as a concern for customers, the tools and middleware available to developers has made it much easier for them to build highly customized apps for a wide array of users, Tarazi said.

And the infrastructure is getting smarter as well. “There will be middleware to help manage apps that are not disciplined,” and more sophisticated clouds will interoperate with the wireless network to optimize service delivery.  The technology will figure out how to download a frame first, before all the content to make it a faster user experience, Tarazi said.

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Consumers. The biggest losers of this deal are going to be the consumers. While AT&T and T-Mobile are going to try to spin it as a good deal to combine wireless spectrum assets, the fact is, T-Mobile USA is now out of the market.

T-Mobile USA has been fairly aggressive in offering cheaper voice and data plans as it has tried to compete with its larger brethren. The competition has kept the prices in the market low enough. This has worked well for U.S. consumers. With the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile, the market is now reduced to three national players: AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.  Net-net, U.S. consumers are going to lose.

Phone Handset Makers. Before the merger was announced, the handset makers such as HTC and Motorola had two major carriers who could buy their GSM-based phones. They just lost any ability to control price and profits on handsets because now there is a single buyer that can dictate what GSM phones come to market. Even with LTE becoming the standard for the 4G world, it would essentially be a market dominated by three buyers (should Sprint go with LTE), which would place handset makers at the mercy of the giants.

Sprint. The nation’s third-largest carrier was in talks to buy T-Mobile according to Bloomberg, but AT&T’s offer has now pushed Sprint to the bottom of the pile in terms of size and potentially spectrum assets if it goes through. If it doesn’t go through, then Sprint now has a price it has to match in order to get its hands on T-Mobile. Plus, Sprint and T-Mobile often stood against AT&T and Verizon on a variety of regulatory issues, so if AT&T succeeds, Sprint will stand alone on special access and other issues.

Network Equipment Suppliers. The carrier consolidation has proved to be a living hell for companies that make infrastructure network equipment. Alcatel-Lucent, along with Ericsson and Nokia Siemens, are suppliers of gears to both AT&T and T-Mobile USA. With a single customer, they will lost ability to control their own fate and are going to see their profits suffer as a result.

Google. I think the biggest loser in this could be Google. In T-Mobile, it has a great partner for its Android OS-based devices. Now the company will be beholden to two massive phone companies — Verizon and AT&T — who are going to try to hijack Android to serve their own ends.

Don’t be surprised if you see AT&T impose its own will on what apps and service are put on its Android smartphones. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the worst phone company in the U.S. (according to Consumer Reports) tries to create its own app store and force everyone to buy apps through it.

It doesn’t matter how you look at it; this is just bad for wireless innovation, which means bad news for consumers. T-Mobile has been pretty experimental and innovative: It has experimented with newer technologies such as UMA, built its own handsets and has generally been a more consumer-centric company. AT&T, on the other hand, has the innovation of a lead pencil and has the mentality more suited to a monopoly: a position it wants to regain.

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