I don't believe you can get into bed with a US telecom and stay clean. It's impossible.
Sure, they have had to pull some apps (although both ATT and Apple deny it was due to the carrier).
As the article states
"ban cool apps for no real reason (Google Voice on the iPhone for one), cripple apps to protect business models (Skype on the iPhone) and outright ban data-heavy apps from third parties (Slingbox for the iPhone), all the while promoting their own app (MLB’s iPhone app)."
Looks like compromise to me, all in its best interest of course.
Apple changed all carriers, since they are less locked down. On Android, you can get apps from the google marketplace, not just the carrier store. Ringtones can be had easily.