I think you skipped a sentence:

  Apparently, the operators are "venting their anger" at 
  high-level executive meetings with Nokia, whom they 
  believe are trying to wrest away control of their 
  customers and offering easy access to an app that could 
  potentially hurt call revenues.

Nokia is trying to control the platform and therefore the customers' user experience TO THE CUSTOMERS' BENEFIT and yet, you act like that is a bad thing. Clearly, Nokia does not believe the service provider's intentions have the customers' interest at heart, so they are trying to OWN the customer, rather than the service provider so that they can provide them with what they (the customers') want (ie. Skype). Nokia is trying to do what few other companies are and you are calling their attitude to their customers as "stifling innovation"? Wow.