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The issue, as Hesse outlined it in his keynote speech at CTIA this week, is that carriers have still not definitively solved the "dumb pipes" conundrum - that is, how do carriers prevent themselves from being relegated to pushing bits on their networks while over-the-top content providers rake in cash by offering value-added services?

To make things more complicated, Hesse said the wireless industry was currently suffering a "trust and reputation crisis" and noted that the latest showed that all three major U.S. wireless carriers ranked in the bottom third in customer reputation among all major U.S. companies. What's more, Hesse said that the companies at the top of the reputation chain were big tech players such as Google, Amazon and , which carriers will have to compete with for value-added wireless services. In Hesse's view, reestablishing trust among customers should be the wireless industry's most important goal over the next few years.

"As we look forward as an industry, we need to see trust as our key," he said. "If they trust us they are going to buy from us, they're going to have a special relationship with us."