That's a nice way of putting it. I'm not sure if they can do so. But they have surely tried to hold back the tide.
If they cannot, they are doubtless worrying about becoming akin to the fixed line carriers who are running a fading legacy business model.
Maybe that is the way things will go from here as devices become smarter and more secure.
Or maybe - as I think they are doing - they are pushing into the transactional space in which they can not only act as bitpipe providers but they can also tax individual transactions on a value basis. Hence the Isis eWallet and the corralling of the merchant card services.