There’s been some good stuff in the FT over the past few days, featuring some insights from the leaders of China Mobile and Vodafone — the world’s largest mobile operators by subscribers and by revenues, respectively.

First, from last week, China Mobile chairman Wang Jianzhou on changing business models. He says operators need to innovate and to “bring improvements to the value chain” to protect and grow their businesses. This hints at the smart-pipe strategy I mentioned before, how operators need to offer more than simple access to “their” customers.

Second, from Monday, a couple of pieces with Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin. The first is a general feature on Sarin and his strategy for Vodafone, which is to evolve it into a “total communications company”, building on its core skills in mobility and internet services. But much of the positivity you could take away from that piece gets set back by a shorter second one, in which Sarin says the iPhone delivers “a pretty poor experience”, and that Vodafone will always have power in the market because it owns its customers, finishing with the lovely quote that “Whoever comes into the marketplace is going to have to work through us.”

Perhaps I’m overanalyzing a bit, but I think it’s rather telling that he says “work through us” and not “work with us”. I guess it just illustrates that for all the steps forward operators worldwide may be taking, there’s still a long way to go to escape the closed telco mentality of the past.