I think that deal was less about exclusivity, and more about the enforced voluntary compliance of apple to well behaved networking. In theory one phone is able to jam a radio tower. Mobile networking is heavily dependent on devices not sending data outside of their time slot.
The iPhone was sold outside the US too. The AT&T deal probably had almost no impact on those markets.
Aren’t they already doing all of that, but just on their servers? I’d rather have them doing it on my device. There is and will be no way for us to know what they are doing with our data on their servers. But there will be people analysing what ever they do on our devices.
Same with googles FLoC, do it on my device where I have a chance to turn it off.
The outcry really should have started when people started using devices that in reality are still owned by the company that made them.
How much do I pay to contribute better?