Bad analogy. AOL didn't own anything essential like the spectrum owned by the mobile operators. I don't see WiFi as being a replacement for this spectrum and note that WiMax relies on it.
The spectrum is immensely valuable, but it's fundamentally owned and controlled by governments who have the power to decrease its value by imposing more regulation on current operators and/or opening up new spectrum bands to new competitors.
Current operators appear to me as not unlike the railroad monopolies of the late 19th century. Immensely powerful and seemingly irreplaceable, but on the brink of being disrupted to irrelevance.
AOL was a previous-generation network infrastructure company. Current mobile phone operators are in a similar position. Any IT company should stay away from making long-term bets on them: just play nice to get what you need from the operators now, and let these dinosaurs go extinct when the market eventually changes.