In the long term, when equilibrium is reached (which of course it never is but the trend is generally towards it) the profit made by each competitor will be, on average, just enough to keep the capital employed which each competitor is using.
Call it proof that there's a global wireless karma equilibrium, if you will, that needs to be maintained: China Unicom has warned that its net profit for 2009 will be down a whopping 50 percent, while one of its doppelgangers across the Sea of Japan -- NTT DoCoMo -- has encountered exactly the opposite fortune on news that it has posted a 48 percent year-over-year improvement in black ink.