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Business Week reported yesterday that mobile phone carriers are desperately looking for new business models that will help these companies mantain control of their networks.

Mobile data services remain focused on market niches, and investors have seem little evidence that the mobile carriers can deliver compelling content. The carriers are more focused on maintaining control of their network, so the carriers miss ipportunities to be a vital connection point between media sites and users.

Except for a few offerings, such as Sprint’s aggressively marketed mobile data card, most mobile carriers offer customers access to a limited set of Internet resources. For example, MySpace offers mobile versions of its site to Helio and Cingular/AT&T customers. Facebook had an exclusive mobile deal with Cingular until recently. Now that service supports several different carriers, with the notable exception of T-Mobile. Seems like Facebook would work well on a Sidekick.

Author Robert Clark also offers this startling tidbit: YouTube generated more Internet traffic in 2006 than the ENTIRE Internet did in 2000.

Some quick Googling led to another interesting fact: Photobucket handled 2% of US Internet traffic at this time last year.

The mobile Internet has nothing close to either site in terms of popularity, functions or content. Even the mobile versions of established webmail systems like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail have failed to capture the imagination of mobile users. Yahoo offers multiple branded versions of its mobile interface (Go, Mobile and Mobile Web), which just adds to users’ confusion.

Both Google and Yahoo are offering mobile web services for the Apple iPhone, which may miss its June 11 ship date because of quality issues with the phone’s complex operating system. Stephen Wellman of Information Week reports that Apple and AT&T will be offering rebates to iPhone buyers, and AT&T may pay Apple for every customer that buys an iPhone through an Apple storefront. There’s no such thing as a “sure thing” in the mobile communications industry these days.