For the past few years, our continual criticism of foldable phones has been that, while the form factor innovation is neat, the cost of the devices is far too high – usually twice the price of the standard flagship. But with macroeconomic conditions worsening, and with Apple unveiling its leasing scheme, this criticism is not so contentious anymore. Bigger screens should in theory mean more video being delivered to mobile devices over wireless networks, and, ultimately, more bandwidth consumption – exactly the sort of behavior that MNOs would like to see from increasingly data-hungry subscribers. But for the MNOs, there is a renewed role to play in being the conduit for these expensive new phones. At the start of the smartphone era, the carriers were central…