These old guard companies, he insists, are the ones that will really drive the internet forward.

That was the Facebook founder's message last week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona—home turf for many of those old-school telecoms. It's a counterintuitive claim. The telecoms are just laying wirelines and putting up cell towers, in accordance with their trusted business model.

Zuckerberg's assertion also comes across as disingenuous when you consider that Facebook is also a company that's undermining that old business model. See, for example, Facebook's free messaging in lieu of the paid texts that have traditionally generated so much telecom revenue. "Any company would be careful to deliver the keys to their house to the competitor," one telecom CEO said of Facebook at MWC.