I'm not sure I buy the ignorance argument. We're talking about two options here:
1) Pay a high cost for the phone up front in exchange for a lower monthly payment
2) Pay a higher monthly fee and receive a free (or much lower cost) phone upgrade every two years
To understand the attractiveness of #2 to consumers, we can look at the reasons for financing anything.
Financing allows us to spread out capital outlays in exchange for a finance premium. For many consumers, the attractiveness of financing is that they can get the product they want now, rather than later. Even for consumers who might be willing to delay a bit, there's the matter of planning. Planning takes effort, and the finance costs are an easy offset for them, because they perceive that their chances of successfully executing their savings plan is low.
There is also a price psychology issue. An unsubsidized smartphone can easily cost $600. That is not an insignificant one-time cash outlay. The simple price deterrent factor pushes consumers toward obscene, but ultimately bearable, finance terms.
The real "ignorance" comes in the fact that we don't have a clear method of separating out subsidy costs. Yes, we can look at MVNO's, but they fail the "all things being equal" test. That is to say, an MVNO is not an apples-to-apples comparison to a large network provider like Verizon or AT&T, both of which have more coverage with their fast networks.
We can't adequately separate subsidy costs with T-Mobile, because they don't differentiate between subsidy plans and non-subsidy plans. This means that if you bring your own device to T-Mobile, you're actually paying a subsidy penalty for everyone else's phone.
I think saying that consumers are addicted to subsidies is really just another way of saying that consumers are addicted to financing. This is definitely true of American consumers. I don't think we'll see a shift in the way consumers purchase cell phones without a broader shift in the way consumers pay for goods.