iPhone Carrier Update was released today and i contacted apple and was told they don't know what goes into a carrier update all the time, only AT&T knows... there must me a select few who know about this right?? It wouldn't make sense that AT&T is the only one, or does this go back to that story on carriers handling what users can do and cant do??? (TiPb article Link)
Considering that Apple isn't known for being the most informative company, even to it's own employees, it doesn't surprise me that whoever you talked to didn't have a clue. Carrier update is simply a nice term for firmware. Bug fixes, improvements and other related items are what is usually installed.
As ghostface said, Apple isn't very forthcoming with information, and what one group implemented, nobody else is going to know about if it's determined that the information shouldn't go out.
That said, carrier files are for network settings, and enabling/disabling certain sets of functionality, and the carrier update was simply supposed to be for network connectivity.
